Get that fresh clean feeling!

Yeah, you heard right. Right after I put out the podcast this morning, I got an email from John at Magnatune (yes, that John) (… yes, that Magnatune), saying he liked my music, and he would be happy to release my album.

HOLY CRAP.

Ok, it’s not out of the blue, I did send in demos a couple of weeks ago, and John has to personally like the music to be accepted. But still! Little old weird-ass me, I have a record deal with one of the most remarkable independent music labels on the planet. One that actually pays real money.

Of course, it’s never that simple. The first thing I need to come up with is a name for the album, and I have no freaking idea what to do here. I just submitted a bunch of my favorite tracks with no real concept of how they went together. Not all of them made it in, but the tracks that will be on the album are:

Instant Space Orchestra
14 Space 1
Vistas
Summer Solstice
Drone 6
Ambient Strings
Surely
Neur 7
Yettu
Chickabom

I think it’s neat that these tracks cover the entire 4 years I’ve been doing this podcast.It’s pretty balanced, I think, somewhere between ambient and drone, light and dark.

Anyway, I don’t know what order they’ll be in, but those are the tracks. So what do I call this? I need an album name so I can fill out the contract and send it back and make the whole thing all official. The only idea I’ve had so far is “Reaching Out In All Directions”, because, lets face it, my sounds are all over the place.I also want to avoid the ambient tendency to have really sappy, sentimental album titles, and I think that title achieves a certain thoughtfulness without being syrupy.

So what do you think? What should I call it?

Ok, I know most of you don’t read the words in the file notes, let alone the words on the website, but I’ve told every other network about it, so you guys get it too.

~~~

Hey everybody,

If you’ve talked to Dani and I over the past year or so, you know we’ve been busy. Busy busy. Crazy busy. We’re running around selling jewelry and building websites and working jobs and neglecting basics like vacuuming and dishes, and it’s gotten to the point that something has got to give. So, we’ve sat down and thought about it, and decided to pursue the path of fewest pants — we’re shaking things up a bit* and going full time freelance.

Cue the gasp orchestra.

What does this mean? For us, it’s a massive revolution in lifestyle. For YOU, it doesn’t mean a heck of a lot except to know that we’re officially open for business, and what was a small side thing is now our bread and butter. We design websites, we do graphics and logos, we host internet things, we do copywriting and copyediting, we produce new media content, we advise you on your new media content, we can design email advertising and newsletter layouts, we can fix your computer, and we can talk to your group of people about all that and a lot more.

We’re not begging you to hire us**,  we’re just asking that you keep us in mind during your day to day. Does your company hire freelancers or temps for projects? Do you know someone who wants to sell things online? Does your church want to teach its members about sane internet use? Heck, does your church’s website need updating? We’re open for business and ready and willing to do what you need. Our prices are good, and like all new freelancers we’re a little bit desperate for work.

So, please, keep us in mind. If you’re not sure if we can do something, call, ask, email, tweet or send up smoke signals. We’re not just flexible, adaptable and good at finding fixes to problems, we’ve also both had bizarre careers that left Dani and I with a strange and broad collection of skills. Check out our newly revamped website [link] to find out more.

*A note about Sweet Tarragon: It’s no secret that we really dig the jewelry thing. We’ll be taking a bit of a break from that in the coming year to pour all of our energy into hot glue media, where it needs to be right now. We have plenty of shows booked through September, so we’ll be finishing out the season, and we plan to keep going with our consignment gigs, home shows, and custom work. Sweet Tarragon will still be open for business, but on a much smaller scale.

**That’s a lie. Yes, we are.

If you haven’t noticed, I’ve started a thing.

Podcasters, being a rather silly lot, have been bequeathing titles on each other since forever. I was having some fun with twitter folk earlier today over these titles, and, well…

It became a Canonical List of All Silly Titles of All Podcast Overlords, Ever.

Am I missing someone obvious? Like you? That can be fixed. You can comment here with the relevant information, or tweet me at @braindouche, and the list will get updated as I can get to it.

Since, like, forever, the video describing my brain on drugs has been broken. I’ve finally found a new version of the vid, Gwen Verdon and her girls dancing to Mexican Breakfast. All is right with the world.

However, I found a few more Gwen Verdon vids, and I thought I’d share my guilty little pleasure with you. A little piece of your soul may die if you watch this, but them’s the wages of youtube, folks.

Let’s see… school just started, I work full time, I manage all these god damn websites, I have a wife that needs my attention now and again, and my car is desperately in need of an oil change.

Dunno about you, but it sounds like the perfect time to start a killer insane project!

I signed up the other day with the RPM Challenge. In really short terms, it’s the NaNoWriMo for recording musicians. During the month of February (now with 24 extra hours!), you need to come up with, record, and master a CD with ten songs or 35 minutes of sound. Just like Nano, it doesn’t need to be good, it just needs to be done. Since I haven’t written an actual song in years, I figured I could take this opportunity to really dig into sound art type stuff, play with ambient textures, and generally assemble a collection of noise that will be little more than proofs of concept. It’s a challenge to plug in my digital audio toys and see if I can come up with 35 minutes of not nothing in an absurd time frame.

I don’t know what I’ll come up with during the month of February. What I do know is that I’ll be updating this site with whatever I do come up with, as frequently as I can. I probably won’t do a whole lot of talking, if any, because I do know that talking into a microphone is still an inefficient practice for me. For my own sanity, I’ve also made a rule that, unless I need something specific or I find something that inspires me, all my samples will come from The Freesound Project. Whether or not I can stick to it is yet to be seen. My goal, from beginning to end, is to use public domain work in my work, and then release everything as CC-attribution. The only reason I’m not releasing the new work as public domain myself is because I’m vain, and while the goal is to set this stuff free, it’s the least I can do to get reports on derivative works, if any.So, that’s the news. Wish me luck. Better yet, go sign up for RPM ’08 and suffer with me.

*points*

See that? In the header? That is my brain.

See this?

This is my brain, on drugs.

Any questions?

Today is a big day. I’ve been comment spammed for the first time!