Blackout Crew Doit Again

After saving pop music with "Put a Donk On It" (I am only slighty sarcastic here)



The blackout Crew Return with "Dialed" about cell phones. Wow.
Myspace has the song (turn off annoying autostart clips in the comments section!)
http://www.myspace.com/blackoutcrewmcs

Heaven 17 in the US!!!!!!

Heaven 17 and ABC ( and some others, like I care!) are coming to tour the US in June and July.

Sweet!

Awesome video

ok, it's been done before, maybe even better, but I still love this:

Good Record Company/Bad Record Comapny

Arista/RCA (or whoever they are now) is at least trying with the new Annie Lennox best of. check out this website http://annielennoxcollection.com/ for what they are doing. There you can:
Listen to tracks from the album, watch videso (it's a CD/dvd set) and order it from amazon. Plus they have a blog from annie herself explaining each song.

I may try this for the new ESH album. Stream it and have a special page for them to post words about the album. Maybe two new songs a week streamed? Hmmm.


Now on to a record comapny that just does NOT GET IT. UMG (Universal) I am talking about YOU!
I have a small child, so I now have the Wall-e video. (A great movie, and not just for kids, it should have gotten a best picture nod imho).

It opens with "Put on Your Sunday Clothes" from Hello Dolly. It is the version of the song from the movie version. Now Micheal Crawford (yeah, that Micheal Crawford) sounds like a 5 year old on it, but it is a great song- one of those big production numbers in the movie.

And by the way, Wall-e features a GREAT Peter Gabrial song. So I bounced to iTunes, got the Gabrial song for 99 cents and...

oh, the one minute version of "Sunday clothes" is album only- so I bounced over to the Soundtrack to Hello Doly and the WHOLE ALBUM is album only.

WTF? Does UMg really think I'm gonna shell out $10 for a musical, and a marginal muscial at that (hey, I took American Musical theater in colege, I know from good musicals).

I am not going to scour the torrents for the song, but I expect that a local library has the CD...

So UMG looses my 99 cents, and certianly will not get my $10. DO they win? Maybe some folks will shell out $10 for one song (from the Amazon reviews it seems some people have) but really, take advantage of the huge success of Wall-e and let people get the one song - maybe you will get some new fans who will plunk down money for the album.

and don't tell me the stage version is for sale by song only - the guy singing on the stage version is terrible, ugh.

What did I do this week?

Been a busy week but here is what happened:
1. Got the Cotton & Gin Ep up to IODA, it should pop up next week online, and in a few weeks be most places. Maybe. Hopefully.

2. Got the ESH album out the door to be pressed.

3. Got a GREAT megamix from Steve Olaf for the Synthetic Dance project. Will get that album up to IODA ASAP, maybe by next week

whew!

Wonderwall done EBM style on songsmith

too funny

Appropos of nothing - the new Kelly Clakrson single - for free

VH1 has it here (legally) It's not bad, actually pretty electronic in many ways. Although not as electronic as that damn cover
But... just asking. Does it bother anyone else that the song seems like a sort of "Told you so" from her label? She didn;t write it (Max MArtin did, God bless those Swedes!) After that dust up over her last record (which she wrote a lot of) it seems the label is sending a not-so-sublte message to her about how she would suck without them.
Hmmm

Does Amazon matter?

Up front - Amazon still matters, a LOT, when it comes to CD sales.

But does it matter when it comes to downloads? From my point of view, no. Not even close. October was a good month for Ninthwave - the Smile.dk album sold well and Heaven 17 's "Reaper" cover sold really well. And over at Amazon we did well - Heaven 17 was usually in the top 25,000 of the songs list and Smile.dk often was top 10,000 of albums sold. Mind you, top 10k is pretty badm until you realize there are at least 500,000 tracked albums on Amazon and I am sure many more tracked songs.

So- not bad, right? Well, I get the October statement from IODA. iTune sales? About $900. Emusic? Usually about $300. Amazon? -Well, what would you predict for what is supposedly the #3 ranked seller of MP3s now? $300? $250? $100? $50 even? Try $32. And this i with titles that are selling well on Amazon.

So, right now at least, when it comes to digital sales, Amazon does not matter at all.
Hm.

Gary's Cover

OK, so a track list and title has been settled on for the Gary Flanagn collection. MEanwhile he is writing and essay, as am I and maybe one or two other folks, to be included in a pdf liner notes.

Meanwhile here is the first pass at the art for

:Golden Days of Analogue

p.s. bonus points if you can ID the synth in the picture.

Remix Empire State Human!

Laptop Rockers has a great conest where you can remix ESH's collaboration with Wolfgang Flur Of Kraftwerk.

http://www.laptoprockers.eu/

The winners not only get on a digital EP but also can pick up some cool prizes like - 1st: Mastering plugin Ozone 42nd: pHATmatik PRO Slice and loop!3rd: Virtual drum machine iDrumAll three winners will also receive a copy of the "Melancholic Afro" CD album personally signed by Wolfgang Flür.

So hop on over and remix!

Ten Years? and Gary Flanagan

Has it really been ten years? I guess so, techincally. It was 1999 when Ninthwave "handmade" (read- CDRs) released the debut from Gary Flanagan - Anthems for the Young At Heart. We then followed that up with another CDR, "Another Coin in the Daydream MAchine." Gary went on to release a proper CD on Cohaagen -Future Fashion.

I liked Gary's stuff from the begning. It wasn;t polished (or even in tune often :-) but it really caputred what I liked about the early days of synthpop. It also impressed David and PAtrick in ganymede- they signed to ninthwave (they were our first official "real" Cd release) mainly because they thought I was cool because I had put out Gary's first album.

They soon learned I wasn't cool at all ;-)

Anyway, the other day I dug out some original CDrs of Garys and I am trying assemble a iTunes release. Something like "Gary Flanagan - Ninthwave YEars" or some such crap title.

Stay tuned.

back to the imaginary world

Wow, long break, but stuff has piled up.

I am sending out the new ESH album this week to be pressed. Official release date is Feb 9 2009, but I hope ot have it before then.

next is the Spray album on CD.

also got word that Aidan from ESH has a solo album almost done, we should get that out by mid 2009.

Cotton and Gin - freeee EPeeeee

New Ninthwave "artist" that "we" "signed" - Cotton & Gin.
Humour me folks.
Anyway, it's free, give it a listen and zip the blog some feedback
http://drop.io/candgin


The songs are all done on Garage band, hence they sound a little, um worn. Also, kinda going for a trance sound (read- find a loop and repeat it endlessly for 7 minutes).

:-)
UPDATE: New track shows much more promise. hear it on their myspace page now
myspace.com/cottonandgin

Here's to a better 2009

Right?

For fun- all time best selling albums on Ninthwave. Does not include several Ganymede titles that are now distributed by Cohaagen.
updated Jan 09
updated Jan 09
Release
OMD 1
Before/after 2
Spray Neon 3
Yaz 4
NASA 5
E2 6
Electricity 7
pop robot 8
Smile dk 9
Smilacra 10
Xero/G 11
Hands up 12
Sleepless 13
A&o 14
Clockwork 15
Symbion 16
Modern 17
I am gothic 18
WXJL 19
IGMYFILWM 20
Liquid blue 21
New Man 22
Nightshade 23*
Astromill 24
Peoples 25
Macondo 26
WXJL 2 27
Qubiq Hands up Rmeixes 28*
Garland Cult 29
COALG 30*
Bubblewrapped 31
Space March 32
WXJL 3 33
IWBYS 34*
Pushing the Future2 35
Smash hits 2 36
E3 37*
Interrobang 38*
Urbanism 39*

* = digital only