A few months ago I read an interview between Derek Sivers and Seth Godin and couldn’t stop re-reading this particular paragraph:

“Sure, some music that’s great is great for the ages and it’s okay that’s it’s not being heard, but so much of what people call great isn’t actually great, it’s merely “very good.” Very good music goes unheard every day, because very good music is not in short supply. There’s a huge surplus of it.”

“I’ve sampled hundreds of songs on CDBaby and I can say that almost all of it is very good. And virtually none of it is great, if we define great to mean music I need to buy, to give away, to talk about to everyone I know.”

I have to admit: reading this really shook me up. How much of what I had released, had been truly great? How much material have I released that I knew to be “merely good” or “interesting”?

Hand on the heart? I’ve probably released my fair share of songs that I could have made better, had I worked harder, had I thought more deeply about the song, had I had more confidence in my ability to turn good into great through sheer work and determination.

Now, perhaps there was once a time where it made sense to just get on with it and start releasing music, but whatever the case for that might have been, that period is now over.

Therefore, I hereby promise you that – from this day onwards – I will only release a song after I’ve done everything I can to make it the best song it can be. And while this will not guarantee that everything I ever release will be great, or perfect, or even close to it, I promise you that in the future, when I fail, I will fail because my very best efforts were not good enough, and not because I was too scared and lazy to really try. Pinky swear.

So, how does this promise impact the making of my new album, In Perfect Blooms Of Color?

Well, for one I am working a lot harder to make the music more beautiful, more memorable, more structured, more polished. I’m also doing my best to raise my production standards to the next level. Not only do I want the songs to sound better, but I want the sounds and performances to be more nuanced, rich, and more expressive.

In addition, I’m finally allowing the needs of specific songs to trump my concerns for genre identity, “indie-cool”, or listener expectations. I’ve often had ideas that I ended up self-censoring because they wouldn’t “sound like Enright House”, or because I was worried I would alienate people who had grown to love my music as it was.

But I’ve finally come to realize that worrying about all of this only drains my creativity. In fact, it’s enough to turn a sane man positively neurotic.

Thus, if a song now sounds better with brass, I include brass – no matter that I’ve never used brass before. Now, if a song benefits from a 4-to-the-floor rave kick drum, then that’s what’s going to happen – no matter that I’ve never before written a song that one could dance to. If a heavily auto-tuned vocal a la Cher sounds perfect for a particular song, then a heavily auto-tuned vocal it is! – no matter that its sonic signature is almost exclusively associated with top-40 pop music.

In short, if an idea sounds good, if it makes the song better, and if it excites me, it’s in – whether it fits into a previous Enright House canon or not.

There are other ways, too, in which I am working to improve my music. For one, I’m trying really hard not be lazy about lyrics. I’m trying to dig deeper, be more straight-forward, less cute, less sentimental, and, generally, just a tad braver. No doubt I’ll be making myself quite vulnerable with the new lyrics, but I’ll own that. I’ll write my heart out, and when people start making fun of certain lines – and I’m calling it right now that there will be those people who will – I’ll take it.

But the biggest thing I’m doing to ensure that In Perfect Blooms Of Color will be the best thing I’ve ever done is by preventing you from ever hearing the vast majority of it. If a song is “good”, it’s out. If a song is “very good”, but doesn’t really inspire me, then it, too, is out. Good is no longer good enough; like Seth pointed out, there’s already too much of it out there as it is.

So, hang in there with me. I think it will be worth it.

xOx

What I can say, is that I won’t be touring Europe this year, after all. Instead, I will be moving to New York until early next year, and then – most likely – I will move to Berlin to set up a more permanent base for my music. For those of you in Europe, who had been looking forward to hearing me in concert this fall, please be patient with me for a little while longer. Once in Berlin, I will be in a much better position to tour on a more regular basis.

To all those that have written to me: my sincerest apologies for being so slow to write back – I promise you’ll hear from me soon.

Lastly, please be patient with this website over the next week, I’ll be re-coding some of the site, updating wordpress, installing new plug-ins, and implementing a more professional merch shop that will make it easier for you to get a hold of CDs, vinyl, shirts, and downloads.

“If I am fortunate enough to enjoy a death that is not instantaneous, but rather, a death that is a process during which I have sufficient time to reflect upon the life I have lead, then I want to feel like I have given it my all, and that I was not a coward for seeking out security over idealism and adventure.”

So, most of you know by now that The Enright House is about to embark on an epic tour of the US, and, thus, delve into the magical and often-chaotic world of the “roadtrip”. I am, safe to say, very excited to get on the road, meet new people, and, hopefully, in the process of it all, win over new fans.

Encouragingly, the most common reaction I get from friends and family, whenever I tell them about it is, “Wow… that is so exciting!” After which, however, almost always, I am asked some form of the following question:

“Are you going to be making any money doing this?” Or, “Are you doing this to get a record deal?”

The answer to the first question – just to be totally clear about this – is: “No.” Now, regarding the question of a potential record deal, I just typically try to brush the question off, by explaining that the times have changed, and that record contracts (or at least the types of deals most commonly offered these days) are not the be-all and end-all, as they once were. Doing it yourself, for the most part, still seems to be the only realistic way forward for an emerging artist.

The truth, of course, is that I would absolutely adore finding a hard-working indie label to help me release and promote my music to a wider audience. However, one has to be prepared to go it fully alone, and then actually do some serious walking on one’s own two feet, before labels will really show any serious interest in you. No one, these days, wants to help and work with someone, who cannot help themselves. And fair enough, too.

Which brings me back to the question of why, then, do this tour at all?

Well… perhaps, because I believe that when everything is said and done, that an adventure of this kind will be something I will be proud of; that I will reflect upon this time in my life as something profoundly liberating; that it will be something that unearths more of the person I want to become, and that this trip will provide an opportunity to make new friends and create worthwhile memories that will linger for the duration of a lifetime.

In short, I would very much like to think of this tour as the start of a life that is solely lived for the sake of living it fully, unapologetically, and free of fear. I don’t believe in any version of an afterlife, and I am starting to feel deeply the brevity of life, and I want to make sure that when my life ends (as it will), that I will be proud of having followed my dreams.

If I am fortunate enough to enjoy a death that is not instantaneous, but rather, a death that is a process during which I have sufficient time to reflect upon the life I have lead, then I want to feel like I have given it my all, and that I was not a coward for seeking out security over idealism and adventure.

I love creating music more than anything else in the whole world, and the only true ambition I have in life is to leave something of enduring value behind. Without the possibility of eternal life, thus, I seek to create a legacy of achievement that will outlive me.

Why? Because what else is there? Why spend all this time, effort and money on this tour? Because it is a start – a beginning.

Well, today is my birthday. An even thirty. And I’m glad I get to spend it with my Mom, back home, in America. It’s nice to be home, but unlike past holidays here, this… well… it isn’t really a holiday. So instead of relaxing and going clothes shopping, I’ve been trying to rally more gigs for the tour, find fuses and proper US power supplies (harder than you might think!), buy a new car, have said car repaired, register the thing (a white 1994 Ford Explorer XLT with leather seats… muahahaha!).

Oh yeah, I also had a massive and freakish fever (already recovered though… rarrr).

So anyhow, the flight from New Zealand to the States was a piece of cake. Seriously. It was the quickest-feeling flight I ever had. Rachel saw me off in Christchurch (thanks, love), and then, after spending some time hanging around in Auckland and waiting for my flight to LAX (aka 666, Satan, Hell), I boarded my plane and… fell asleep. All I remember is getting on the plane and sitting down and then someone nudges me and asks me to sit up straight, as we’re landing shortly. Wow. 13 hours in the air and zero misery: a first.

Once in LAX, I went through customs (a breeze! yes! under the radar, suckers!) and went through security (also a breeze, ditto re. suckers). Of course, it couldn’t all be pink candy canes and fluffy clouds, so, in an act of cosmic hubris-control, my flight to Chicago got delayed by about 2 extra hours. But yeah, after essentially being zonked out for the past 13 hours, I didn’t really mind. I just pulled out my copy of Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion” and read away.

Anyhow, I’m sitting there reveling in Dawkins’ wit, and this charming lady sits down next to me, says hi, glances at my book, looks a bit embarrassed, and opens up a book of her own: “How to become a believer”. Ha. I tell you, that was as awkward a moment as they come.

So yeah, theological funnies aside, despite nasty weather I arrived safely in Chicago. Mom was there to greet me, and we drove home, where I fell asleep pretty fast after an approximately 30-hour journey.

Here’s a brief selection of just a few things I need to sort in the next 2-3 weeks:

• create A4 programs for the upcoming farewell shows
• continue dealing with the volumes of emails and myspace messages pertaining to the booking of the US tour
• rehearse three times a week with Evan for the upcoming shows
• finish writing lyrics to two of the songs we will be performing
• continue working on the new album, including recording synths, programming drums, and continue writing lyrics for all the songs
• organize accommodation for SXSW in March
• fill out a 20+ page application for an Outward Sound grant to help fund SXSW and the US Tour
• write a massive business plan to accompany the Outward Sound application (henceforth OSA)
• sort out travel plans for Rhythm and vines
• rehearse the full three-piece band, including Simon on drums, in time for Rhythm and Vines
• find support bands for US tour
• create a full tour budget and sort out personal finances
• record material and lyrics for an upcoming split EP release with US label Mine, All Mine! Records
• create a US tour poster and get printing quotes for OSA
• organize shipping quotes for personal belongings and gear from New Zealand to the US in time for OSA
• get flight quotes for OSA
• calculate entire 9 weeks of petrol costs for US tour via mapquest for OSA
• get quotes for 500 promo CDRs and artwork for SXSW in time for OSA

DIY has its limitations. You just can’t do it all yourself. I reckon the way of the future is OIY. Outsource-it-yourself. Or CIY. Control-it-yourself. Or MIY. Manage-it-yourself. You get the gyst…

Or perhaps just GSS. Get-some-sleep.

Anyhow, the trade-off of DIY is my sanity and happiness. Now, I have no issue sacrificing happiness, as I no longer really consider happiness to be an important objective in my life, but my sanity? I think I would rather like to hold on to it a while longer, thank you very much! :)

“Democracy (…) is but a buzz word for politicians, hardly a shining beacon of reality. (It) has long since undergone a transformation in the western world from being a philosophical and moral ideal to becoming a moderately clumsy tool for controlling a population from the top down.”

As many of you know, I am moving to the States next year to pursue my dreams of touring my music and trying to earn a living off of it. I am under no illusions as to how difficult a task that will prove to be, but I figure I only have one shot at life, one thing I care deeply about, so I have to muster the courage to go out there and try to tell as many human beings as I can about my music and convince them of its worth. I am excited about this, but I’ve also been having some serious doubts about wanting to build a life in America.

For most of my life I have thought of the US as my spiritual home. My mother raised me largely by herself, and mom and her parents were pretty much the only real family I had. Although mom and I lived in Germany whilst I was growing up, my grandparents lived in Indiana, where my mother was born, and so each summer mom and I would spend four to six weeks back with my grandparents on holiday. For me this was always a time of carefree existence. I loved my grandparents deeply and felt at home and at peace in the midwest. The world was quiet there, the people friendly, and I just always felt really tenderly cared for whilst there. Even though I never really lived in Indiana, I came to think of it as my true home, my one true place of rest and belonging.

Although studying in Chicago felt like a far cry from home, it was a time where my political and philosophical beliefs were such that I identified quite a lot with being an American. I’ve always fancied myself an individualist and, whether justified or not in my belief, came to see the United States and its people as a spiritual haven for people like me.

Moving to New Zealand didn’t really affect my identity at all. I have family here, but our interactions are based on courtesy, not love. And although I’ve made good friends here, I’ve never particularly bonded with New Zealand. Moving away from New Zealand – and I would like to ask for your forgiveness in return for my honesty – has struck me for years now as a life or death matter.

But whatever my reservations about living in New Zealand, I cannot help but admit feeling this sense of dread about moving back to America. Why? Because America is desperately broken and its people seem to have grown proportionately hostile in spirit.

Democracy there, like pretty much everywhere, is but a buzz word for politicians, hardly a shining beacon of reality. Democracy, in general, has long since undergone a transformation in the western world from being a philosophical and moral ideal to becoming a moderately clumsy tool for controlling a population from the top down.

Then, of course, there is always the tattered economy and the all-enveloping sense of despair and fear. Add to that decades of disgusting foreign policy, a lack of proper health care, all the recent military conflicts, the political tensions and divisions, the insufficiently educated masses, viral “us vs them” attitudes, rampant poverty, homelessness, crime rates and gun proliferation, the lost war on drugs, the never-to-be-won “war on terror”, spiraling living costs, religious fundamentalism, et cetera… and well… my excitement about the States is replaced by anxiety and cynical disgust.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more it’s becoming clear to me that I haven’t even mentally committed to sticking around in America for more than five or six months. I might end up doing so, but at this point it would only be due to lack of better options, or a dramatic change of heart.

Truth is, I just want to live humbly off of my music and travel the world for as long as I can survive. If I had the choice, I just wouldn’t settle, I would never linger longer than my whims would encourage me to, I would never be around long enough to learn how to hate a place. I would live without borders, without governments, without news, without guilt, without fear. Just me, my music, and the lost souls who come out each night to share their presence with me.

“The truth of the matter is that my current life-style is unsustainable. It’s unhealthy, full of distractions, and unwholesome. My flat has been a shambles for almost a year now. It is cluttered. It is dark. It is cold. It is damp. And I literally feel like I have been slowly wasting away in it. I need to get out of there. Fast.”

As many of you already know, I am moving back to the States in January. The main reason for that being that I miss the mid-west, I miss my friends, I miss being around my mother, and I’m really excited to tour The Enright House throughout the US and, later in the year, Europe, as well.

Going back oversees after living in New Zealand for almost five years will be good for my soul, I think. As much as I love certain aspects of New Zealand, I love the wider world even more, and to have spent a good half of my twenties in a small and remote country, too far away from my friends and family, has been a significant contributor to my ongoing struggles with depression.

Not everything about my time here, however, has been bad…

I’ve learned a lot by tutoring three years worth of philosophy and art theory to university undergraduates, The Enright House came into being during my time here, I made new friends, learned a lot about being a DIY musician, fell in and out of love, rediscovered my life’s calling, and managed to grow a few years older, and perhaps grow a bit wiser, even.

But it’s not time to say good-bye quite yet. The truth is that having four more months before moving is a blessing, for I have much I want to accomplish before I jump back into the world:

1) Complete the new record

I have pretty much all new songs demoed at the time of writing this, and the material has me immensely excited. The songs and sounds of this album are digging deeper into my heart and mind than anything I have done previously. The record feels even more uniquely my own than the last, more authentic, earthier, in many ways simpler and more focused.

The last record faced the unenviable challenge of unifying a set of songs that were written years apart from each other. The result was a diverse record – one that I am proud of – but it was ultimately also a record with many loose ends. It was – I think it is fair to say – a record that succeeded as best as it could have, given the circumstances, at documenting my struggle of searching for my own artistic voice. At times it came very close; but there are also times when, in hindsight, it probably fell somewhat short of that intention.

I now have four months to refine lyrics, complete the recordings, and work out the track order, and I am quite certain that I can make this happen between now and my departure.

2) Shifting flats, shifting life-styles

Within the next two weeks I am moving from my inner-city apartment out to my father’s home in the country. Dad is away, and so I have accepted his generous offer to stay in his beautiful apartment, in order to save money for my journey oversees (rent, power, phone, etc. will be free).

But money is hardly the main reason for moving. The truth of the matter is that my current life-style is unsustainable. It’s unhealthy, full of distractions, and unwholesome. My flat has been a shambles for almost a year now. It is cluttered. It is dark. It is cold. It is damp. And I literally feel like I have been slowly wasting away in it. I need to get out of there. Fast.

Dad’s flat is clean, spacious, modern, has a stunning view over the Canterbury plains and the distant mountains. I will be living in close proximity to my father’s side of the family, and although we are not as close as I would like, I feel comforted by the thought of becoming part of a stable and welcoming family environment.

Furthermore, it is an ideal space to record my new album. There is a nice grand piano close at hand, and, most importantly, it is quiet there, and reassuringly peaceful. No TV, no internet, no cafes, no pool halls, no events that are “not to be missed”. Here, in short, the noise of the world fades from a roar into a silent fizz. Here I can cope, here I can find myself, here I can excavate my latent optimism.

3) Practice, practice, practice

Once I’ve settled over to the States it will be time to tour relentlessly. Now is the time to grow my live-set from something interesting, into something extraordinary. It will take time; four months will not suffice, a year will not suffice, maybe not even a lifetime, but I have to make a start, and four months of isolation are as good an opportunity as any to take some more determined steps towards becoming a more complete performer.

4) Plan, organize, connect

My remaining college fund is humble, at best. Whatever money I can make by selling my personal belongings and saving on living costs, will no doubt be swallowed up by the costs of building a new life oversees. The emerging reality of the next 12 months is one in which every day, every week, every penny, will have to pull its full weight.

I plan to tour the mid-west, west-coast, and Canada in April/May with Misfit Mod. Then I would like to shack up with Mary in New York for 4-6 weeks and play weekly shows in NYC and the surrounding areas. If I have any money left by that time (roughly July), I will head over to Germany around the third quarter of 2009, and play some shows in and around the country I grew up in.

From this point on things are still looking very vague. There is always the possibility of coming back to New Zealand for a bit, crashing my friend Rob’s place in Japan for a few weeks, if, that is, he will still be living there by that time. Maybe all the money will run out and I will need to find a job. Who knows. I’m just not prepared to contemplate that with any seriousness as of yet.

Right now all I want to do is get out of here with an album tucked under my belt, and travel and play for as long as I can, before I go broke. My uttermost hope is that after working as hard as possible on The Enright House, that maybe I can generate enough of a trickling income from my music to sustain a modest life for a few years. I have to believe that I can do it. If other people can, then so can I. It’s just a matter of dedication and hard work.

If I fail, so I tell myself, it will be my own fault. It will not be the fault of chance, of bad timing, of “the industry”, of the nature of the world, or of the monsters in the closet. It will be my own fault for not having worked harder, for not having wanted it enough, for not having had the courage to put everything on the line when the going got tough.

7.30 in the morning. Ouch. I was feeling a bit light-headed and my tummy’s growling sounds gave me this distinct feeling that it would rather not yet be put in an upright position. Still, today was the day of my first solo show in my de facto hometown of Christchurch, and I had to start setting up around 10 am in order to kick off my set early in the afternoon.

After skimming my email inbox for messages not pertaining to penis enhancements, I began loading up the car and went through my mental check-list of things I ordinarily forget (powerchords, extensions, batteries, rosin, bottle caps, spare strings, et cetera).

The morning was already shaping up to be a rather special one. It was sunny, and the air was finally beginning to warm up after an excruciatingly long and dreary winter – a winter that pretty much began on the first day of autumn, six full months ago, and finally seemed to come to an end this very morning.

After stopping for a quick coffee, I was first to arrive at High Street Projects, the gallery where I was to perform during the Lovecraft arts and crafts fair. After carrying my entire equipment up two flights of stairs, Fran and James emerged from across the street and casually suggested I might prefer to use the elevator instead. Oh well… no harm done in getting a bit of morning exercise!

The space was gorgeous, with the morning sun brushing over the hardwood floors. I set up in the far right corner of the gallery and proceeded to soundcheck whilst everyone else was setting up their tables with lovingly made arts and crafts. Tim and Anna, both of whom studied with me at Mainz last year, came over with the PA, and very soon we were all set up and ready to go. It was truly shaping up to be a fun event!

Right before the show, however, I was actually starting to feel a bit uncomfortable, as an older lady had come up to me at the end of my soundcheck and complained about the volume (which was already really, really quiet compared to regular live concerts… no, really!). The lady even went as far as to threaten those present with packing down her table and leaving, as her “customers” wouldn’t be able to hear her otherwise. Now, I honestly felt bad for her (she clearly seemed a bit out of place), but I couldn’t help but notice that she was so soft-spoken that her customers probably would have had plenty of troubles hearing her, even amidst the deadest of silences.

Anyhow, the fact that I was about to perform a rather challenging and somewhat polarizing music to an audience, most of whom, of course, had not even come to hear me, started to fuel my anxiety. My live set isn’t really “entertaining”, per se. If you’re into the kind of music I perform, then great, but for the people that aren’t into brooding and mournful music, I have no troubles imagining that my set can quickly turn into a source of some annoyance.

Thankfully, once I started to play, my fears subsided. I quickly withdrew into my own world and, only after my set came to an end, did I actually realize that quite a few people had gathered around to watch me play. Despite a very embarrassing error early on, I felt quite comfortable about my performance.

Now, loopers are a dangerous tool! Their immense musical potential is matched only by their infinite potential for causing epic disasters. What happened was the following: The first song I play is an instrumental piece that builds layers upon layers of guitars, slowly transforming quiet melodies into a soaring hymn of distorted guitars. The thematic development usually takes me around 5 to 6 minutes. This song, incidentally, is also a great song to warm up to and check the levels between guitars and synth, and so I almost always make it my go-to song during soundcheck. No different today.

So, after building up all the loops during soundcheck and getting to this huge cathartic moment, I decide “yep, that sounds pretty good to me”, stop the overdubbing, stop the loop, and wander off to get another cup of coffee before I have to start my set.

Fast forward to my performance…

I’m on stage, quietly playing my first guitar line after building up a synth drone. Everything is calm. People are looking expectantly at what I am doing. People are skeptical about machines, you know? They want to see that you actually play most of what is coming out of the speakers.

So, there I am, three minutes into creating cautiously silent synth drones, and I’m about to introduce the first of many, quietly restrained guitar lines. I take a few steps over to my looper in order to overdub a tenderly bowed bass line, I step on the overdub button, and…

ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAR!!!!!

Ten, maybe twenty distorted guitars are screaming out of my amp and I just stand there like a deer in the headlights, internally cursing at myself for forgetting to clear my looper’s memory after soundcheck! Anyhow, after a few eternally long seconds, I decided to take the only reasonable course of action I could think of: add more guitars!!!

Ha. I guess that’s what you get when you put a naturally clumsy person like myself in a room with a looper. Live and learn! :)

So, after the somewhat botched opening song, I then proceeded to play Afterthoughts, then another new song, and then I finished with my slow rendition of Darkwave. What sounds like a short set, probably added up to about 40 minutes, a duration which seemed appropriate to me, given that there were more bands to follow.

Ultimately, I felt rather happy about my performance, and had an absolutely wonderful day hanging out and catching up with friends and acquaintances, perusing all the wonderfully creative arts and crafts on display, and meeting new people all throughout the afternoon.

Spring had finally come, and it couldn’t have done so on a more appropriate day.

Daniel Batkin-Smith: dude, got the link to the NatRad thing?
The Enright House: Erm. Sorry, what are you talking about, again? :)
Daniel Batkin-Smith: your status message
Daniel Batkin-Smith: about missing guitars
The Enright House: oh
The Enright House: ha
Daniel Batkin-Smith: I wanna hear
The Enright House: no fuck you
The Enright House: ha
The Enright House: i’m sure it will be fixed in a few days
Daniel Batkin-Smith: ah come on
Daniel Batkin-Smith: sook
The Enright House: why do you want to hear a 13 minute guitar song that has no guitar in the mix?
The Enright House: explain that, and MAYBE, I will oblige your ludicrous request
The Enright House: that is, if you haven’t already found it yourself with your mad internet powers :P
Daniel Batkin-Smith: I want to hear what it sounds like WITHOUT guitars, out of interest
Daniel Batkin-Smith: fuck you i’ll find it myself!
The Enright House: ha
The Enright House: darnit!!!
The Enright House: FINE
Daniel Batkin-Smith: hahahahahaha
The Enright House: here
The Enright House: SIGH SIGH SIGGGHHHHHH!!!
Daniel Batkin-Smith: thanks buddy
Daniel Batkin-Smith: good trip back?
The Enright House: ha yeah man
The Enright House: despite a delayed ferry it wasn’t too bad at all
Daniel Batkin-Smith: good one
Daniel Batkin-Smith: so have you mailed Kirsten about it?
The Enright House: ha of course. and texted
The Enright House: it’ll no doubt be fixed
The Enright House: or taken down
The Enright House: depending on what happened
Daniel Batkin-Smith: dude… you broadcast that field recording on National Radio!
The Enright House: haha
Daniel Batkin-Smith: talk about not being audience friendly
Daniel Batkin-Smith: you run the risk of alienating a good majority of a possible audience
The Enright House: it’s so friendly it’s smiling like godzilla on its wedding day
The Enright House: what am I? robbie williams?
Daniel Batkin-Smith: you could be, I guess
The Enright House: what do i care about alienating people?
Daniel Batkin-Smith: if you really want
The Enright House: that’s right, i could entertain you. and you. and you. and you, too.
Daniel Batkin-Smith: if only we let you
Daniel Batkin-Smith: (ooh that’s a good one)
The Enright House: ( ,,|,, )

• Recording the new album.
• Promoting the Cat and Bird 7″ lathe cut.
• Creating a new multi-media single for Darkwave, including various recordings, remixes, videos and a short film.
• Putting together a whole new live show as a solo performer, using synths, vocoders, drum machines, field recordings and looping guitars.
• Helping book a North Island tour for late August. Solo Enright House, solo i.Ryoko.
• Personal stuff. Dad just arrived in the country. Getting my life on track for next year. Planning my move to the US in January.
• Pre-planning a US tour with Misfit Mod for March/April ‘09.

Lastly, I’ve been meaning to give the blog more prominence in this website, so I’ve decided to move my Wordpress installation from theenrighthouse.com/blog to the root directory. I also want to take the opportunity to change the layout a little bit and modify some of the site’s pages, as well as getting the paypal store up and running. Meaning? This week you will see a lot of broken links, a lot of weird design changes happening in real time, errors, missing images, and non-loading mp3s. In other words, anything that can go wrong undoubtedly will. After this week is over, however, things should be quite swell.

Will try to stay in touch more as soon as I get this website sussed out!