Back in 2019 I published a feature on Buffalo, NY musician Bill Boulden’s Pieces—A Thousand Albums At The End Of America. I’m excited to share news of his latest and largest project to date – a massive and impressive undertaking titled, We’re Doomed We’re Dancing: Sixty Apocalypses. The album depicts the world’s end through the guise of no fewer than sixty different genres of music, each encapsulated in a sixty-second sonic vignette.
Bill released the project under his artist moniker, Downupright. The project was crowdfunded through Kickstarter back in 2022 and gained recognition as one of Kickstarter’s “Projects to Watch.” The result is thoroughly satisfying and a musical experience quite unlike any other.
Released on all major music platforms on April 4, 2024, We’re Doomed We’re Dancing is a tour-de-force of musical deftness. It’s frankly astonishing how much musical prowess and impact they’ve packed into every sixty second slice of the album.
And contrary to my expectation, the transitions were fluid and seamless, while the pure range is staggering. I’d approached the project with some skepticism, thinking, surely this is a gimmick-heavy endeavor, expecting pure novelty. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I was floored by how potent each individual track was. I consistently found myself turning the volume up and eagerly anticipating each new installment, not one of which failed to impress.
It was equally arresting how seamlessly the album functions as a single cohesive work, despite the vast array of genres it comprises. And the album’s high production value rewards headphone listening.
Each sixty-second track is of a quality wholly-faithful to its respective genre. This is in no way a pastiche. This exemplifies the incredible range of the artist. From atonal chorale to black metal, swing to dubstep, Satie-esque piano interlude to campy call center hold music, and everything in between. There are even hints at style-parodies of contemporary figures of rock and hip-hop to evoke a smile from the listener.
Undoubtedly, the amount of work and attention to detail it takes to cater the faithful production to the style of each genre is simply amazing. To use the cinematic catch-phrase, We’re Doomed We’re Dancing is “white-knuckled apocalyptic thrill ride” of genre-spanning adeptness. Don’t miss it!
I am beside myself with joy to report this latest news from Innerspace Labs.
My faithful readers have long-understood that I am a committed Brian Eno enthusiast. To date, my digital Eno library comprises 412 unique releases including a wide array of non-commercial recordings not available officially at any price. And the physical portion of my Eno library includes all major official vinyl releases and vinyl box sets, all major books published by or about the man, and miscellaneous artifacts like the Oblique Strategies deck, films, and a variety of framed limited edition lithographs.
As one might imagine, it is becoming quite difficult to incorporate yet-unacquired objects into this substantial archive. Though Eno, himself at the age of 75 continues to release new material of a quality consistent with his finest vintage efforts.
That’s why this latest acquisition is so exciting. First, for those not already familiar with Eno’s experimental record label of the 1970s, Obscure Records was a U.K. record label which existed from 1975 to 1978. It was created and curated by Brian Eno. Ten albums were issued in the series. Most have detailed liner notes on their back covers, analyzing the compositions and providing a biography of the composer, in a format typical of classical music albums, and much of the material can be regarded as 20th-century classical music. The label provided a venue for experimental music.
On 4 November 2023 I happened to Google the phrase, “Obscure Records Complete Vinyl” on a whim trying to locate a photo from anyone who might have had the rare privilege of assembling a complete library of the elusive and oft-expensive releases. Tragically, the majority of the titles on the label have remained out of print and difficult to find for decades.
As my incredible fortune would have it, the top search result was from Soundohm Records – an international online mail order company that professes to “maintain a large inventory of several thousands of titles, specialized in Electronic/Avantgarde music and Sound Art…” and “rare, out-of-print and sometime impossible-to-find artists’ records, multiples and limited gallery editions.”
My eyes widened as I beheld the release page. I had inadvertently stumbled upon an announcement of an upcoming 10LP deluxe box set titled, The Complete Obscure Records Collection, with a release date of 24 November!
The release is issued by Dialogo Records, an Italian imprint which has showed a remarkable dedication to the history of experimental music via reissues of seminal artifacts from the Cramps catalog, and important albums by Piero Umiliani, Ennio Morricone, Bruno Nicolai, Enrico Rava, and others.
I’ve archived the release summary from Soundohm’s pre-order page in the event that it is taken down after the release date:
** Limited Collector Edition of 1.000 copies. Includes hand-numbered certificate, 10 LPs in faithful replicas of the original covers and polylined inner sleeves, a 80-page LP-sized book in English, all housed in a custom lavish linen box. ** In a very special Soundohm exclusive, we’re thrilled to announce pre-orders for the first ever box set gathering the entire ten album collection of Brian Eno’s Obscure Records, originally issued between 1975 and 1978. Containing the debut releases of Gavin Bryars, Michael Nyman, John Adams, David Toop, Max Eastley, Harold Budd, Christopher Hobbs, Jan Steele, and Simon Jeffes / The Penguin Café Orchestra, in addition to important works by John Cage, Tom Phillips, and John White, not to mention Eno’s seminal “Discreet Music”, the label’s output collectively amounts to a monument in the history of minimalist experimental music that has captivated audiences since it first appeared – a rare bridge between the avant-garde and popular realms. This remarkable collection, coming as a deluxe box set designed by Bruno Stucchi / dinamomilano, and issued by Dialogo in CD and vinyl editions completely remastered by Andrea Marutti – both including a book filled with rare photos, archival material and texts by, among others, Gavin Bryars, Bradford Bailey, David Toop, Max Eastley, Richard Bernas, and Tom Recchion – marks the first time this seminal series has received a complete repress on any format, with a number of the albums within having never been reissued on vinyl and/or CD since their original release. You can’t get any better than this, simply a dream come true.
Over the last few years, the Italian imprint, Dialogo, has showed a remarkable dedication to the history of experimental music via reissues of seminal artefacts from the Cramps catalog, and important albums by Piero Umiliani, Ennio Morricone, Bruno Nicolai, Enrico Rava, and others. This initiative now takes on a towering scale with the first ever box set gathering the entire ten album collection of Brian Eno’s Obscure Records, originally issued between 1975 and 1978. A truly groundbreaking body of recordings – many of which have remained out of print and difficult to find for decades – it contains some of the most important, influential, and enduring music to emerge during the second half of the 20th Century, which collectively reconfigured the terms of minimalism and laid the groundwork for the emerging movement of ambient music over its short, three year run.
Issued in both CD and vinyl editions of 1000 copies, with the later accompanied by a hand-numbered certificate, each box set contains all of Obscure’s albums, completely remastered by Andrea Marutti and housed in faithful replicas of their original covers and liner notes, as well as an 80/130-page book (respectively, LP/CD) with texts / contributions by Gavin Bryars, Bradford Bailey, David Toop, Max Eastley, Richard Bernas, Tom Recchion, Carlo Boccadoro, Walter Rovere and Bruno Stucchi, and rare photos, including several by Roberto Masotti, this historic collection marks the first time such a seminal series has received a complete repress. Stunningly produced with the full collaboration of all the artists or their estates, this is easily one of the most exciting, important and hotly anticipated releases of the year.
One of the great anomalies and triumphs of 20th Century recording, Obscure Records was initially conceived by Brian Eno as a vehicle for the work of his yet to be recorded friend, Gavin Bryars, before taking on grander ambitions. Having left Roxy Music in 1973 and launched his own solo career, during this period Eno had become immersed in London’s thriving experimental music scene – occasionally playing with Cornelius Cardew’s Scratch Orchestra and Portsmouth Sinfonia – cultivating a deep connection with the avant-garde that had begun in his student years, finding a deep sympathy with his own ideas and approaches among the artists he encountered there. Among these were Bryars, Christopher Hobbs, David Toop, and Max Eastley, who, in addition to Eno and a lone American, John Adams, would contribute the first suite of works: Gavin Bryars’ “The Sinking of the Titanic”, Christopher Hobbs, John Adams, and Gavin Bryars’ “Ensemble Pieces”, Brian Eno’s “Discreet Music”, David Toop and Max Eastley’s “New and Rediscovered Musical Instrument” – released by Obscure in 1975.
Backed, manufactured ,and distributed Island Records, working under the curatorial direction of Eno, Bryars, and Michael Nyman (then primary known as a writer), Obscure would rapidly emerge as a rare example of a record label entirely committed to the radical ideas of the artists it involved, releasing two more suites of albums in 1976 and 1978 – containing the debut recordings of Nyman, Jan Steele, Simon Jeffes / The Penguin Café Orchestra, and Harold Budd, in addition to important works by Eno, John Cage, Tom Phillips, and John White, before Eno followed the path toward ambient music and moved to New York.
When viewed collectively, the Obscure catalog – which, in addition to the aforementioned four LPs, contains Jan Steele and John Cage’s “Voices and Instruments” (1976), Michael Nyman’s “Decay Music” (1976) Simon Jeffes / The Penguin Café Orchestra’s “Music from The Penguin Café” (1976), John White and Gavin Bryars’ “Machine Music” (1978), Tom Phillips, Gavin Bryars, and Fred Orton’s “Irma” (1978) and Harold Budd’s “The Pavilion of Dreams” (1978) – reveals a remarkable, and previously unexplored counterpoint – bridging the United Kingdom and the American West Coast – to the dominant threads of minimal and experimental music, centred in New York that had long dominated the public consciousness.
Equally as noteworthy was the belief, rubbing below the label’s directives, that experimental music should be accessible and available to listeners of popular music, encountering Eno, Bryars, and Nyman setting out to bridge the gap. While it achieved this more than most of contemporaries, it would take decades for the full impact and influence of Obscure’s ten albums to unfold, eventually giving way to numerous discreet practices within experimental music embraced by successive generations of composers. Despite this, the majority of the label’s output has been unavailable on vinyl for years, with a number of releases having never received a CD reissue.
Illuminating the remarkable, and largely otherwise undocumented, creative ferment within and between the British and American scenes of experimental music during the mid to late 1970s, Dialogo’s incredible “The Complete Obscure Records Collection” deluxe box set designed by Bruno Stucchi / dinamomilano – made in full collaboration with all of the composers or their estates – contains the entire ten album output of the label, completely remastered and housed in faithful replicas of their original covers and liner notes, as well as an 80/130-page book (respectively, LP/CD).
This historic collection marks the first time the seminal Obscure catalogue has received a complete repress on both vinyl and CD; simply a dream come true.
I hesitated ever-so briefly about this discovery. I had significantly reduced my spending on vinyl over the last several years, resolving only to invest in exceptional rare specimens befitting of my Archive. After some carefully-considered research into the label and the release details, I drafted a comparative list of rationale for and against the purchase, enumerating how sound an investment of this nature would be.
Paramount among the benefits were several convincing arguments in favour of the purchase, including:
– It’s something I’ve always wanted but could never afford to collect individually – It serendipitously manifested the moment I searched for it – I do so adore lavish limited edition box sets – The release includes an 80-page companion book exclusive to the set – It is truly archival, precisely what my library embraces – It’s a long-elusive Eno artifact and I specialize in Eno treasures – Eno is my hero and this is his brainchild – All 10 discs are remastered and mint new LPs, far better than buying them all used – It’s an experimental music holy grail, perfectly-suited for my Archive – It’s limited to just 1,000 copies. Once it sells out, I will never have this opportunity again at this price
Also noteworthy is that all of the albums are newly-remastered, many were only previously available as their elusive original pressings, and that the original album covers and insert artwork have been maintained. That was something missing from the former Cluster and Kraftwerk box sets where hyper-minimalist design replaced the classic original layouts.
I decided that it was too perfect an opportunity to pass us and pre-ordered it on the spot. It arrived safely and I am so proud to add this artifact to my collection. So many iconic composers are here – Eno, Gavin Bryars, Michael Nyman, Simon Jeffes, Harold Budd, John Cage, David Toop… it’s a critical work of music history which deserves a place on my shelves.
It’s a special day at Innerspace Labs. Just arrived is The KLF’s new 23 Seconds to Eternity (Dual Format Edition) DVD/Blu-ray collection. One of the most successful, subversively creative and enigmatic electronic bands of the early 90s, this is the first-ever official compilation of The KLF’s films.
News of the collection was published August 23, 2023 when The British Library acquired The Acetate, the only physical copy of a new, reconstructed version of the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu’s debut album 1987 (What the F**k Is Going On?). TBL announced that, “for one week only, the recording would be available for everyone to listen to in our free Sound Gallery, starting from 11:23 on 23 August 2023, and from 30 August 2023, the album will be accessible within the Library’s Reading Rooms in perpetuity for research, inspiration and enjoyment. The Acetate is the only physical copy of 1987 (What the F**k Was Going On?), officially credited to The Ice Kream Van (unpublished by KLF Communications, London 2023).” TBL also noted that “The Acetate and all surviving KLF Communications master tapes donated by K2 Plant Hire Ltd will be archived as The KLF Kollection. All unpublished items will be catalogued under the collection number C2023.”
Two official statements were included in the announcement –
The KLF have issued the following statement from the Ice Kream Van: “As a lifetime, card carrying and founding member of The KLF Re-Enactment Society, I felt it my duty to not only ‘re-enact’ The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu’s album 1987 (Blah, Blah, Blah?) but present it to the world in a way far superior than their original version…That said, I am very aware, even if they are not aware that I am aware, that my aging Ice Kream Men, have ‘pirated’ a copy of my re-enactment’ and have had an acetate cut of it and have ‘donated’ their pirated copy to the British Library for those that visit such places. Yours forever… The Ice Kream Van.”
Karoline Engelhardt, Curator of Popular Music Recordings at the British Library, said: “This is a very special year in the history of the British Library as it marks our 50th anniversary. The Sound Archive became part of the British Library only a decade later and, from the beginning, its mission was to preserve the nation’s sound heritage in all its creative facets. The KLF Kollection is another exciting piece of popular music history that will now be available to explore at the British Library for generations to come.”
This was thrilling news for fans the world over, but there was more excitement in store with the announcement of the DVD/Blu-ray set. The KLF produced some of the most original videos and short films of their era and fans can now enjoy them all in 23 Seconds To Eternity, released on limited-edition BFI Blu-ray and DVD (Dual Format Edition) on 6 November. The BFI will also be screening the collected films and videos on the big screen when BFI Southbank presents a special release day launch screening followed by a Q&A with producer/director Bill Butt on 6 November. Further UK cinema screenings are to be announced. This release is the first ever compilation of KLF Communication’s films and includes previously unreleased material along with an illustrated booklet.
BFI’s Shop page for the release offers the following details:
Produced and directed by Bill Butt in collaboration with Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond in their various guises as The JAMs, The KLF and The Timelords, 23 Seconds to Eternitytakes viewers on a film journey through the collected music videos and short features including The White Room (1989), The Rites of Mu (1991), narrated by Martin Sheen and the previously unreleased Krash (1992). Also included are the world famous music videos for the hit singles 3 A.M. Eternal, What Time is Love? and Justified & Ancient.
This release is the first ever compilation of KLF Communication’s films and this release will feature an array of special features and an illustrated booklet featuring rare and previously unseen material.
23 Seconds to Eternity includes the film The White Room (1989), an ‘ambient road movie’ following American police car Ford Timelord and Jimmy Cauty (Rockman Rock) and Bill Drummond (King Boy D) on a journey cross-country in search of the ‘White Room’. Remastered and regraded from the only existing film print, The White Room features a new soundtrack specially recorded for this Blu-ray/DVD release. 23 Seconds to Eternity also features a newly restored version of The Rites of Mu (1991), a 29-minute feature narrated by Martin Sheen, documenting a summer solstice event organised by The KLF on the Scottish island of Jura in 1991, plus the previously unreleased short Krash (1992), edited in 2022, a record of the final and violent destruction of Ford Timelord. The soundtrack to Krash is a track from The Black Room, the unreleased album by the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu.
The DVD set comprises the following:
23 Seconds to Eternity running order and special features
Doctorin’ the Tardis (1988)
The White Room (1989) (44 mins, 45 seconds)
Kylie Said to Jason (1989)
Stadium House Trilogy (1991)
Rites of Mu, Martin Sheen narration (1991) (29 mins 21 Seconds) newly restored
KLF: Unfinished (1992, 30 mins): making of documentary including optional commentary by director Robert Milton Wallace
Interview with Bill Butt by Mick Houghton (2023): the producer and director discusses the making of 23 Seconds to Eternity
This Is Not What The KLF Is About (1991, 15 mins): a short film shot and edited by Jimmy Cauty capturing the making of Stadium House Trilogy, newly remastered by Rich Osborn
23 Seconds to Eternity theatrical trailer (2023, 2 mins)
KRASH trailer (1 min)
The White Room trailer (1 min)
Stills gallery
Limited edition includes an illustrated booklet with new writing by Mick Houghton and the BFI’s William Fowler, Bill Butt’s filmography, an introduction to The White Room, and rare images from the personal collections of Bill Butt and Mick Houghton
This is an incredibly exciting archival release for fans and an essential addition to any KLF collection.
Today marks one of the proudest moments of my life. It took an incredible amount of work, but I now possess a four-volume full-color glossy set of hardcover books comprising twelve years of my research and writing in the field of music. Due to its 1,716-page length, the work was previously only available digitally, but after reading a Ray Bradbury quote where he said, “Everyone must leave something behind when he dies,” I was inspired to tackle all the challenges necessary to realize my vision for a physical edition of my life’s efforts for my bookshelf.
And there’s a fun easter egg – when the volumes are side by side the spines form an image!
This project has had quite a history of challenges. I first conceived the project on March 26, 2022 when I began wondering whether I could automate or batch process the extraction of twelve years’ worth of my articles from WordPress. I found a script utility to do that and was able to perform the complete extraction during the one-week free trial of the application resulting in several hundred doc files.
Then I had to research what software in the Linux environment could be used to merge them and to manage the formatting of the publication. It took further free and open source script utilities to batch process the uniform formatting of the work, removing hyperlink metadata tagged to every entry, batch scaling and placing the image content, re-formatting the page and text areas, etc.
The resulting manuscript was over 3,000 pages long, and researching Amazon’s publication limitations I was unable to submit the work as an ebook on their platform due to its size. So I turned to Google and was able to publish a PDF of the work and on July 6, 2022 my book was live on the Google Play Store.
Fast-forward to July 20, 2023, when I encountered the aforementioned Ray Bradbury quote from Fahrenheit 451 which I’ll include in its entirety below:
“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.
It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”
― Ray Bradbury
This inspired me to reconsider my project to see if there was any possibility of a print edition set. Revisiting Amazon’s Kindle documentation I discovered that I’d been looking at the incorrect column in their pricing structure table the year prior, and that I could order what is termed an ‘Author Copy’ at the print cost without the mark-up. This gave me a glimmer of hope!
I encountered several additional challenges over the subsequent nine days. First I found that Amazon’s hardcovers are only available in fixed standard sizes so I’d have to reformat my book. Unfortunately many of the changes I had made when finalizing the manuscript were performed on PDF outputs of the working documents, which presented enormous challenges to reformat them to another document size while adhering to Amazon’s margin specs. And this was all the more difficult as I was working in a Linux environment without Adobe applications like the full version of Acrobat or InDesign.
Then I had to split the book into four nearly-equal volumes to comply with Amazon’s maximum page count for hardcover print production. That’s when I learned that differing page counts per volume would require slight variations in their respective cover spread templates due to the varying spine dimensions accommodating those page counts, so I carefully worked my way to the end of chapters at about each quarter of the manuscript and added one or two blank pages where necessary to get all four volumes to identical page counts. This way I could employ a single cover template for all four volumes and just incorporate a Roman numeral denotation on each cover and spine for its corresponding volume.
Uploading the manuscript drafts to Amazon I discovered there was another critical element to print design which wasn’t present in the digital edition – namely that of the gutter measurement. The page content must be offset just a bit to the right on odd-numbered pages and to the left on even-numbered pages to accommodate the page area lost to the stitching of the binding, and that dimension is conditional to the total number of pages and spine width. Normally one would simply key in a gutter measurement value in their desktop publishing software and the application would automatically adjust all pages appropriately. But again, I was working with a fixed PDF export of the manuscript and in a Linux environment so this was an incredible challenge. After a day of dedicated research I found a magnificently powerful command line based script utility to perform the task of offsetting the even and odd pages of the nearly 2,000-pages of PDFs in mere seconds’ time. It took a bit of experimentation with the syntax, but I worked it out and the revised upload to Amazon appeared with the content perfectly centered on each page!
Once I had the body pages rescaled and reformatted, I queried my graphic designer who had conceived the brilliant cover layout for my ebook the year prior to see whether or not he’d be able to rework that original artwork to comply with the specifications for Amazon’s hardcover spread template. In only a few days’ time he created four visually-impactful layouts consistent with the thematic elements of my content and at an unbeatable price. And as I mentioned – he had the fantastic idea of incorporating abstract imagery of a CD, cassette, and LP into an image which spans the spines of the four volumes when they are placed side by side. I couldn’t have been happier with his work!
The evening of July 27, 2023 I finalized and submitted the project to Amazon and created a series page to tie the titles together. According to their terms, I had to wait for the volumes to be published and live on their site before I could order my Author Copy set, after which I could unpublish and mark the project as complete.
But there was yet another challenge when the bots Amazon employs to automate the initial stage of review rejected my work stating that some text on the cover was difficult to read. I immediately contacted Amazon author support by phone and explained that the gritty, abstract design elements of the cover are intended to look that way. They submitted my request to their technical support team and confirmed that they could manually approve the work. That was such a relief!
After a grueling anticipatory wait of just over 48 hours, they were live on Amazon and six days later my Author Copies of the four volumes comprising The Ghost of Madame Curie: Writings From Innerspace Labs arrived intact. Here they are. Thank you to everyone who encouraged me and shared their creative inspirations along the way. This is a milestone achievement of my lifetime.
Dearest readers, I am excited to offer this small write-up to you in the spring of 2023 as it marks my first emergence from my post-book-publication hiatus. I really felt like I’d said all I had to say about music, and the act of publishing gave me pause to contemplate the vastly-transformed landscape of how the world consumes and engages music in the 21st century and how it left me feeling “old and in the way.”
However, upon hearing the latest collaborative effort from my hero, the great Brian Eno, I felt that familiar compulsion to return to my desk and start writing once more to share the joy of my discovery. How fitting that this stimulus came from the same artist who inspired my life-long passion for the ambient music genre at a young age – that he, more than 20 years later, would continue to be a wellspring of creative force within me to reach out to my readers once again.
Eno’s representation in my archive demonstrates my commitment to his catalogue. In addition to the dozens of art prints, books, lithographs, 412 digital releases, and other miscellanea I’ve acquired, I’ve successfully built a sizable library of most major releases issued in the vinyl format by the artist. My library to date comprises 49 of his best-loved works totaling 77 discs of content, including the highly sought-after Music For Installations 9LP limited edition box set. After resolving to retire (mostly) from record collecting, I’ve yet to claim vinyl editions of his releases from 2022 forward, however the consistent quality of those works often gives me moments of reconsideration. Perhaps a few exceptions for my hero’s occasional releases are in order.
At the age of 74, Mr. Eno has shown no sign of slowing down, himself. In 2021, he and his brother Roger Eno premiered their first-ever performance together at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, an ancient theatre of the Acropolis as part of the Athens Epidaurus Festival. Then in 2022, he released the brilliant and critically-lauded album, FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE, featuring his vocals as primary focus across an entire album for the first time since 2005’s Another Day On Earth. His work continued in 2023, with a special limited instrumental edition of FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE titled, Forever Voiceless for Record Store Day. And on May 5, 2023, Eno released an all-new collaborative album titled Secret Life with the young producer “Fred Again..”
Frederick John Philip Gibson, (born 19 July 1993) known professionally as Fred again.. or simply FRED, is a British record producer, singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and DJ. The new album is not the first time the two composers have met. At age 16, Gibson joined an a cappella group at Brian Eno’s studio in London, who was his family’s neighbour at the time. And in 2014, he collaborated as co-producer and songwriter with Eno and Karl Hyde on their two project albums Someday World and High Life. This was particularly interesting as Gibson exhibits a similar approach to that of Hyde’s notable work with Underworld where his use of vocals is that of rhythmic device rather than communicating directly through language, as most-famously demonstrated in their anthem, “Born Slippy .NUXX.”
While Gibson may likely be the youngest collaborator of Eno’s to date, he is no novice to the musical world. Gibson won Producer of the Year at the Brit Awards 2020 – the youngest producer to ever win the title. And another fun bit of trivia – his artist name came from a line in the live action movie “Scooby-Doo” where Fred, (in the voice of Daphne) says: “I’m Fred Again..”.
In addition to Gibson’s own album catalogue, he collaborated with Four Tet and Skrillex on the track “Baby again..” released on the USB EP in 2022, played several shows with both artists in 2023, and performed with them for the closing set at Coachella. There are notable parallels in Gibson and Four Tet’s album production techniques and their penchant for glitchy-yet-organic lowercase-styled sonic effects, particularly with their manipulation of vocals and minimalist percussion. Secret Life was released on Four Tet’s own label, Text Records, and Four Tet called it “the most beautiful album of 2023.”
Throughout his long, illustrious career, Eno has been famously committed to never making the same album twice. And the ambient genre is a dangerous and notorious field where a composer could easily get comfortable embracing the “less-is-more” aesthetic and philosophy resulting in pleasant but well-tread, familiar territory. However, his new collaboration with Fred Again.. maintains his consistent track record of pioneering and refreshingly-contemporary content. Fred lends his unique voice (both artistically and literally), and his modern mastery of album production to Eno’s refined veteran technique and the result is purely inspiring.
Secret Life is a work of lush and ethereal ambient pop in the spirit of the finest post-minimal works. Gibson’s vocal contributions were a surprise for an ambient record, but are employed sparingly to evoke emotion and masterfully-processed such that they in no way detract from the ambience. From the delicate and longing evocations of the album’s stand-out lyrical track, “Secret” to the sparsely minimalist but soulful fragmented vocal crooning of “Chest,” Secret Life is a fragile and textural album-wide soundscape of yearning.
RYM user foxtrot_stowaway poetically summarizes the nature of the album saying, “It’s incredibly beautiful but also full of these massive, aching pangs of nostalgia/regret. It is epically life affirming but also epically devastating.” This is most-evident in the chiefly-lyrical track “Secret,” with its slowly-unfolding lo-fi lyrics:
“I miss you so much… but you’re not out of sight… cause I’m still… breathing… in my secret life… hold on, hold on, my brother… my sister, hold on tight… finally found my whole life… So I’ve been marchin’ ’til the mornin’, marchin’ through the night… moving cross the borders… of my secret life… of my secret life.”
This is an album that, much in its spirited thematic romanticism, stretches time, itself. It’s a newfound favourite post-minimalist work, approaching the accolades of Max Richter’s epic 8-and-a-half-hour Sleep album from 2015. The triumph here is Secret Life’s low-fidelity execution of marrying the dissonance between fractured and fragmented microtonal cut-up music and soothingly warm, organic mellow ambience. Secret Life easily charts among my top releases of 2023.
Recently I had an idea to explore the market and technology of “sleep headphones” – that is, headphones designed to wear all night while the listener sleeps. As my readers know well, the ambient segment of my archive comprises over 60,000 ambient tracks from nearly 5,000 artists’ discographies. My bedroom is set up with a dedicated amplifier and a tablet wirelessly patched into my server on my home network which plays ambient music through a vintage pair of Advent One speakers my late father passed down to me for 10-12 hours each night while I sleep.
Unfortunately, as the albums must be played at a minimal volume for sleep, the environmental noise of rainfall, passing cars, and my furnace drown out much of the nuance and delicate sounds of the music. This is why I decided to explore an alternate solution.
A quick search on Amazon returns a product named as Amazon’s Choice for the category of “sleep headphones” – called MUSICOZY Sleep Headphones Bluetooth Headband Wireless Music Headband Headphones. The product has 12,698 ratings and an average of 4.3 stars and is priced at just $19.99. The headband is lightweight, breathable, pairs wirelessly over Bluetooth, and the lithium ion battery lasts for ten hours on a single charge.
I carefully read through the product details and was seriously considering clicking that big “buy” button, but I took some extra time to read through all of the customer reviews as well as the question-and-answer section from those who purchased the product. This revealed an undesirable property of the model – notably that the speakers emit a loud “low battery” warning every time they are in need of a charge. A few customers complained that this is jarring and wakes them up from a sound sleep.
So I searched Amazon again, and found something intriguing. I discovered a very similar model from a different manufacturer, called Perytong Bluetooth Sleep Headphones Wireless, Sports Headband Headphones. These were curiously also named as Amazon’s Choice, but this time for the nearly-identical category of “sleep+headphones” (that’s with a plus symbol between the search terms). This product has 39,919 ratings – more than three times that of the former model, and matches its average of 4.3 stars. Both devices offer Bluetooth pairing and a battery life of ten hours with an approximate two-hour re-charge time. This model was priced at $39.99 marked down to a deal price of just $19.99, and it is available in a variety of colors.
I carefully read through the question-and-answer section and other buyers confirmed that this model has no low battery warning sounds. I surmised that other customers had viewed and compared the same products that I had.
The most promising review came from a customer named Joshua B who said:
These headphones have become my go to for night listening and sleeping, for these reasons…
The headband feels lightweight and doesn’t heat up, even during summer nights with windows open.
As long as my head is on something soft like my pillow, the round, hard plastic speakers inside the headband do not get in the way or introduce much discomfort or pain. This makes side, back, or stomach sleeping and listening comfortable. I can turn to any side and the headband remains in reasonable position on my head, and speakers in reasonable position at my ears. I make small adjustments to the speaker positions, but this is not a hardship. If I’m on my side, sometimes I can feel one of the round speakers pressuring my ear. So far it hasn’t bothered me.
While both left and right speakers need to be adjusted/positioned within the headband each time I put it on, this is a minor inconvenience for comfortable listening without discomfort.
The battery life easily lasts all night and into the next morning. It lasts two nights. I find myself charging the headphones either once a day or once every two days, just to be sure they’re fully charged. Charging is fast.
The plug-in side of the USB-C cable is actually tucked into the back of the headband. I can easily locate it, pull it out, and plug in. Surprisingly, it’s not uncomfortable tucked back into the headband, while wearing. Do the plug and the two round, plastic speakers feel a little clunky? Yes they do. I envision this design being refined over time.
Conclusion: Overall, this is my favorite sleeping headphone set. Battery life is great. Comfort is fine. Easily better experience than earbuds or a headphone form factor.
I did a bit of Googling outside of Amazon before finalizing my decision and found that the latter model was also the Editor’s Pick on Sleepopolis’ article showcasing the best Headphones for Sleeping. For under $20 it seemed like a safe bet.
They arrived just a few days later. Exploring the modest packaging and reviewing the included instruction guide, they seemed like a very straightforward product. No USB charging brick is included, but thankfully I had a spare. And evidently the headphones only accept a charge when used with the short charging cable included with the device. The product touts a lifetime warranty, while customer service is provided via a personal gmail account address included in the manual. Hopefully the manufacturer will be around long enough to honor it. (But hey – it was only $19.99.)
There were a few key functions to note. When the headband is fully charged, (in approximately two hours), the charging light on the front of the headband turns solid blue. To connect to Bluetooth, the user presses and holds the Play/Pause button. The headphones will enter pairing mode. Turn on the Bluetooth of your device and connect to the headphones. That was a snap.
Short press the minus button to advance to the next song. Long-hold the minus button to lower the volume. Short press the plus button to reverse one song. Long-hold the plus button to raise the volume. And long-pressing the center play/pause button powers the device on and off.
And yes – the headphones work with Bluetooth phone calls.
After a brief acclimation with the product I queued up a seven-hour-long album on my tablet and scanned through the tracks adjusting the volume to make sure I wouldn’t be disturbed by a spike in sound in the middle of the night. I found I was able to rest comfortably on my back or on my sides without any pressure from the speakers. The headband was fairly comfortable and breathable like the other reviewers had described.
Of course, these are not audiophile speakers by any stretch of the imagination. They’re just small, efficient speakers for yoga, workouts, or sleep. As most of the albums I’ll be playing in them will be minimal drones at a very low volume, the music isn’t going to be pushing the limits of the speakers, and I’ll be asleep for most of the listening sessions, so I am fine with that. Once again – they were under $20.
The music was enjoyable with the Perytong headphones I selected. I did notice that a lot of the subtle detail of the raindrops in the recording were lost with these speakers, but that was to be expected. It still sounded pleasant and relaxing which is just what I need to sleep.
Unfortunately, due to a combination of my excitement at acquiring new audio tech for my favorite genre coupled with the novelty experience of my first-listen, I remained awake for nearly the entire seven-hour duration of the album. But that was a consequence of my overactive mind and not a fault of the product. I just need to get accustomed to this new listening dynamic. In time I hope to experience a more restful sleep with them on. So far, I’m pleased with the purchase.
Now on to my promised Accompanying Soundtracks for Slumber. I took a quick look and put together a brief list of highlights. Forgive me – I can do much better when I have time to dedicate to the task. But at a quick glance…
There are a few noteworthy long-form sleep albums, including:
Max Richter’s Sleep (8 hours) Robert Rich’s Somnium (7 hours) – this was the album I employed for my first-listen and Perpetual – A Somnium Continuum (8 hours)
Larger catalogs and archives for ambient listening include:
Hearts of Space (1327+ broadcast library) Ambient Music Guide Podcast series (55 mixes) A Strangely Isolated Place (62 mixes) Brian Eno (the ambient portion of his 410 major releases) William Basinski (23 albums) selections from 36 (22 albums) Mathias Grassow (149 albums) Robert Rich (72 albums) Deuter (89 albums) Klaus Wiese (100 albums) Harold Budd (82 albums) Steve Roach (162 albums) Music For Sleep (29 albums)
As well as a few sleep album favorites –
Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster, Panaiotis – Deep Listening The KLF – Chill Out Jimmy Cauty – Space This Is Not What Space Is About This Is Not What Chill Out Is About Peter Broderick – Float Lawrence English – A Colour For Autumn John Foxx – Cathedral Oceans Vols I-III Moby – Calm. Sleep. Tom Middleton – Sleep Better
And additional albums from artists including:
Stars of the Lid A Winged Victory For The Sullen Deaf Center Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto Marconi Union Eluvium The Album Leaf Tapes and Topographies Loscil Liquid Mind Jóhann Jóhannsson Ólafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm
To supplement and introduce new content into my library for sleep accompaniment, I compiled album data from various sources around the web. I’ll share a few of those chart and list sites below for my readers to join me on my journey of exploration for quality ambient soundscapes for sleep.
Next I compiled a database showcasing highlights of ambient drone artists’ catalogs. Below is the introduction from the accompanying documentation I authored:
Methodology:
Artist names were sourced from music-map.com entering Stars of the Lid as the core artist value and pulling favorites from the most similar (proximate) artists in the cluster.
Each artist/composer was then run through rateyourmusic.com and all of their releases were then sorted from highest to lowest overall score from the userbase’s ratings.
Albums I’ve already exhausted from my own library were omitted so that the list would comprise new or lesser-experienced releases of the genre.
The resulting LPs were indexed for future listening.
From that list, I assembled a roster of examples of “bleak and haunting yet beautiful music, like the emptiness of a barren and gray wasteland (Ambient, Minimal, Drone).”
Then I constructed a chronological survey of Minimal Ambient Modern Classical Music from other articles around the Web.
For more quality content, I compiled ambient titles contributed by members of the SteveHoffman music forum at the links below:
And I wrapped up my research refining various incarnations of an ambient music introductory guide I’d authored and shared with friends over the years. The present iteration of my Introduction to Ambient Music (Revised Edition) was incorporated into the book I published.
There are also a variety of sleep music streaming sites and apps, including:
I’ve additionally bookmarked each of the generative music apps showcased at Brian Eno’s generativemusic.com but haven’t yet tried sleeping to them.
I’m definitely interested in continuing to expand my library of sleep music. I’m always interested in exploring more non-sequencer based, beatless ambient minimal tone poems such as Indo-Tibetan music for meditation, generative soundscapes, etc. I enjoy veteran minimalists like Harold Budd, Steve Roach, and Robert Rich who are regularly featured on transmissions of Hearts of Space. I have a complete HOS archive, as well as all the essential artist discographies, from Popol Vuh to Klaus Wiese, and their contemporaries like Music For Sleep and Stars of the Lid.
I also have complete vinyl and digital archives of foundational ambient kosmische musik discographies such as those of Cluster and Harmonia and other forebearers of the genre. I’m looking for quality catalogs beyond the common threads. Neo-classical composers like Max Richter are welcome as well. As I mentioned the ambient segment of my library clocks in at over 60,000 recordings, but I’m always interested in new discoveries. I’m ideally looking for soundscapes for work and sleep to quiet an overactive mind. I invite my readers to share any music they find well-suited to sleep-listening, or if they find any value in the selections I’ve noted above.
Forgive me for any glaring omissions in my own offerings. Happy sleeping!
I’ve just read Susan Rogers’ new book, This Is What It Sounds Like: What The Music You Love Says About You. Special thanks to my librarian cousin for the recommendation! 🙂
Rogers worked as a producer on albums from Prince’s Purple Rain to Barenaked Ladies before securing a doctorate in psychology from McGill University. Her research focuses on auditory memory, the perception of musical signals, and the influence of musical training on auditory development. The book is written in an accessible style to readily aid any music lover in discovering their unique “listener profile.” I’ll share my results from reading the text as an example of what you’ll find.
Rogers’ first evaluatory metric is Authenticity, characterized on a scale of “below-the-neck” to “above.” I found that I most often prefer cerebral music “from the neck up.”
The next chapter is on Realism. Here, I naturally gravitate toward the pole of highly-abstract musical properties.
Then she moves on to Familiarity vs Novelty. I generally prefer novel “art music.” Engaging with novel stimuli demands more cognitive effort and commitment than engaging with the routine. The greater the novelty, the heavier the cognitive load on the listener. Still, for Familiarity I enjoy the predictable properties of ambient and drone music to balance my taste for novelty.
Next up was Melody. Rogers explains that the dimension of the Melodic Spectrum has three axes – melodic range (narrow vs wide), articulation (legato vs staccato), and complexity (simple vs complex). I prefer narrower melodic contours, as employed in minimalist compositions like Glass’ Koyaanisqatsi, and legato notes which float into one another like in many ethereal ambient compositions. Interestingly, I embrace both simple and complex works, from droning minimal soundscapes to the hypercomplexity of many pieces in the classical avant-garde.
Chapter 5 explores Lyrics. On the lyrical spectrum, I am most affected by the stream-of-consciousness abstract and subjectless rapid-fire lyricism of wordsmiths like Karl Hyde or M Doughty where words’ semantic value takes a back seat to their rhythmic device. But one notable exception to this preference is the masterful songwriting prowess of Tom Waits. The dark, downtrodden visual worlds he paints with his lyrics are sombre, melancholic, vulnerable and hauntingly beautiful.
Chapter 6 examines Rhythm, spanning from straight to syncopated. I enjoy metronomic rhythms like those of four-on-the-floor house music and the static linearity of minimalism. But I also have a proclivity for funk’s emphasis “on the one.”
The next chapter is on Timbre. My interest in timbre is all over the sonic spectrum, ranging from frail and intimate vocals to dehumanized electroacoustic synthesis. Timbre is a complex and nuanced property of music that greatly contributes to each of our unique listening profiles.
Following Timbre, a chapter called Form and Function touches upon just a few of the near-infinite pool of decisions a record producer must resolve in order to make a great record. I developed a newer and greater appreciation for producers in the pop music sphere after reading it.
The final chapter wraps things up nicely revisiting the seven dimensions of your listener profile – the four musical dimensions of melody, lyrics, rhythm, and timbre, and the three aesthetic dimensions of authenticity, realism, and novelty and the factors which influence these aspects throughout our lives.
The one thing that is the most consistent throughout every chapter of this book is Rogers’ pure love of music. And that’s what made it a resonating and satisfying read. She’s inspired me to listen more consciously and attentively in an effort to rediscover and refine my listener profile.
I’ll close with my favorite quote from the book – “Oh! The crystal-clear fidelity of that mix! It was beyond anything I had ever heard before, and I remember thinking, I can tell what color socks the drummer is wearing!”
Revisiting a few of my unpublished articles, notes, and remarks from the last six years, I felt a compulsion to record them once and for all for whatever the act might be worth. I’d also dusted off my bookmarks folder of all my favorite socio-cultural blogs only to find that every one of them had since been retired and stripped from the Web. That realization reinforces my resolve to document these thoughts and questions which still remain on my mind years after penning them and my search for a community to share these ideas.
Here they are…
Copyleftism, Open Culture, and the Future of Mass Media: A Brief (Immediate) History of Media Culture
03-12-2016 (prev. unpublished)
In the last decade, we’ve seen the growth of niche markets and the rise of user-generated content as Youtube and Netflix quickly replaced television in millions of households.
Similarly, annual revenues of subscription-based music streaming services are on the rise while physical media purchases continue their rapid decline, (excepting the niche used and new vinyl markets with yet another year of monumental growth.)
Subscription-based media access is quickly replacing broadcast packages, where for a fixed monthly fee consumers can access any media under the provider’s network of licenses (Spotify and Netflix are this year’s most active examples.)
And media streaming hardware is gaining popularity, as Roku, Apple TV, Chromecast and Amazon Fire TV are each vying for the public dollar.
In the 3rd quarter of 2014, mobile use hit critical mass, rivaling television use in hours-per-day. The smartphone and the tablet were proudly dubbed, “America’s First Screen.” This is a direct reflection of the way users get their news and information and consume their media in the digital age.
The democratization of music-making and filmmaking technologies has made user-generated content a critical element of our global culture. At present, 300 hours of new user content is uploaded to YouTube every minute. And, paired with social media, user content can have instant exposure to millions of potential viewers with little to no distribution expense.
More important still is the continued-growth of the Open Culture movement. Wikipedia has become a global primary source of information and has spawned innumerable spin-off wikis of their own. Creative Commons makes content shareable and relevant as users are free to copy, transform, and combine ideas instead of creators scrambling to secure their works under digital lock-and-key.
The GNU Project, Copyleftism, and Open Culture are growing and having a greater impact on the world with each passing day. Many major universities have opened their digital doors, offering online course material completely free to the public, and an ever-increasing number of texts, films, and music albums are finding free and legal accessibility on the web.
What does the future hold for these cultures? By what system will creators be compensated for their work in the digital age? Will media conglomerates succeed in locking down content, further-extending the reach of traditional copyright? Will the public passively accept forms of DRM as simply part of the digital territory? What lasting-impact will increased media accessibility have on the global audience?
And what’s next?
The following short piece was composed as a conversation with myself fleshing out the undeniable conflict surrounding the future publication of my book on mass surveillance, digital privacy, free culture, filesharing, and its impact on previously-reining media distribution models.
This write up, concluding with an intimate conversation with a scholarly peer, helped me arrive at a very difficult conclusion about my work.
Free
09-03-2016 (prev. unpublished)
I find myself faced with a terrible and heartbreaking conundrum. I’ve written passionately about the subjects of filesharing and of digital privacy for some time now. And to speak of one without acknowledging the other does a great disservice and misrepresents the very real circumstance that we face as a global culture. So both must be addressed.
Sadly, these subjects are strangely taboo in the economy of published works, as the acts are ostracized and demonized from the global conversation. It is inconsequential whether or not filesharing is a moral act, though there have been numerous examples in recent history demonstrating circumstances where they serve a far greater morality than the illegality of the act, itself.
It is understandable that anti-authoritarian reference texts by their very nature had to remain somewhat under-the-radar throughout history and in times of revolution. But in an age where subversive guides to filesharing and the protection of anonymity are a single Google query away, why does the world have to pretend that it is a secret anymore?
One might suppose that, if the establishment were to publicly acknowledge the actual frequency and simplicity of free media access, that the entire commercial market would crumble in a matter of days. Put simply, nothing can compete with “free.”
But in the age of mass surveillance, there has nonetheless been a tremendous clandestine tidal shift in the public conversation about any information unpopular with the powers that be. Society stubbornly ignores information which is readily and publicly accessible from any of thousands of sources which eliminate the relevance of commercial markets and services.
And this is the very conundrum I alluded to at the outset. In all likelihood, a book published outlining the simplicity and ease of filesharing and highlighting some of the greatest achievements in large, decentralized media library metamapping would be instantly struck down as a corrupt and evil text, and its author(s) would be punished to the fullest extent of the law for inciting anti-authoritarian thought and promoting illegal activities. The RIAA, international media conglomerates, and copyright troll organizations like Righthaven and Rightscorp Inc spend millions of dollars to make a public example of their accused infringers and a guide to its subversion would surely be rapidly extinguished.
There is also the dichotomy of the effect of sharing this sort of information to the public, itself. Those who wish to participate in filesharing already have the common sense to search for and educate themselves as to the best acquisition methods and means of protecting their anonymity without the need for a printed guide. (The internet already EXISTS.) So in fact, exposing this widely-practiced and incredibly simple activity to the public discourse may actually result in a net harm to the filesharing community.
The final factor of this puzzle is the nature of the format. The printed word, as beautiful, elegant, and surely powerful a thing as it is, is static and fixed upon the pages. Whereas discussions of emerging and ever-changing web technology are far better-suited to the dynamic and fluid environment of the net. Post-scarcity replicability, revisioning as networks and technologies rise and fall, zero cost distribution… each of these critically important factors make the internet – the very home of filesharing communities – the ideal means of disseminating related information. But as I’ve said – a simple Google search will yield all one needs to know. Numerous guides already exist – just none of them are acknowledged by the establishment.
The act of widely-publicizing the simplicity and commonality of filesharing might be enough to disrupt the status quo and inspire a global revolution of media consumption… I just don’t know if I’m ready to die (or disappear) for that cause.
Until 1987, (particularly before the passing of the DMCA), the publication of a work of this nature would have been plausible as I’d be protected under The Fairness Doctrine. My work would be justified as in the interest of public welfare and not as a malicious guide written to directly harm the media industries. However, the Doctrine was eliminated by the FCC in 1987. And the DMCA, (written by the RIAA and fellow industry giants), effectively eliminated any trace of that former protection, silencing this conversation and others like it from the public discourse. If the text were published today I would instantly become the target of countless litigations and would be sued in perpetuity. Most likely, my credit would be eliminated and my wages garnished by as much as 60%, destroying my livelihood in the US. My only course of action would be to flee the States and to seek asylum under a foreign government (or lack thereof), and to live out the remainder of my life in exile.
This isn’t just a statistical likelihood. Based on the legal actions of the media industries in their war on piracy, these lawsuits are a guaranteed and inevitable eventuality – precisely the reason that books of this nature do not exist in print, but are instead bound to quiet circulation in less-conspicuous digital environments.
And after constructing a spreadsheet and a library of over 130 books on related subject matter, I penned this note.
Untitled Note
08-27-2019 (prev. unpublished)
I’ve compiled 100+ books on the subjects of Free Culture, Open Culture, Copyleft, Creative Commons, The Post-Scarcity Digital Economy, Linux, and Pirate Culture from The Cathedral & The Bazaar to Galloway’s The Four.
But the majority of these texts were published before 2010. I’ve pored over metadata on several sites and the only recent publication I’ve found is The Essential Guide To Intellectual Property by Aram Sinnreich; (I LOVED his book, The Piracy Crusade).
Surely the subject isn’t dead? Doesn’t the streaming service revolution, the struggle for artist compensation, and the ever-increasing consolidation of content distributors warrant further discussion of the matter?
Am I missing out on a wealth of analytical and philosophical texts about the digital economy?
As we enter the closing months of 2022, I’ll continue my search for a community where these ideas are actively discussed and debated. Perhaps one day I’ll find peers with whom to engage and further this discussion.
Friends, I’m honored to share that I am now a published author with my book available at the link below! This book comprises the first 12 years of my publications showcasing highlights of my Archive, as well as select previously unpublished works.
There were several breakthroughs which helped me accelerate the timeline of the project. First, I amassed 339 of my articles from 12 years of publishing online in just 5.5 hours. Second, I taught myself RegEx to batch process all formatting to clean up the raw text. Third, I discovered a free extension to format 1,388 images in under 2 minutes. Then I developed a process which permitted me to burn through 1,400 pages of material in just 2 hours.
Unfortunately, the remaining work seemed insurmountable. Due to a glitch in the conversion, I had to go sentence by sentence through the remaining 2,000 pages of text to correct all the missing paragraph breaks and all 1,388 mis-positioned images. I feared I might have to quit my job and devote my full attention to the project to complete it in any reasonable span of time, but I worked hard through May and into June and by June 15th I’d completed the reformatting of all 289 finally-selected articles. I tidied up the book and carefully analyzed the subsequent text and images so as not to create more problems in the process. There were a few minor anomalies I was unable to remove without compromising the remaining text, but nothing which impairs readability so I was able to move forward.
Thereafter I proactively researched and drafted a design brief to commission the cover artwork and to register the ISBN. The brief included a short author bio, a back-cover blurb, a summary of my business brand, my target audience, values to communicate in the cover design, stylistic preferences, output specs, and example images of books by competing authors in my field. This was a serious endeavor and I worked to ensure that every aspect of the project was handled as professionally as possible.
I did discover, due to the substantial page length of my manuscript, that it exceeds the maximum length for a printable paperback or hardcover by Amazon’s terms of service, so unfortunately this will be exclusively issued in the ebook format. But as I’ve incorporated hundreds of links to web content on sites like YouTube, perhaps it will function best as a digital edition. The only other way to get a printed version would be to issue the book in a series of volumes, but I’m not ready for that presently. At least as an ebook it made the design process markedly simpler to implement.
I encountered one last critical hurdle when I attempted to upload my finalized PDF using the PDF Upload button on Amazon’s Kindle Store. Tragically, the button returned a red “X” with no error message when I tried to upload my book. I contacted their support team and they explained that they only support simple PDFs without images or significant length.
They suggested I try their native ebook conversion utility, but it is only available for Windows and Mac users, and I use Linux. They offered to convert it for me manually on their end, and I similarly tried converting it locally using the popular Calibre application. Sadly, the .epub and .mobi outputs of the book compromised all formatting and it looked awful.
Undeterred and determined to succeed, I researched alternatives and successfully published through Google Books who support PDF with no conversion necessary. The book is live at last!
Publishing this book is a dream come true for me! This is particularly gratifying as my writings will remain long after I’ve left this earth for the whole world to enjoy and to continue inspiring rewarding listenership for years to come.
Check out The Ghost of Madame Curie: Writings from Innerspace Labs at the link below!
I am so excited to have achieved a new musical milestone, having assembled a complete collection of all full-length studio releases issued in the vinyl format by The Penguin Cafe Orchestra and their later incarnation, The Penguin Cafe. This includes the first-ever vinyl edition of The Penguin Cafe’s 2011 debut, A Matter of Life, issued by Erased Tapes on May 6, 2022.
I’ve previously written about my adoration of this fine ensemble back in 2017, where I summed up the beauty of their music thusly:
The music of The Penguin Cafe Orchestra is tranquil, eclectic, and magically pastoral. The albums are classified as works of minimalism but are impressively dynamic recordings. Rich with subtly and understatedly intricate instrumentation, their music is a seamless and masterful blending of an impressive roster of genres, weaving together classical and contemporary elements. The result is magical and elegantly surreal.
These records are stubbornly difficult to label or classify. Spanning a broad range of influences from classical to jazz, featuring middle eastern or perhaps Indian inspired drones, as well as Cajan, traditional folk melodies, African rhythms, and more, these elements blend seamlessly into marvelous soundscapes and musical vignettes reminiscent of Moondog’s symphoniques.
There is a timeless serenity to these recordings, and I’m grateful that I was at last ready to let them into my life at a time when they served as a sensational complement to my headspace of late.
From start to finish, The Penguin Cafe is a treasure of heady and engaging arrangements, and some of the most peaceful sounds you’ll ever hear. I really enjoyed an observation from a fellow listener named bpnicast who remarked, “The dispassionate, cerebral atmosphere here creates its own unique space that seems to slow time and demand hushed attention – an emotional connection achieved through stillness and abstraction.”
That is precisely what I enjoy about these albums. It will be a pleasure to play them again and again and to share them with those who bring joy into my life.
The Innerspace Connection 