Hello, my name is Looptron.

Heart shaped, er, box.

Well, a heart shaped CD label (so you can put a heart in your machine, innit?) with subliminal Looptron logo-ing.

We're all doomed. Oh, hang on...

I missed this yesterday even though it was linked of the Thom Yorke/David Byrne piece in Wired but here's some more wisdom from the boy Byrne, namely his strategies for emerging artists. Seems to me like quite an accurate piece on the current state of affairs, definitely worth a read. It's not all doom and gloom like a lot of pieces about the industry either, although it does contain some words of caution:

"Of course, not everyone is as smart as those nerdy Radiohead boys. Pete Doherty probably should not be handed the steering wheel."

Indeed.

Also, I believe Frank Zappa's standing advice was retain all your publishing and get a good lawyer. That's probably more apt now than it ever was.

Distro Schmistro.

Righty, been on to CD Baby this lunchtime, got me a UPC barcode (10 quid, but necessary to get onto the big download services) and got and the EP set up (17 quid). I can't remember how long that gives me until I need to have the stuff sent to them but it means I have to get it mix finished and mastered sooner rather than later (before the barcode expires) and some CDs sent to them. Then, as well as CDs shipped to everywhere in the known world they'll also set it up so you can download the MP3s (DRM-free) from their site, plus buy it or listen to it on iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody and just about every other online service known to man. For this they take a whopping 9% of your sales and you get the rest. It really is a genius little organisation and they seem like really decent folks in every dealing I've ever had with em (we released the Moeker album through them as well.)

Record company? These days? Bollocks to it!!

Must finish the mix, must finish the mix, must finish the mix.

Playing covers.

Ok, it's fair to say that art is not my strong point (I got a D in my Art GCSE, although that's the maximum they could give me given the amount of coursework I was happy enough with to submit) but I'm quite chuffed with how these came out... I was gonna take the concept (scribbled on the back of a document at work and badly photographed on my phone) and actually properly paint it or something but all I've done is taken said rubbish photo and processed the fuck out of it while I was having my lunch yesterday. This approach is not dissimilar to the way I make music and I'm quite chuffed with the results, actually. Even if it is all a "bit emo" as my brother put it.

Now all I need to do is decide exactly what I'm going to call the songs! Obsolete Before You Start [Parts I-V], while having a nice Jean Michel Jarre feel to it, just ain't gonna cut it.

Oh yeah, and FINISH THE GODDAM MOTHERFUNKING MIX. Gnnnghgh.

PS: EMF were amazing. Best gig I've seen in ages.

Thom Yorke & David Byrne are in Wired...

...discussing Radiohead's In Rainbows release strategy and some other stuff. An interesting read.

The stupid.

It's weird when you get decisions made for you. An example:

It has become necessary during the recording of the EP for me to get a plugin for retuning audio (hey, you've heard me sing) and in my former PC-based recording life I had a copy of Antares Autotune (version 2 or 3 or something) so I naturally gravitated towards aquiring that. However... in order to activate the most recent version (5) you must use something called an iLok - a little USB dongle (that you have to buy separately, and only has paid support) that holds licenses for your software. The plus side is that you have your licenses on a portable device which means you can move them between computers at will. The downside is that this would take up one of the two USB slots on the MacBook Pro, both of which are already full of actual audio hardware (as they fucking well should be).

So instead I've gone with Celemony's Melodyne plugin....does all the same stuff, costs about the same, scores equally well in reviews, the demo worked nicely and sounded good in Ableton and most importantly while it supports the iLok thingy it doesn't force you to use it. You have the option of doing a challenge/response authorisation for the machine. OK, you lose the portability but they let the consumer decide if that's what they want.

So, nice one Antares. By making people go the long way round and have to pay to support your DRM you've just lost a sale.

Still, that's the only outstanding thing to acquire for the mix process, so hopefully all that'll be finished soon. But this evening I shall be seeing EMF instead of working on that. Which is nice. If a bit random.

But first....to the dentist! (Ew.)