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Ahem. OK enough talk of business, let’s get onto the art. We’re cutting back the variety of releases for the time being – only ButchCrutch and Solar Woodroach albums are on the table for the moment. (The final Music Server volumes will be scheduled not long after that.)

ButchCrutch’s LP Ebolaball is underway, with music beds being recorded over at Clearwater, sent down to Sydney for me to ruin with my yelping. Everything is going smoothly with no, few, well not too many shit fights so far. I’m still trying for some kind of interview with the duo but (for reasons that I hope to explain soon that start with an ‘S’) they are being very shy of media.

So instead we have Tikis! Sending out the plastic Tikis turned into a postage nightmare so we’re thinking FLAT. You’ll have the opportunity to purchase packs of FLAT things that go with the album, which will be anything but flat at playtime! Here’s a photo of Tiki maker Tara Ellard slaving away at the front cover art.

The Solar Woodroach album is called Her Human is a Poet in New York City. Make of that what you will – it’s existed and been called that for two years now. As with the previous Perversions LP you’ll be greeted by what sounds like ‘classical music’, so long as you don’t listen too hard. The interesting thing is that it has change built in – when you download it several months apart you end up with a slightly different album. There is no definitive shape or size to it, and any attempt by Discogs to document track lengths will fail. All the track titles are fluid. This is all part of disrupting ‘the album’, with the hope that we can make something different for the 21st century.

I was asked why ‘Solar Woodroach’?. In the upper class areas of Sydney where they like their classical music they do not have cockroaches. And add to that, this:

Beyond albums we have LUNA and ATMOS.

LUNA has been going for a few years now so I am delighted have placed the first building in the game engine – a helter skelter that will be the starting point of the game. That doesn’t mean all the problems are sorted out, more than there will be someday be a game and not just endless pages of notes.

Not much work on ATMOS recently as the work schedule demands other music be completed first. Plenty of experiments and remixes of older things to see how it sounds, but you won’t be hearing it for a while yet.

HIGH MERCH

On the planning chart behind me there’s a section about ‘high merch’. It describes steps required over the coming years to build the ability to supply complicated objects. ‘High’ simply acknowledges that we have to start ‘low’, study hard, find people in the northern hemisphere that will work with us and eventually reach the quality of which we dream. A box of vinyl such as made by Vinyl On Demand is a good example – it is a formidable slab of culture at a formidable price! But we’re not much interested in vinyl, as I think there’s much more interesting ways to fill a box.

So then how to fill the box?