A few weeks ago I got an email from a guy called James, who wrote to tell me about a remix of Darkwave he had created. His email came totally out of the blue, as it has been ages since I posted the Darkwave remix pack (which is still up, btw). I was pretty excited honestly. Kind of like finding a $20 dollar bill in some old pair of jeans that I’ve completely forgotten about.

Anyhow, not only was I stoked that someone had remixed Darkwave, but the remix itself is super creative and very beautiful. James rearranged the song, added vocals of his own, wrote a few new lines of lyrics (I love that he did this!!!), and more. He really made it his own, so I asked James to tell me a bit more about his remix:

“I used to listen to the song a lot, and got the remix pack when it came out, but never got around to do doing anything with it. Recently I’ve become obsessed with the idea of remixes, and making music production less uni-directional. I associate Darkwave with a particular time in my life which I havent really made peace with yet, and reworking this song in my own voice seemed to be a way of achieving some closure.”

James plans to put out a release with more covers and remixes this year, so if enjoy this one, make sure you check out more of his music, as well as his label/blog Papaiti Records.

Download the remix right here, and feel free to share this remix in any way you want.

I scared the living daylights out of my partner, Mary, the other day. Two weeks ago I noticed that my remix was #9 on the RDU charts, and thought I would check to see how it was doing this week.

Hand to the heart, I was certain it would be out of the charts. You know… a dip in / dip out kind of situation.

I was so shocked when I saw it was #1 this week, I literally shrieked!

Thanks to all you cats over at RDU who have been spinning the remix. And sorry, Mary, for making loud, scary noises. XoXo!

Two weeks ago I took a trip out to Fire Island with my partner Mary. That, incidentally, was also the weekend where the winners of the remix competition were announced. Thanks to your support The Enright House managed to take the popular vote! Unfortunately, that didn’t quite decide the overall winner. Out of the three highest ranked remixes The Mint Chicks would eventually pick the winner, and well…

…they picked a funk remix from Poland.

Not sure I totally saw the logic in that choice (musical or otherwise), but honestly… when you’re walking down beaches like this, who cares, right? Ultimately, all of you ended up voting my remix to the top (out of 16 entries non the less), and that’s really all I could ever have hoped for. So thank you for making that happen!

So yeah, no worries re. not winning the grand prize – as Will Ferrell put it so well: “Matt Lauer Can Suck it!”

Check out more photos from this blissed out trip:

Oh yeah, and P.S. my remix just dipped into the top-10 RDU charts last week. Radness!

So yeah, musichype.com posted this remix competition for The Mint Chicks, who are a totally choice New Zealand band.

“Crazy? Yes! Dumb? No!”, in particular, is a really great song, so I was quite excited to have an opportunity to remix it.

Does it sound like an Enright House remix, though? Well… It’s a rad, trancy throwback to early 90’s euro-rave, mediated by piles of exuberance, some beautiful chord progressions, and a smitten of Enright House aesthetics.

Download your remix here: Crazy? Yes! Dumb? No! (Enright House Remix)

So, something really sweet just happened. My friend John, who runs a boutique DIY label called Mine, All Mine! Records just offered to add my latest live recording of Darkwave to his label’s catalog.

John and I actually collaborated earlier last year when we released a spilt EP called “Together”, and we also played a show together in his basement in Madison, Wisconsin during the US tour.

What’s really cool about John picking up Darkwave is not so much that more people will hear it – obviously that’s a totally rad bonus – but what excites me most about this is that it serves a wonderful reminder to me how fellow musicians and personal friends can do kind and darling things for each other.

It’s little gestures like these that mean everything to me, because that’s all my career in music has ever amounted to: a series of small gestures by people who believe that what I do holds value.

Whether it’s a guy in an office who listens to a song of mine and agrees to book me at his venue, a person who is passionate about music and decides that one of my songs is good enough to include in his or her podcast, a friend or family member who buys an album or a t-shirt from me, or a total stranger that falls in love with a song of mine and cares enough about it to sent out a tweet or facebook message to his or her friends.

It sounds so insignificant, perhaps, but you take all these things together, and that’s all there is.

And that’s why I am so infinitely grateful to friends like John: he’s always kind, always supportive, and it’s the little gestures and offers to help out where he can that just flat-out make my life a happier one.

So, here’s to Mine, All Mine! Records and my buddy John: thanks for being an awesome friend and finding value in my music.

Download “Darkwave (Live In Auckland)” from any of these places:

• Bandcamp (MP3 and many more formats)
• Internet Archive (Ogg Vorbis or Flac)
• Mininova (MP3 Torrent)

Feel free to spread the word by using the facebook or tweet buttons below. Hugs!

This version of Darkwave was recorded live at the Wine Cellar in Auckland, New Zealand on September 11, 2008, as part of my Solo Electronic Tour.

Thanks to John picking up this release on Mine, All Mine! Records.

Download “Darkwave (Live In Auckland)” from any of these places:

• Bandcamp (MP3 and many more formats)
• Internet Archive (Ogg Vorbis or Flac)
• Mininova (MP3 Torrent)

As usual, any way you can help spread the word, be it a retweet or facebook message, would be genuinely appreciated.

I was reading a recently published interview with Steve Albini this morning before work. Steve’s pretty much a legend in the indie community. He’s recorded over 2000 records, including albums by Nirvana and the Pixies, and has been running his own studio, Electrical Audio, in Chicago, for ages now. A good friend of mine and former bandmate, Andrew, actually interned for him for years during college, and so I briefly met Steve a few times when Andrew and I would go into Electrical to record stuff when the studio stood empty.

Anyhow, this excerpt just made me feel an epic sensation of joy:

“As an engineer, the only people I’m concerned about are the other people in the room, the band members. I mean literally everyone else in the world can go fuck themselves.

I honestly don’t care at all what some abstract listening audience would say about listening to a record. They’re not in the band. They’re not there helping us make the record right now.

Occasionally someone in a band, when they are in quandary about what to do, they’ll say “what will people think when they hear this?” My response is generally, “fuck ‘em.” They’re not here right now. If they mattered if they really cared they would be here helping us make the record. If you guess what those people would say, you are going to be wrong because there is no unified opinion in the outside world.

You can only satisfy yourself in the studio and I am also of the opinion that decent records are made with almost total disregard to the listening audience. My favorite records are records that were utterly unique statements and that were the product of some kind of mania. That doesn’t happen by committee or test marketing or focus groups.

You distill the idea behind what you are trying to do down to an action and then you do that action. That’s the only way to go about it.”

- Steve Albini

Misfit Mod – Sugar C from eep! productions on Vimeo.

I’m pleased to announce that we’ve recouped the costs for pressing the EP (yay!), and that we’ve sold out of almost all of our copies – thank you all. Consequently, we’ve all decided it’s now time to set these songs free!

So yeah, please help spread the word via twitter, email, facebook, and all that other good stuff.

And to all those who have been wanting to get ahold of a CD for themselves or their friends, please note that mam!records is now down to its last 10 copies of the limited-edition EP, so make sure you visit the mam!records shop now to secure yourself a copy before it’s too late.