So, here’s how you can help me win my first-ever remix competition:

(1) Visit the competition site here
(2) make sure you select my entry as #1
(3) hit “submit”

That’s it! No sign-up required. You’ve just helped me win in under 30 seconds. Thank you! xOx

Don’t have the remix yet? Download it here or here.

Crazy Yes Dumb No (Enright House Remix) by The Enright House

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.

For two years, now, I have been working on a new album. It will be called ‘In Perfect Blooms Of Color’ and I will release it sometime during the second half of 2010.

Until recently progress has been slow, but ever since I moved to New York in August, I’ve been making a lot more progress.

Much of the songwriting and early demoing took shape in 2008, but planning and rehearsing the US tour took up a lot of time and energy. Then in early 2009, right before leaving New Zealand to go on a 9-week tour of America with Evan, I decided to team up with my long-term mate, Rob, to record guitars, trombones, french horns, and accordions, as well as some stray percussion.

Unfortunately, due to the long tour and wind-down phase thereafter, I found myself without the requisite energy to tackle the recordings Rob and I had made earlier in the year. Several hundred brass and guitar takes were filling up my hard drives, and, after lying dormant for so long, it wasn’t always clear to me, how some of these recordings even fit together any longer. In short, the state of the album was a royal mess.

My saving grace was New York. In August of last year, I moved to Brooklyn with my best friend, Mary, and inspiration hit soon after. There’s a lot of energy in this town, a lot of young adults are working on amazing music and art. My internship, too, helped kick my musical ambitions back into high gear.

Ever since August of 2009, I have made a concerted effort to spend at least a few hours each day on the album. I don’t always manage, but I’m never too far off the mark, either. I have 10 songs that, aside from vocals and minor tweaking are now totally ready to mixed, with 4-5 more songs that need a bit more attention, perhaps.

You might be interested to know that the album will be roughly 12 songs long, yet ought to clock in under an hour.

‘In Perfect Blooms Of Color’ will contain no instrumental songs and only very few guitars. Instead you can expect a lot of electronic beats, synths, and vocals, as well as lush orchestral arrangements with violins, violas, cellos, double basses, french horn, trombone, tuba, oboe, bassoon, bass clarinet, piano, and lots and lots of orchestral percussion, including field drums, woodblocks, triangles, large bass drums, and even the odd rainstick.

So yeah, it’s going to be a big departure. I’ll be tell you more about it shortly.

Happy thanksgiving everyone. Just wanted to let all of you know that from today through to Monday morning, you can get yourself a copy of A Maze and Amazement for whatever you like. No minimum. Get it for free, or choose to pay something for it. Zero pressure. But do hurry up, this deal is only good for the weekend!

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.