As I am writing this, I am uploading the Kometkameratene Season 1 CD for mastering.

I spent the last few weeks editing, structuring and mixing most of the songs from the first season of the show.

The music has been well received and NRK Aktivum, the commercial publishing entity of NRK, has secured a nice record deal for the album release.

Many tracks was originally optimized for broadcast, and some of them mixed to follow and sync with on-screen action. This was not necessarily suitable for a CD version. There was some work structuring tracks into better independent versions, and also in general to balance everything to a coherent mix.

After the Reminiscience release mayhem, where I did everything on my own, it is a relief to only focus on making the music and CD as good as possible. Everything else is handled by a NRK Akvitum and the record company.

Not sure if I am allowed to reveal the release date, maybe they already did, but anyway I think it is safe to say it won't be during summer, but not far into autumn. 

I am seriously overdue with my taxes this year, was supposed to be in by June 1st, but I hadn't time until now. I prioritized the album.

A massive effort over the weekend, and it is done.

I don't enjoy doing the taxes and company accounting myself, but I certainly enjoy the control and overview it gives me. The time spent is well invested, I get to know all my own numbers intimately over the years. My economical intuition is improving. I also get to observe intriguing internal statistics.

In general, after looking at the hard numerical facts, I conclude with satisfaction my world domination plan is actually working. Slowly, but working.

The Thermatron is a voltage controlled oscillator and wave shaper controlled by the action of a flame. This is possible because electricity can be conducted through a flame. It is also possible, because it is awesome. 

By Electric Western. Hot, hot youtube video of the beast in action. 

(Via Make.)

World domination progression must not be hindered by pathetic hardware glitches.

This spring was more hectic than usual, and during stress, some of my hardware failed. This is natural, expected and I was prepared, but I was not prepared ENOUGH. I have now taken technological measures to reduce possible downtime, simultaneously as optimizing my portability.

I now have two MBP laptops, one 17" for studio and live work, and a 13" for office, web and portable studio/live work. Both laptops duplicate the same installation and system, ready to take over instantly if the other faints.

I had to get an iLok. Gah, I hate dongles, I hate copy protection conglomerates, but with a backup dongle and the Zero Downtime plan I should be covered. 

Email, calendar, plans, documents, webs, social networks, most of that either is in the cloud or duplicated to the clouds.

All my digital media, projects, sound libraries, visuals, videos and films are spread on multiple external disks, every disk cloned with SuperDuper. Critical material also cloned offsite.

I have found it is better to span material across multiple disks, than one big mofo. This is more flexible, portable, cheaper and safer - disks can be shifted from laptop to laptop as necessary, and if one disk fails (they do), the others are unaffected. In particular I like the WD 500GB Passports; small, portable, silent. 

This is terribly geeky, I know.

Apogee announces a new hyper portable high quality audio interface One.

I already have the big brother Duet, which has seen great use. I wouldn't mind a smaller and lighter backup, with integrated microphone. Though, I can reserve my enthusiasm for breakout cables.

I think I'll hang on to see some reviews and user experiences.

I am often bewildered to which of my tracks will become popular once released.

The Bosporus Incident is no exception. To my surprise, earlier this week it received over 1000 votes in 24 hours at TheSixtyOne, more than twice as much as previous tracks from Reminiscience.

It's close to midnight and something evil's lurking in the dark
Under the moonlight, you see a sight that almost stops your heart
You try to scream but terror takes the sound before you make it
You start to freeze as horror looks you right between the eyes
You're paralyzed

'Cause this is thriller, thriller night
And no one's gonna save you from the beast about strike
You know it's thriller, thriller night
You're fighting for your life inside a killer, thriller tonight

You hear the door slam and realize there's nowhere left to run
You feel the cold hand and wonder if you'll ever see the sun
You close your eyes and hope that this is just imagination, girl!
But all the while you hear the creature creeping up behind
You're out of time

 

Apple has rejected an official, licensed iPhone C64 app from developer Manomio. 

Applications on the phone are not allowed to execute code themselves, which I sort of understand. A computer emulator needs to do that. But this is SPECIAL and should have SPECIAL considerations applied. Also, there are other emulation apps in the store which does exactly what the C64 app was rejected for.

Touch Arcade has full story with description and video of the application. It has full SID chip emulation. I much want.

The album is one week old, but my world is zooming on. To me it feels like Reminiscience was something I did "back in the days".

I spent a few intense months on making the album. This meant I had to postpone and delay other commitments, in particular the upcoming Kometkameratene TV show new season, and first season CD. Literally the moment the album was released, I started working on this, and catching up has been some effort. I've written some new character and incidental music, the CD premaster is to be delivered tomorrow, and then I start composing music for the new season over the summer. There are also some new projects, including a computer game, currently in negotiations.

It was sort of a relief turning my attention to a fresh new focus, I am a forward moving person, more concerned with future challenges than previous productions. This becomes a problem in certain situations, like album releases, because someone really should spend good energy on selling, marketing and looking after the album. This is what I miss the most from being on a record label, and I realize I will be needing help with this for the next release. 

I do try to spend a few hours each day following up the album, but truth is - work like that repulse me. I don't care about marketing and sales and buzz and hype and success and bling and celebrity, I dislike it, but I do understand the importance and value of it. There are good people concerned with such matters. My negligence and aversion ends up sending an unfortunate signal to those few actually helping, or wanting to help, me.

It is a tricky balance. I'd much rather write music and work towards the next project and next release. Which is what I am doing now.

Some observations after a week:

• Marketing. I am a terrible marketer and promoter of my own material. 
   
• Release date. I feared June 15th would be slightly late concerning summer, this seems like it was a valid concern. If possible I will avoid releases so close to summer. 
  .
• Most popular. As usual, I am surprised by the most popular tracks. Apocalypse Please Wait Buffering, New Shoes and The Bosporus Incident seems to be the most popular tracks by purchase, rating and downloads. (But not by buzz and opinion, and the numbers vary between countries and services.)
   
• Sales stats. Sales, and web visits, was initially twice the size of previous release, but have dropped off steeper than usual after release date, but I expect this is a consequence of summer, and my marketing efforts, and I'm not worried.
   
• Compared to previous releases. In general, much better buzz and coverage than Unicorn.
   
• Piracy. The album seems to be doing very well on pirate mp3 blogs.
   
• Bonus material. This is the first album where people seem to actually get the bonus tracks thing. The bonus tracks have much higher download rate compared to previous albums. Not sure why, but I guess it is a combination of more dedicated listeners, better web presence for both me and listeners, and more transparency of what is available. 

English Russia has an entertaining collection of vintage Soviet album covers.

The Norwegian government is considering adding an 8 percent VAT to ticket prices. Simultaneously, allowing a 25 percent tax deduction. This sounds great...

...if you are a big mothersucking museum with tanned people in the finance department.

Not great for those paying the ticket price, and not great for me.

I don't have time to go into details, but as a small independent artist, in Norway I'm not VAT accountable. This means, if I am arranging my own concert (which is becoming more and more normal for artists, taking the risk instead of the venue), I have to add the 8 percent tax on ticket prices. BUT I CANNOT DEDUCE THE 25% ANYWHERE. The museum can. I can't. Quite simply, it means higher ticket prices for my fans and more work for me. And absolutely no benefit.

If I understand this correctly, this is a great deal to the bling bling orcs at the top, funded by taxing concert goers and the indie establishments.

This is not a clever way of developing and nurturing modern culture.

Update: Dyrt Nok! is a petition against the tax suggestion (Norwegian text).

The new website is only a week old, but so much has happened in this time it feels like the website is many years old. (Like pictured above, the very first Ugress web.)

I have already made some observations on my own, and some of you have emailed me your valuable impressions. Please keep them coming, or write a comment here what you think work, and more importantly, what DOES NOT WORK. A website is an eternal work-in-progress (which is why I love the tubes).

I think the color scheme was a nice change, coming from the old grey journal, but I am quickly growing tired of the saturated boxes. Thinking to scale the surrounding purple down a few notches.

I think (as sysrq868 firstly pointed out) the music player should be sticky during page shifts, like TheSixtyOne, but at the moment that is beyond my limits to fix on short notice.

I think the activity box is too crowded for regular users, but inviting to new users.

And of course, I still have lots of features I didn't have time to implement. I will be getting to those during the summer and early autumn.

Spotify has still not my album available. WTF is up with that?

A new report from Harvard concludes that a weaker copyright would benefit society. This comes in the same week as RIAA is awarded massively in damages for a petty file-sharing incident.

And simultaneously, Norwegian performing rights association Tono changes their CC licensing tune (Norwegian), after first blatantly disregarding Creative Commons, which fights back with their own questionnaire to establish the need (or not) for alternative music licensing schemes.

I'm not sure where I stand right now, as usual I linger between everything and everywhere. I definitively think copyright law (and many other laws) needs to be updated to reflect our digital culture. But Creative Commons, I dunno.

I like it, the theory is great. But they haven't convinced me yet that theirs is the ultimate road.

I suppose I should be flattered. The album has been out for a few days, and it is already available on pirate mp3 blogs.

I am not particularly angry or upset, just a little bit sad, schizophrenically combined with a milligram of satisfaction.  There is a difference between knowing the theory, and experiencing the practice. The music is good enough to copy, but not good enough to pay for?

That piracy happens, I absolutely understand. I do not condone it, but neither do I want to behead pirates. My philosophy is not to attack pirates (you will never, ever, win), but work and strive to provide something better, ultimately rendering piracy negligible.

On another side, just as I feel torn about this, RIAA was awarded massively stupid amounts of damages for a silly filesharing issue. USD 80 000 per track fileshared? What. The. Frack.

Piracy feels like win and a fail at the same time.