Like the recent Remixes and Collaborations album, our Acoustic EP, too, is now finally available as a free download at bandcamp.mu:

You can choose to download the album in whatever format you like, such as MP3 (128k, 320k, V0, V2), AAC (high or low quality), Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, or the iPod compatible Apple Lossless format. And, to top it all off, the artwork, too, is included.

Now, I’m not expecting there to be a mad rush on the album or anything, as it was never intended to be more than a spontaneous and fun exploration of my songs in acoustic dress, but still… I was always really glad we recorded the album when I was still playing my music with a band, as there was just something totally magical about the four of us being in this massive gymnasium together.

No rehearsals, no overdubs, no isolation booths, no release schedules, no pressure of any kind… just a big room and four guys sitting around in a circle and playing to each other, with only a handful of sparkly microphones casually listening in.

Whatever the limitations of such adventures might generally be, we felt uninhibited and free and joyfully creative on that day. Maybe it was just the warmth and sunshine of the afternoon, or perhaps just the simple quietude of acoustic instruments, but the recordings sound to me like the music is just drenched in the dusty sunshine and benevolent atmosphere of that late summer sunday.

So please, have a listen and, if you want to be part of our musical adventure, please support us by telling as many other people about its existence as you can.

Just a quick note about a new internet release that you can download for free and in various formats (mp3, aac, ogg vorbis, flac and apple lossless) here:

It’s a wee humble release that features collaborations between The Enright House and Misfit Mod, The Enright House and Coterie (Off Loving Memories), as well as remixes by, or of, The Enright House, A Flight To Blackout, Coterie, and Fiveandahalfminutes.

Here’s the track-listing:

1. 3. (A Remix By The Enright House Of Fiveandahalfminutes)
2. Driving (The Enright House / Misfit Mod)
3. Unfolding in Limelight (Off Loving Memories)
4. Exit Right (Off Loving Memories)
5. No Idea Environment (Off Loving Memories)
6. Fly Your Arc (A Remix By The Enright House Of A Flight To Blackout)
7. Darkwave = MC Squared (A Coterie Remix Of The Enright House)

Make sure you check out all of the lovely and talented musicians to whom you owe these songs:

Misfit Mod (www.myspace.com/misfitmod)

A Flight To Blackout (www.myspace.com/aflighttoblackout)

Fiveandahalfminutes (www.myspace.com/fiveandahalfminutes)

Coterie (www.myspace.com/c0t3rie)

So yeah… I really hope you find some tracks on it that you enjoy!

…and, if you do, I would be really grateful to you if you could help me spread the word about its existence. Given that neither myself nor any of the other artists are making any money off of this release, we also can’t really afford to advertise it being there, so any help you can offer (posting it to your profile, emailing your friends, blogging about, sharing it, copying it, performing rain dances, what have you… :P) would be really sweet of you! :)

Thanks!

Simon, a really good friend of mine, will soon be joining me on my last New Zealand tour as Halon Sirius. Now Simon’s pretty much just getting started as a live act, and so there are lots of things he just hasn’t found the time to sort out yet - one of those things being press photos. Anyhow, I decided it might be fun to chauffeur Simon around town with my camera in tow, and see if the two of us couldn’t get a few good shots happening.

Despite wind and rain, I think I managed to capture quite a few striking shots, and I was just glad I didn’t totally waste Simon’s time! :)

Here are some of my favorite ones I took of him today:

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.

I was pretty excited this week to stumble over two really sweet podcasts, featuring my music.

The first of the two podcasts was created by a blog called My Pleasure, Miss!. The concept of the podcast is so bloody creative and bizarre, I’ll just quote their own description:

This week’s mixtape is an adaptation of Teenage Diary, a gripping audio drama about an ordinary teenage girl, played by Vonda Van Dyke, Miss America 1965, searching for love and happiness. The plot blends romance, violence, sex and substance abuse wonderfully, and manages to thrown in a few moral teachings for wayward 1960s youths.

Teenage Diary is a wonderful story, with a great cast, and using the magic of audio editing software, I abridged the narrative to a succinct 20 minutes and updated the music to include Adem, Cody Chesnutt, Bird and the Bee and other hot kids.

Seriously, when I heard my song “Darkwave = MC Squared” combined with the audio drama, I was just grinning from side to side. I’ve listened and played Darkwave so many times, I would be lying if I didn’t admit growing a bit tired of it due to over-familiarity, so to be able to hear the song in this unusual context and, hence, hear it with fresh ears, was a real treat for me.

Lastly, and most significantly, you should really just check out the podcast for all the other amazing music on it. I discovered some wonderful new bands listening to that episode. My favorite find by far is a track called “The Races” by a band called The Bird And The Bee (apparently, they are quite famous?). The track is just pure and lovably charming, with a healthy dose of casual chromaticism. Very, very cool!

The second podcast I came across is the NZ-based Counting The Beat podcast. In the most recent episode, Chris introduces some of New Zealand’s recent releases, including our Cat and Bird Split 7″.

Now, I hadn’t heard of the podcast before (my internet connection was until recently too slow to get very deep into podcasting!), but, boy, has Chris ever put together a great series! I was listening into some of his other podcasts, and they are all lovingly compiled and carefully researched - a wonderful gift to New Zealand’s budding online music culture!

• Download the Teenage Diary Mixtape by My Pleasure, Miss!
• Download the Counting The Beat - October 08 New Releases podcast.

So, before I sign off… now that my connection speed has improved, I would totally love to find some good podcasts to listen to. So come on!… educate a lost soul: what podcasts have you been listening/subscribing to? Anything worth sharing?

Watch Shaun’s video on YouTube and check out his music on his myspace page. If you would like to make Shaun’s songs part of your life, then be sure to grab a copy of his EP at his label’s online store.

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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.

After rolling into Auckland both Thomas and I decided that we had already lost so much money that, hell, we might as well splurge on a Backpackers for the last night. I remember having liked the backpackers on Queen Street, where the band and I stayed last year during the A Low Hum tour with craftwerk, and so Thomas and I booked two beds there in a dormitory room for $20 NZD each. That particular backpackers also had the advantage of having secure parking (not an insignificant bonus given Auckland’s notoriety for petty crime), as well as being right around the corner from where we were playing.

Once we settled into our room, Thomas decided to take a short nap. He was getting a pretty nasty cold, which in due course I, too, was to get. For now, though, I was still holding up OK, so instead of cat-napping I decided to go for a walk and put up flyers around K’Road. After a boring and restless hour of wandering around town, I scraped Thomas off of his cozy mattress, and the two of us headed down to the Wine Cellar to start our setup routine.

The Wine Cellar is an absolutely gorgeous venue with a proud history of hosting experimental bands. Rohan, the owner / resident engineer, was an enthusiastic supporter of more far-flung sonics, and both Thomas and I felt incredibly privileged for being allowed to play in this beautiful room.

Soundcheck was super fun, with various employees and regulars eavesdropping and coming over to check out our set-up. The PA and room sounded great, and Rohan even recorded our soundcheck on his laptop and played it back through the speakers for us, so we could hear exactly what our mix sounded like - awesome! I wish every venue I played was set up to do that. This is just such a fantastic thing to be able to offer musicians, who, otherwise, always have to take it on pure faith that the mix faithfully captures their sonic intentions. This way we can play, record, listen… adjust, play, record, listen… an absolute dream come true!

After finishing soundcheck, Thomas and I grabbed a tasty kebab and headed back to the venue, where there were a total of zero people present. Oh my…

By the time Thomas started four people had shown up. Thomas incidentally gave a jaw-dropping performance, and spontaneously added this whole new section to his performance, building on a motif of irregularly picked, chiming guitars. The whole thing had this vaguely oriental feel to it, and it was one the most exciting musical moments of the tour for me. Pity only six people in this world (myself and Rohan, included) ever got to hear it live - thankfully Rohan recorded the entire show, and I’ll be posting some songs from it soon.

When I got up on stage I was, truth be told, really a tad depressed that no one had come to see us. We had advertised online, had done plenty of radio promo (including National Radio, Kiwi FM and 95 BFM), used myspace, facebook, forums and gig guides to tell people about our show, had postered and flyered K’Road and Real Groovy, et cetera. The only thing we didn’t do, I suppose, is play with local support, but given the nature of our music and the way Thomas and I set up, that just wasn’t a feasible option. Aside from the sheer logistical nightmare of setting up, the sets that Thomas and I played already stretched to the limit what audiences could take in.

Anyhow, I got on stage and made a sincere promise that I was not going to let a disappointing turnout ruin my performance. After all, four people had sacrificed their time and money to come out and see Thomas and I perform, and since it wasn’t their fault not more people had come out that night, I had no right to let it effect my performance. If anything, I felt that I had a duty to give the absolutely best performance I could to prove to them that they had made the right decision in choosing to spend an evening with us and our music.

So, I withdrew into myself, started to build up the first themes of the first song and…

…two of the four people walked out!

Now, I could go into a lengthy analysis of the terror and sadness I felt in that moment, but I’ll spare you. No doubt, you’re intelligent enough to image it for yourself, if you’re into that kind of self-inflicted emotional S&M or Schadenfreude, that is! :)

I don’t remember what happened next. I played and played, I just withdrew into my head and played and sang my heart out, and then at some point I paused… I looked up, and people were applauding. Somewhere along the lines maybe another 10 or 15 people had walked in. Thomas later told me they had decided to let people in for free or via donation. But none of that mattered to me, neither then, nor in hindsight. What counted is that, when I had least expected it, human beings had actually gathered together and were listening to my music. Most of them didn’t know who I was, most of them probably didn’t care, but they cared enough to stay, to hear me out, to come up to me after the show, thanking me, talking to me. And that was enough for me.

It was such a bizarre concert, such a disappointing return to Auckland, but even here, against all odds, I found many things to be grateful for and worthy of remembering. Rohan, for example, really enjoyed our performances, and, despite what could have been one of the worst turn-out for the Wine Cellar ever, even invited us back and even promised to get all of his friends to come out next time we played at the Wine Cellar.

I admit, the fact that nobody came to hear us play seriously diminished my desire to play Auckland ever again, but sometimes these kind of things just happen in life and you have to find the humility within you to take it with a grin and try again. Auckland, after all, is a large city, and the people who live there have access to a lot of high-quality local and oversees bands performing there. If playing a series of shows with next to no one present is what it takes to earn the respect of the people who live there, then that’s just what I will have to do.

Either way, you just can’t let that stuff get you down. At the very least there’s some decent record shopping to be done in Auckland. And hey, if that wasn’t enough, they even had a Dunken Donuts! :)

After playing Happy we crashed at Thomas’s place again, but because we had a long drive to Hamilton ahead of us, neither of us got a decent night’s sleep. Truth be told, I was bloody exhausted and still a tad down about the previous night’s show.

Anyhow, nothing cures a bit of sadness during a tour like a long drive. Although driving is exhausting, monotonous, and expensive, it is also, I think, the essence of excitement. Traveling, after all, is the heart and soul of adventure. New possibilities flare up, changing landscapes tickle the imagination, and, most importantly, one has time to reflect and rebuild healthy levels of anticipation.

Now, although, yesterday had certainly readjusted my expectations for tonight, I couldn’t help but feel excited again. A new town, a new opportunity to perform my music, another chance to meet people. Not even a terrible show, I suspect, would be able to eclipse in its entirety the irrational optimism that flourishes so readily during a tour.

After having an unnecessarily difficult time finding the cafe we would be playing at, we started to set up. La Commune completely exceeded my expectations as a venue, and, generally speaking, I think it suited our style of performance very well. It was small, but also clean and modern, with an absolutely delightful exhibition of badges on one wall.

[photo by Petra Jane]

The only headache of the evening was that the cafe could, for obvious reasons, not shut out its clientele, who had come to enjoy a cup of coffee or what looked like many a delicious meal. What little money we had been making, was due to a $6 cover we had charged at the door. Here, however, that would prove ridiculously impractical. How could we charge some people $6 dollars to get into the cafe and other’s not. This conundrum seemed vaguely absurd, and so we opted to drop the door charge in favor of a tip jar!

The good news, as a result, was that the smallish cafe felt reasonably full, and, to our surprise, people actually tipped quite generously - thank you! :)

Anyhow, I really, really enjoyed playing that night, and felt happy with the intensity of my performance. I was starting to get a bit more comfortable with the technical aspects of the set, I was doing a better job of incorporating the synth-looper into my songs, and I had finally completed all of the lyrics to the songs I was playing - and yes, the first shows did incorporate a lot of mumbling, improvised lyrics, and repeated lines! Thankfully, the use of a vocoder and the often subtle and quiet vocals make that sort of lyrical juggling act a rather feasible undertaking.

[photo by Petra Jane]

Lastly, I want to give a big shout-out to all the wonderful Hamiltonians who came out that night, hung out with us, took photos, and just made the whole show unexpectedly brilliant. But the biggest of all shout-outs goes to Brent, who put us up that night!

At the time the show finished (around midnight), we had still no idea where we were going to sleep. Our only two options were either sleeping upright in my cramped Subaru (yikes!), or driving to up to Auckland that very night and staying with Thomas’s brother who, however, wasn’t going to be finishing work until after 5 AM. Either way, it wasn’t looking to be a happy sleep!

Thank goodness Brent, who had heard my Broken Hands EP in late 2006, came down to La Commune for the gig and, as soon as he heard we were without a place to stay, generously invited us to spend the night at his flat. Brent was just the bomb - an ex-RDU DJ and music enthusiast, himself, he was comfortable having two strange kids sleep in his living room. After the show, all of us played some pool and then made our way out to Brent’s apartment on the outskirts of Hamilton. And after chilling out for a bit over a cup of camomile tea, Thomas and I made our beds and I ended up sleeping like a baby.

Thanks Brent, thanks Hamilton! :)

I think both Thomas and I had high expectations for this show. When we started out on our tour, we were constantly joking about how the turn-outs for the first three dates weren’t of dramatic importance, as the “big” shows (this and the Auckland show) were yet to come. Even if no one showed up for that first weekend, we told ourselves, that, too, would be OK, as we could just treat those dates as a kind of wider dress rehearsal.

Much to our delight, it never came to that. The cosmos spared us the experience of playing to empty rooms, and, contrary to all my cynical expectations, the first two shows probably turned out to be two of the most memorable shows I’ve ever played.

Tonight’s venue, Happy, was actually quite a nice performance space. It had a good vibe about it, and the girl who opened up the place for us was really friendly, as well, so all around it was looking like it had the potential to be a good night.

Now, in case you were not present that night, and think you know where this post is heading, let me sabotage any story arch I had going by saying: it was not a terrible show.

It was, by normal standards, I suppose, a normal show. The turn-out was humble, but not so much so that there would be reason to feel embarrassed about it. Some dear friends of mine came, quite a few didn’t make it. Certain songs turned out really nicely, others were just OK. We set up the lighting the way we wanted, but our cold fluorescent lights were completely at odds with the natural feel of the venue. The sound was decent, but not great. The stage, although spacious, stood in the middle of the room, and I felt a bit exposed and uncomfortable on it.

All in all, it was a pretty decent evening I think, but the show is already starting to fade into the recesses of lukewarm and indistinct memories.

I appreciated everyone coming out and was stoked to hang out with all of you, but next time, if we play two shows in Welly again, I think we’ll have both shows in Thomas’s cozy bedroom. Had that first Wellington show not been so cool, maybe I wouldn’t have had been so down about the Happy show. But so it goes… live and learn (unlearn), and onwards.