Walk with Me

The fourth track on Transmission is called Walk with Me.



This shouldn't take long, as neither of us seem to be able to remember much about writing it. When I first lived in Yorkshire, before even Dusk came out, I used to walk a lot, and I think it grew out of that. I think we came up with a few vaguely profound moments, such as the second verse: "Come with me down this long path / The one we walk down every day." The words in full:

Walk with me beneath the trees
Where the shadows play their secret game
I hear your voice on the light breeze
And see a shape running away

I’m silently fighting the militant crowds
Still passive but restless, another lost hour

Is there anywhere for me to hide?
Any place to stay alive?
We hunt for the strangers deep inside
Chasing rainbows in the night

Come with me down this long path
The one we walk down every day
One eye ahead, one in the past
It twists and turns in every way

I’m silently hiding in dissident fear
My energy fading, all hope disappears

Is there anywhere for me to hide?
Any place to stay alive?
We hunt for the strangers deep inside
Chasing rainbows in the night

I’m sheltered by demons who force me to wait
They hold back my passion, and drive me away

Is there anywhere for me to hide?
Any place to stay alive?
We hunt for the strangers deep inside
Chasing rainbows in the night

(R. Martin / S. Martin)

Eyeballing

The third track on Transmission and the first track on our remix EP Remission was a song called Eyeballing.



I was sitting on a train back in 2004, reading an academic book about "eyeballing", which is a computing term. I thought the term would make an interesting starting point for a song, and wrote the whole thing in under half an hour.

The original demo, recorded in 2008, was very dark and industrial. The album version is still supposed to have the same simplistic, robotic, Kraftwerk-like quality, but is considerably easier on the ear than its earlier counterpart.



We were tentatively toying with the idea of releasing Eyeballing as the second or third single, when largely by accident we entered the world of remixes. It started with someone offering to do a dub version of Golden Wheel, which ultimately didn't work out, but while we were waiting for that, we also asked around, and came across Sappy. His version of Eyeballing took us both aback completely. It was utterly brilliant, and entirely unlike anything we would have ever thought of doing with it.

The lyrics go as follows:

Eye on the target
Food for the flame
You can taste it
The speed of a rocket
Mind on the game
You could fake it

You could fake it
And claim your place in my sights

We’re eyeballing until
The sights have gone astray
We're daydreaming again
Don’t turn your eyes away

Dive for submission
Swim for the shore
You can make it
Flesh on metal
You're back for more
You can take it

You can take it
In any way that you want

We’re eyeballing until
The sights have gone astray
We're daydreaming again
Don’t turn your eyes away

But I can tell
That you won’t blink first
You're in control
Your hunger is worse
We’re eyeballing until
The sights have gone astray
We're daydreaming again
Don’t turn your eyes away

(R. Martin / S. Martin)

Golden Wheel

Second up on Transmission is Golden Wheel.



Whereas Almost was the newest track on the album, Golden Wheel is by far the oldest. At some point in early 2002, I was reading something in the National Geographic about something called the golden wheel spider, which prefers to spin away from its predators. Something about the feat of evolution or the general lack of songs about spiders made me think that it might make a good song.

Then a year or so later, I was visiting Simon at his home in Birmingham, and we just started to jam, with Simon playing chords on a guitar, and me adding synth noises over the top. I sequenced it, and we built the rest as we went along.

We never really took it very seriously as a song, so it missed out on a chance for release on both Empires (2003) and Dusk (2006), and it didn't even make the early selections for what would become Transmission. Somehow it just seemed to fit on this album, though. So, daft lyrics aside, it's a track of which I'm rather proud.

Walking along with my head held high
Nonchalant, I fight the reproof
And tread so steady with my load

It fuels the frenzy in my mind
So I wonder if it's that time now

Golden wheel, just spin away
And hide from me beneath the day
Take the moment from my hand
Just steal away beneath the sand

Wonder again why I feel the cold
Destiny brings another day
I stand unsheltered breathing fire

And search for something I can't find
But I wonder if it's that time now

Golden wheel, just spin away
And hide from me beneath the day
Take the moment from my hand
Just steal away beneath the sand

I see the wall, and change my stride
And I wonder if it's that time now

Golden wheel, just spin away
And hide from me beneath the day
Take the moment from my hand
Just steal away beneath the sand

(R. Martin / S. Martin)

Almost

The first track on Transmission is called Almost.



Completing Transmission was tricky to say the least. Most of it was written and recorded - in some form at least - by the end of 2007, but it then took another three years to finish it off. And one of the catalysts for finalising the album would very quickly become the opening track.

Almost, or Life of Almost, as it was initially called, was by far the youngest track on the album. Simon had invested in new recording equipment in 2010, and had learnt how to use it by composing this track. Quickly partnered with a simple lyric about loneliness, and it turned out to be one of our favourite songs on the album.

So much so, in fact, that we were both keen to consider it as a single. But what we hadn't bargained with was that so many people in the internet age only ever listen to the first track on an album. So, in its own way, it had its time as a single, and was pretty well received too.

The lyrics:

Almost was an only child
Who grew up all alone
He never walked the extra mile
In a world of his own

I've almost been
I've almost seen
Everything
I think you'll find
Most of the time
You're almost mine

Almost wore a lonely smile
And sat alone again
She never called, or came outside
Or so it seemed to him

I've almost been
I've almost seen
Everything
I think you'll find
Most of the time
You're almost mine

(R. Martin / S. Martin)

The return of the commentaries

Merry Christmas!

Well, this has been a funny year, hasn't it? Having managed to get very much back onto the wagon last year with our ninth album Transmission, we kicked off 2012 with a proper reissue of our single I'll Give You Electro, backed up by two of our favourite b-sides. After a rather long gestation, the third proper single from the album Here Comes the Summertime followed in May, with a choice of mini and maxi formats.

We had hoped to finish this album off for good this year with a final single, but due to other commitments we haven't quite managed it yet, but we've been working hard whenever we had the time on extra bonus tracks and remixes for the next single, and so it will have to follow early in 2013.

This album continues to do well, although we long ago gave up the idea of making any money from it. Opening single Better Days has now been listened to nearly as many times as our Dusk singles from the heady days of MySpace. The videos are doing pretty well, too. I still want to see if we can get the album onto some kind of physical format, and maybe reissue the last one too, but that can all wait till next year. What's the rush?

As Simon noted at the time, we celebrated our twentieth anniversary of music making this autumn. It's been a long, and largely undocumented journey, and we managed a few pretty good songs along the road. One day we might even work out a way for you to hear some of them. But in the meantime, we hope you've enjoyed Transmission as much as we enjoyed making it.

If you want to read a little about the genesis of some of the songs, I've been busy writing a series of posts commenting about each of the tracks on the album, which we'll publish every Saturday starting in the New Year. Stay tuned!

Black Earth

As we gently sneak towards the end of our Transmission project, it's time to look in a little more at some of the tracks that made it what it became. So firstly, I'm sure you all enjoyed our song Black Earth from our recent single I'll Give You Electro II? Of course you did.


Black Earth is, perhaps not too obviously, supposed to be about the 'terra preta,' or 'black earth' found in the Amazon rainforest. Originally written nearly a decade ago, it was inspired by a television programme, and quickly turned into a fun - if misleading, given the title - metaphor about everything that we have done to the planet over the last few hundred years.

The first demos of the track actually date back to 2003, around the time that Fateful Hour and Not in My Name (2004 b-sides on A Picture on the Wall) were being recorded. It was then recorded four years later with the intention of appearing on The End, but was dropped at the last minute, and finally the whole thing was re-recorded late last year as a b-side to the most recent album Transmission.

You might be interested to know that it was also featured on this week's episode of QI, Jungles. You can read more about the facts and the fiction behind the theory on their website here. The words follow...

Do we hold in our hands the answers to
All those timeless questions that we always knew?
Is this the solution to which we turn
Levelling the forest as we slash and burn?

We walk on the black earth of history
Where we have lived for years
Today it all adds to that mystery
Lost like forgotten tears

We have always lived for the present day
Let the future guide itself in its own way
It's time to learn from our past, so long ignored
Before the earth is dead with no future ensured

We walk on, ignoring our wisdom
And swallow all we're fed
One day we'll unlock the solution
To how we gain our bread

Maybe we've reaped this earth
One too many times
It's time to sow our legacy
For the good of all mankind 

Maybe it's that black earth
That holds the days to come
The past will change the world again
For the good of everyone

We walk on the black earth of history
Where we have lived for years
Today it all adds to that mystery
Lost like forgotten tears

We walk on, ignoring our wisdom
And swallow all we're fed
One day we'll unlock the solution
To how we gain our bread 

(R. Martin / S. Martin)

Another little anniversary

It's 10 years since we released 'Synopsis', a collection of our first twenty singles (28th October 2002).

It's an interesting release because it includes all of the singles from our first six albums, plotting our development along the way. Certainly, quite a lot of growing up takes places during the course of the album.

Some of the single versions are quite different from the original album versions, which is a tradition that we still quite often continue when we can think of interesting changes that we would like to make.

With a bit of luck and a lot of hard work, we might be able to issue the second chapter in our singles history in the next few years, covering the period from 2003 onwards (three albums so far) and our adventures in the internet age.

Happy 20th anniversary!

It all started 20 years ago today.

The 26th October 1992 was when we released our first album Schizophrenia. It sounded about as good as you would expect for an album written and recorded by two people in their formative years using a few tape recorders, a tiny Yamaha keyboard and a variety of household objects.

It's not exactly a landmark in the history of modern music, but it's still an event that we look back on with a mixture of fondness, amusement and relief that we've learned a few things in the years since.

Our next challenge is to try to write and record our 10th album in time for our 21st anniversary...

Here Comes the Summertime - The Video!

Oh dear, we seem to have missed the summertime. Oh well... have a video instead:

The visual medium

You've probably noticed that we've been making our first tentative steps into the world of music videos over the last few months. Actually, we're working on a couple more (although the chances that Here Comes the Summertime actually gets completed in the Summertime are looking fairly slim).

But honestly, and speaking personally, videos aren't something I'm particularly bothered about. They're a nice novelty, but I'm not really interested in the visual medium. More importantly, though, YouTube is the means a lot of people are using to share and discover new music at the moment, and so for all its faults, I think we need to put some stuff up there. Hence the oddities we've thrown up there so far, and hence the things which will follow. They probably won't be particularly good for the most part, but they'll do the job!

How to buy our new single

Erm. Three weeks later, and I forgot to post the second half of this information. Sorry about that! There are also many ways of buying Here Comes the Summertime...

1. Bandcamp: http://purehype.bandcamp.com/album/here-comes-the-summertime (exclusive four track version!)
2. iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/album/here-comes-summertime-single/id541827492
3. Amazon USA: http://www.amazon.com/Here-Comes-the-Summertime/dp/B008H3C5UA
4. Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Here-Comes-the-Summertime/dp/B008H3V6QY
5. Amazon Deutschland: http://www.amazon.de/Here-Comes-the-Summertime/dp/B008H8CEJM
6. Amazon France: http://www.amazon.fr/Here-Comes-the-Summertime/dp/B008H30VI8
7. Amazon Japan: http://www.amazon.co.jp/Here-Comes-the-Summertime/dp/B008H37LJA
8. 7Digital: http://www.7digital.com/artist/hypernova/release/here-comes-the-summertime (also available worldwide if you search for it)
9. eMusic & MediaNet: should be available but I can't find it at present

But don't forget if you're not ready to buy it yet then you can just listen to it - see this post for more 
details.

How to listen to our new single

There are many ways. Please accept our apologies if one or more of them isn't available in your country, but as a bare minimum one or two of them should work...

1. Bandcamp: http://purehype.bandcamp.com/album/here-comes-the-summertime (exclusive four track version!)
2. Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/04VKvQMXD2rGuCbM9b8q35
3. Soundcloud: http://soundcloud.com/hypernova/here-comes-the-summertime

Places for which we don't have links yet, but where it should also be available:

1. Rdio
2. Muve Music by Cricket
3. Zvooq
4. iHeartRadio
5. Nokia Music
6. Simfy
7. 121 Music
8. Deezer
9. Rhapsody
10. Basepoint Media
11. We7
12. 24/7 Entertainment

We'll follow this up with a guide on how to buy it shortly, if you're ready for that!

Here Comes the Summertime - sleeve notes

Sometimes, the signs point in all directions. This time, we were on an entirely different mission, but then we reached a crossroads, and decided to turn away from the march of technology. Lured by the sound of a hip hop drum loop, we lost our way again, wandering around in circles like a caterpillar trail whose leader has accidentally latched onto the back of his own trail.

We combined the drum loop with Here Comes the Summertime, edited it, and then decided to make another version with everything put back in again. Just like they used to do in the 80s. Probably. It’s a nod to a long lost summer, when the warm days never seemed to end. The lonely traveller, Homeward Bound, questions the nature of place, and slowly comes to realise that it’s people that make places what they are. Words Come Easy is a bitter memory of how things used to be. Finally, as it always does, the summer returns, with an expression of hope that maybe this season really will never end.

So that’s your lot for now. Until the summer ends...

Here comes the new single!

Here:

Yes indeed, it is our new single! Its name is Here Comes the Summertime.

We've put out two versions. The first has two tracks:

1. Here Comes the Summertime (Single Version)
2. Homeward Bound

The first track is a completely new remix of the album track, and the second is a brand new b-side. Well, I say brand new - it's a track which we started writing nearly ten years ago. Anyway, coming over the next few days, it will be appearing on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, 7Digital, and various other famous music downloading services. We'll put some links up when we know what they are.

Or perhaps you would prefer a four track version? That's available now from Bandcamp, and adds two more brand new tracks:

1. Here Comes the Summertime (Single Version)
2. Homeward Bound
3. Words Come Easy
4. Here Comes the Summertime (Extended Version)

More details will follow over the coming days / weeks, but in the meantime you can listen to it (or even buy it, if you like) from the link below.

Erm...

Bit of a quiet patch there, sorry. We were going to do one single, and then we accidentally decided to do a different one instead, and then it took longer than we'd originally intended. Full details to follow later in the week...

A touch of spring cleaning

Spring is here! Apparently. Except in California, where it's going to start raining and snowing this evening and continue all day tomorrow. What was I saying? Oh yes, spring is here, which seems like an ideal opportunity for a little spring cleaning!

So... the bad news first. We've removed a load of tracks from music services which seem to have died a death at some point in the past. It's sad, but there you go. All good things must come to an end.

But there's also a load of new stuff, including various remixes and whatnot. Try some of these for size:

• I'll Give You Electro and Eyeballing on MP3Unsigned.com
• Better Days, I'll Give You Electro, Eyeballing and False Dawn on Viinyl.com
• Better Days, Eyeballing and I'll Give You Electro on Soundclick.com
• Eyeballing on Soundcloud

Finally, in case you haven't heard it yet, here's an embedded link to the latter...



If you haven't already, please go and make friends with us everywhere, such as Facebook. And don't forget you can get a whole pile of our stuff, including freebies, through our Bandcamp page.

False Dawn remix video

Also on Soundcloud in the next few days...

Better Days video

I'll Give You Electro remix video

The concept of choice

A few weeks ago, we released the second half of the second single from Transmission, I'll Give You Electro. If you've come across us recently, you're no doubt having trouble deciding which of them to buy. So here's a little summary...

I'll Give You Electro I
The original version of the single contains four tracks - the slightly rejigged Single Version, plus three exclusive new b-sides: Dissolution, Weather the Storm and The Journey Here.



I'll Give You Electro II
The second version may look a bit more orange, but it contains three tracks - a completely different remix, the Imperfect Attitude Mix, and another two new b-sides: These Four Walls and Black Earth.



Hopefully this helps you a little with your decision. Of course, if you're really struggling, why not just buy both of them? With seven tracks spread across both formats, they're exceedingly good value for money.

I'll Give You Electro - sleeve notes

Hello again.

This is the solution to which we turn: Another single and some exclusive previously unreleased material. More often than not, previously unreleased material is previously unreleased for good reason. That may still be the case here (we’ll very charitably let you decide), but Black Earth and These Four Walls came very close to getting released a while ago, so it seemed only fair that they should be let out into the big, wide, virtual world.

We collaborated on this new remix of I'll Give You Electro, merrily throwing electronic ideas across the Atlantic, which turned out to be more practical than putting messages in bottles. The result is ironically less in your face electro, but by then it was too late to rename the song, so please forgive this slightly misleading advertising.

In case you're wondering, this is the second part of the I'll Give You Electro single. The first part contains another remix of the title track, which we called the single version, and three more exclusive songs. As these are digital singles, we're afraid that there isn't a special collector's slipcase to put them both in. Now please excuse us while we have a cup of tea and work out what we're doing next...

<End>

Eyeballing video

Looking in both directions

It's a bit late for a 2011 retrospective, but then again, why not? We were both away over the Christmas period, so here's your slightly delayed entry...

All round, we think we had a Very Good Year. We finally released our ninth album Transmission, and managed to squeeze out a further six b-sides and a healthy handful of remixes on the singles Better Days, I'll Give You Electro and Remission. We've learnt a lot, particularly from the wonderful remixes which Sappy was kind enough to do for us towards the end of the year. We've also re-recorded some old tracks for our own amusement, which may one day see the light of day. Finally, if that weren't enough, we started work on four brand new tracks which we're saving for our next album.

After 2010, 2009 and 2008 being largely quiet, that's a lot of stuff that we've done there.

We've already kicked off 2012 with I'll Give You Electro II, and we're intending to follow that with another single soon. We're currently working on three or four b-sides and we've got another four or five remixes we're playing with too. At the same time we're thinking about what would be on a Transmission "special edition" if it happened, working out how to open up more of our back catalogue to the wider world, and toying with the visual medium too.

But more on all of that to come. Thanks to everyone who has supported or helped us in the last few months. Happy new year!

iTunes and Spotify

I'll Give You Electro II, our new single, is out now.

Here's yer actual iTunes link. For some reason it isn't classified as "clean" this time round, but don't worry - it doesn't have any naughty words in it.

And here's your Spotify link. Every time you listen to it on Spotify, we earn literally fractions of pennies, so make sure you listen lots and enjoy it!

I'll Give You More

We're about to do a bit of a reshuffle for our last "proper" single I'll Give You Electro.

It all started when we realised we'd all kind of forgotten to put it on iTunes. The first single Better Days has actually done quite well on there, selling over 2 copies (in addition to earning us nearly 50p from multiple plays on Spotify). So we decided to rectify the situation by adding I'll Give You Electro as well.

Then as we thought about it, we realised we actually preferred the remixed version, and we also had some nice new b-sides which we could put on there too. So actually it's ended up being a completely different single.

The tracks this time around are:

1. I'll Give You Electro (Imperfect Attitude Mix)
2. These Four Walls
3. Black Earth

The first track is exactly the same as you've already enjoyed on the Remission remix EP, and so is also completely free. On Bandcamp, it's called I'll Give You Electro II so you can tell them apart. I'll also put up iTunes and Spotify links as they become available.

So, since everything has changed, we've changed the front cover picture too. It's changed colour a bit, and it's now got some extra worms on it too:

Oh yes, and it's released on Monday February 6th. The original single is still entirely available through Bandcamp, including the original single version and three more b-sides, now for the very reasonable price of £3.

The album Transmission will also make it onto iTunes at some stage, but we're thinking of maybe putting together a "special" edition later in the year, so we'll hold off for the time being, and if that doesn't happen then we'll just put the normal version on there.

Remission - sleeve notes

<Remission Statement>

The story of the remix is one that shaped electronic music over much of its history. It evolved from little more than an extended version to fill up the extra few minutes of vinyl in the early 1980s to a slew of 10 minute long re-imaginings by the 1990s.

But taking something you've been slaving over for years, as we had with our recent album <Transmission>, and handing it over to someone else is quite an emotional experience. Imagine our astonishment, therefore, when the first one came back, Sappy's wonderful Treble Up remix of Eyeballing.

We were taken aback. It took the song in directions that truly would never have occurred to us. In fact, we liked it so much that we immediately asked for a mix of I'll Give You Electro as well.

At the same time we've been playing with our own gentle electronic reworkings of False Dawn and I'll Give You Electro, and so we are now able to present <Remission>. And yes, we know this isn't a 12” single. But we hope you'll forgive us the slight self-indulgence. It should be.

Remission

This has been quite a good year, as far as we're concerned. We've finally managed to squeeze out an album which we'd been working on for quite a long time, and we also managed a couple of singles into the bargain.

To celebrate, we've collected together a few remixes of tracks from Transmission and stuck them on a little EP called Remission (do you see what we did there?) There are a couple of mixes by us; a couple by a friend of ours called Sappy; and even a brand new track called Sleepwalker.

Here it is:

Tracks are as follows:

1. Eyeballing (Sappy's Treble Up Remix)
2. Sleepwalker
3. I'll Give You Electro (Imperfect Attitude Mix)
4. False Dawn (Animalogue Remix)

Since we didn't do all the work ourselves, we didn't really think it would be fair to ask for money for it, so it's a completely free download from our page on Bandcamp. If you're lucky, you might also find a couple of extra special bonus things as part of the package. Why not go there now and get yourself a copy? I would.

And with that, I'll wish you a very merry Christmas and a happy new year!

But what's coming next?

So, I hear you ask excitedly, what next?

Well, we have tentatively written a couple of tracks towards our next album, but that's probably a long way away, and anyway the days of Transmission aren't over yet.

In the meantime, we've been playing with our next couple of singles. I know nobody really releases singles any more these days, but somehow strangely in our world it does enable us to promote the album all over again. We've not entirely decided which ones come next, but we've got a good pile of b-sides (6 not far from being completed) so we'll definitely be keeping off the streets for some of 2012.

But first, we have a very exciting and special new mini-EP coming out in the next couple of weeks. More details about which will follow very soon!

Sympathetic synthesis

A very friendly blog has been nice enough to put I'll Give You Electro in their latest post alongside a load of music which is much better than ours. Read it in full by clicking here.

I'll Give You... A Tracklisting

Yes, because I forgot to give you one before.

1. I'll Give You Electro (Single Version)
2. Dissolution
3. Weather the Storm
4. The Journey Here

Four. Yes, four tracks. Count them. Four? Yes, definitely four. Out now, neither from Woolworths nor any good record stores, except Bandcamp, which is a very good record store, actually.

How to get your hands on I'll Give You Electro

The day has come - we are now ready to give you our new single in a variety of different ways:

Watch it (in the loosest sense) on YouTube:

Listen to or download it for free from Bandcamp:


Also, you can listen to it on SoundCloud just here.

Good luck!

I'll Give You... Some Artwork

Art, in the loosest sense of course. Coming soon. Probably next week.

We'll give you our new single

Oh yes, it's time to announce our latest release! It's called I'll Give You Electro, and it will arrive on your virtual doorsteps in just a few days time.

That's pretty much all you're getting for now, as there are a number of details still to be arranged, but there is one more thing: it will be completely and utterly free!

More details will follow very soon, but in the meantime, here is the original album version:

A transmittal

Our new album Transmission has been out for a little over a month now, and lots of people have already enjoyed (well, listened to or bought) the tracks from Bandcamp.

A lot of people seem to think the album only has one track on it, which is a bit of a shame, and quite a good reason for us to get on with our next single, which we're intending to unleash next month even though we haven't entirely decided which track it's going to be.

Anyway, in the meantime, why don't you take a listen? I've put a list of all the tracks there so that you can listen to more than one of them.

Transmission - sleeve notes

<Transmission Starts>

Hello you.

Somehow, <Dusk> was a very appropriate title for our last album. We seemed to get caught up in the throes of midwinter, and managed to leave off most of the pop. But that was nearly five years ago, so what have we been doing in the meantime? Have we dragged ourselves out of our autumnal gloom?

Well, yes. You see, things were different then.

In fact, the story of this album begins way back in 2003. It was late summer, and we were sat in Simon's flat in Birmingham. He picked up a guitar, and together we wrote Golden Wheel in a matter of hours, before largely forgetting about it. A little over seven years later I would receive Almost in my inbox, and suddenly all the murky recordings which we had been tweaking for years seemed to form into an album.

Such a long period of development may not have helped the quality of this album much, but a lot has happened in the last five years. In addition to Birmingham, it has its roots in Derbyshire, Berlin, West Yorkshire, Hampshire and Los Angeles. It follows a very long and wiggly path from naïvety to world weariness, and it takes its influence from an extremely wide and esoteric range of sources.

So where does this get us in the end? Have we learnt the harsh lessons which the past forced upon us?

Well, maybe. Almost.

<Transmission Ends>

You can buy or listen to Transmission here: http://purehype.bandcamp.com/  

A Transmission about transmission

Our album has already been available for a couple of weeks, via our Bandcamp page, and has already received lots of glowing praise, such as:

• "twelve fresh tracks for a fiver is value"
• "will have a look tomorrow and let you know what i think"
• "Oh"
• "the singer's voice is rather monotonous"

Why not see why people are saying such kind things and give it a listen yourself? We're looking forward to hearing your comments.

Please consider

... following us in other places too!

Facebook
Soundcloud
Bandcamp

Also, here's our official website.

We look forward to seeing you there!

You would like to buy our new album

It's Sunday night at the tail end of the world.

But in some places it's already been Monday for some time. So it's time to announce the official release of our ninth studio album Transmission!

Here's a picture of it:

We're hoping to release a physical version soon on a thing called a "compact disc" for those of you who still like to hold music in their hands.

More information will no doubt follow over the coming weeks, as will news of the second single (once we've stopped arguing about what it's going to be).

Go here if when you want to buy it: http://purehype.bandcamp.com/album/transmission

This is Transmission

1. Almost
2. Golden Wheel
3. Eyeballing
4. Walk with Me
5. Better Days *
6. False Dawn
7. Untouchable
8. Blood, Sweat and Tears
9. Distant Moon
10. Here Comes the Summertime
11. I'll Give You Electro
12. Without Life

* Extended version which we did especially for the many millions of you who enjoyed the single version so much

15th August 2011.

And there was this one time, at Bandcamp...

... which is a very odd way indeed of announcing our new album.

So consider this more of a teaser, ahead of our proper announcement at the weekend. But mark August the 15th in your diary (maybe put some words next to the mark too, in case you forget what the mark means).

Why not look here in the meantime?

Spotify Links

Well well. Since Spotify has finally decided to launch in the USA, I can finally provide you with links to listen to our recent single Better Days. Yes, I was pretty excited too.

As we know by now, the tracks are as follows, but remember this time they have links:

1. Better Days
2. The Broken Generation
   
3. Shattered Mirrors

Why not click on them and see what happens?

Finally, here's a link to the whole single, which you will of course share with all your friends, and here's a link which will no doubt look very familiar, as it will take you to the same single on iTunes for the Spotify-impaired.

If that wasn't enough, there will be more information about the album over the weekend.

Nearly

Well this could be it. It's been a long wait, and it's not over yet, but we've nearly got a new album coming out.

It's probably called Transmission, and it might be coming out very soon. It should have around twelve new and exclusive tracks, including a tweaked version of our recent single Better Days, potentially.

It will have been a labour of nearly eight years of love, the majority of which would in all likelihood have been written and recorded over the four and a half years since Dusk came out, in theory.

More information ought to follow shortly.

Coming soon. Almost.

Better Days - release info

Today is a Very Special Day. It's definitely better than the last ones. Why? Well, because we have a new single out called Better Days.


It's going to have three very special tracks on it:

1. Better Days (3:51)
2. The Broken Generation (3:33)
3. Shattered Mirrors (3:41)

Finally, it is available from iTunes and Spotify. iTunes give you half of each track for free, which is nice of them. You can also hear the lead track in full on Soundcloud, so you can try before you buy, or whatever.

You don't have to buy it, if you don't want to. But we hope you'll think about it.

Do you want to hear our new single?

Yes, of course you do!

Well now you can - just wander over to Soundcloud by clicking here, and you will be able to enjoy it in all its sonic glory. A download link will follow, as soon as we know what it looks like.

Progress on the album continues. We have completed a large chunk of it now, and are coming along well with the rest. We don't have a release date at present though; hopefully it won't be too long to wait.

Better Days - artwork

Yes we do have a new single coming out, actually. It's called Better Days, and it will be released into the wild as soon as it makes it through the system.


Just in case you can't work out how to read the posts just below this one, here is a list of the tracks which will be on there:

1. Better Days (3:51)
2. The Broken Generation (3:33)
3. Shattered Mirrors (3:41)

Move along, nothing to see...

Oh dear. It looks as though due to my own incompetence, the Better Days release date has slipped by a couple of weeks. Sorry about that. I suppose since you've waited this long, you can wait a little longer.

We'll let you know when it's available. In the meantime, we'll give you some more details over the next couple of weeks.

Better Days - tracklisting

You're probably still reeling after our shock revelation that we have a new single coming out. As we excitedly announced last time, it's called Better Days, and it will be unleashed on the world on March 21st.

Here's the full tracklisting:

1. Better Days (3:51)
2. The Broken Generation (3:33)
3. Shattered Mirrors (3:41)
   

Our new single - an announcement

Yes, well it might feel as though it's been a long time coming - it certainly does for us! Finally, though, we can reveal some details about what we've been up to recently.

We've been beaverishly fevering for some months working on the final mixes for our next album. It's not quite there yet - there are still five or six tracks that need re-recording from the base up; some more vocals that need recording; and a lot of final mixes that need polishing. So we've shored up one of our favourite new tracks, and thrown together a couple of bonus tracks, to make a nice little three-track comeback single.

Here's the first nugget of information: it's called Better Days and if everything goes to plan, it will come out on March 21st. That's next Monday! You'll get more information over the next few days. The next few better ones.

iDusk Falling

We're going to allow our 2008 iDusk EP to drop off the edge of the internet finally.

It's had a very successful three-year shot at fame and fortune, and we're extremely grateful to everybody who has downloaded it. It's been a real inspiration for us, as we've watched people literally downloading it in their hundreds. But it's had its day, and all good things must come to an end.

Plus, we're hopefully on the verge of replacing it with something young, fresh and new. So remember: you've got until about the start of May to download it; after that it's too late, and you'll never have that particular chance again. Download now to ensure disappointment.

There's more info about the release here.

A list of thirteen good things

Mainly in alphabetical order, mainly things which were happened in 2010:

1. Gotan Project "Tango 3.0"
2. Groove Armada "Black Light"
   
3. Hot Chip "One Life Stand"
4. Massive Attack "Heligoland"
5. OMD "History of Modern"
6. Pet Shop Boys "Ultimate"
7. Recoil "Selected"
8. Röyksopp "Senior"
9. Skywatchers "The Skywatchers Handbook"
10. Tracey Thorn "Love and its Opposite"
11. William Orbit "Pieces in a Modern Style 2"
12. Yazoo "Reconnected Live"
13. Various Artists "Buffetlibre PEACE"

Or so

Every week or so, is what I said.

Some numbers:
32. The number of new tracks which we have currently in the works.
42. The ultimate answer.
4. The number of birthdays I have had since we last released an album.
39. The number of pointless blog posts we will have posted this month.
9. The number of items in this list.
7. The age of one of our new tracks, in years.
17. The surname of East and Heaven.
3. The age of another of our new tracks, in months.
27. The amount of tea we have drunk.

Normal service

This is an important announcement. Pay attention at the back.

We are currently in the middle of mixing our new album. There, I said it.

Current plan is to roll out a single fairly soon, containing a couple of our favourite tracks and probably a couple of others that display what we've been up to recently. We'll probably put it on iTunes or something.

Then there will be a new album, I imagine some time in the new year, and that will have some stuff on it.

Nothing very specific at the moment, I'll admit. I'll try and update every week or so, including a detailed look at how the new stuff might end up sounding. Anyway, this is why our updates have been intermittent recently. In case you were wondering.

Looking Back - Dusk

This is the fourth and (to date) final chapter of my Looking Back series, which brings us to from 2006 up to the present day. If you've been reading its predecessors then... well... you have a lot more patience than I have.

Anyway, if I'm not mistaken we started this blog about three months before its release, so a lot has been said already about our 2006 album Dusk. But if you're joining us now for the first time, maybe it will serve as a good introduction. This will sound horrifically pretentious, but for me, Dusk is really the story of my life from roughly 2002 to 2005. Obviously you put a lot of yourself into anything you do, so this could be said of anything we've done, but I think this helps explain Dusk. I was in my early twenties, going through a lot of change, and struggling to understand who I was, and what that meant (if anything).

It's an album I'm immensely proud of, but it is very dark, and listening back with the benefit of hindsight it suffers a bit from its production. We made mistakes - some of the bonus tracks and different versions on the singles are better - but we also recorded a pretty good album.

So anyway, roughly in chronological order, my personal highlights of 2006-2009:

1. Writing Red Shadows after an amazing day walking the streets of Berlin. It's very literal - when it says "I walked along the wall today," I really did. Well, alongside it, anyway
   
2. Being inspired to write I Have Never. And several of the other tracks actually, some of which are actually verging on being quite good songs. In my opinion
   
3. Putting MP3s on the internet for the first time, and people actually listening to them
4. Writing Beneath the Silent Skies on Ilkley Moor (I took a piece of paper with me)
   
5. Working out what Signs of Life was going to be about
6. Making the artwork for the CDs, based on Simon's amazing photos. Incidentally, the sleeve for The End may not look it, but it's our most photoshopped ever
   
7. People saying we were quite good. We've been sent a lot of nice comments over the last few years, which was surprising and very pleasant
   
8. Being asked to appear on the Electraparade compilation
9. Working out the Ostkreuz mix of The End. Someone commented that we sounded a bit like Kraftwerk, so we duly made it sound more like them
   
10. Putting the iDusk EP on iTunes, and people actually wasting money on it. Thus far we have almost doubled our money on it, although we're not entirely sure how or why
    

That concludes this series of blogs. Whatever will come next?

Looking Back - Empires

Wind your way back through the postings of this blog, and you'll find one I unearthed in our archives from November 2003. It's the rather low-key announcement for our seventh album Empires.

For a long time after it came out, I was extremely unhappy with this album, but this was almost entirely unfair. There are a couple of less good tracks on there, and a lot of bad production, but there are also some of the best tracks that we've ever written.

In no particular order, my personal highlights of 2003-2005, and the aftermath thereof:

1. The rainy autumn day when I wrote When October Comes. As the British weather hammered against the window and I pondered my future, this song came very quickly.
2. Getting really emotional while recording the vocal for Not a Million Miles.
3. Recording the as-yet-unreleased Golden Wheel at Simon's old house, with him strumming a guitar, and me playing synth arpeggios.
   
4. Simon's first suggestion that Empires would be a good title. It was the name of an incomplete song, which was based around a quote from Winston Churchill. Somehow, in a world suddenly full of terrorism, imperialism, and wars that we didn't agree with, it seemed to be the perfect statement.
   
5. Listening to the completed version of Wherever You Are Now, while walking through the forests near Berlin. This will always be a special memory for me, and if we ever make a video for this song, I know exactly what it will be.
6. Working out the final tracklisting for the album, sitting very late at night in a Berlin youth hostel with a CD on shuffle.
   
7. Devising the album artwork, which for the first time used relatively undoctored photos from our holidays. We could probably do better now, but they were an important step following the Photoshop swirls of the Zero era.
   
8. Entering In Your Eyes into a BBC songwriting contest. Obviously it didn't win, but it was our first stab at trying to crack the outside world.
9. Our first forays into the world of online music. Uploading Here We Stand onto an MP3 site, and it taking six months to get approved, possibly because I used the word "Iraqification" in the description?
   
10. Lots of people, including Greek band Marsheaux telling us a couple of years later that they really liked Here We Stand.
    

Next time: we'll be coming right back to the present, with 2006-2009.

Trimming the fat

If you're the sort of person who cares, you'll find a number of tracks on our download sites have changed. To start with, I've got rid of a lot of the less popular (good) ones. Next step, possibly tomorrow, will be to start replacing them. The end result will be that a selection of the same 6 or 7 tracks will be available on all the sites.

The reason for this is simple: the tracks that we had were all over the place. They will now be all neat and tidy and whatever.

There's also some generally constructive stuff going on elsewhere, but that will have to wait for another blog post.

Looking Back - Ephemeris and Zero

It was in late summer 1998 that we bought our first proper synthesiser, and then on the run-up to Christmas, a 4-track tape recorder. Together, these two events truly heralded a new era for us. We ditched everything we'd ever done before, and started from the top, recording what resulted in our fifth and sixth albums, Ephemeris and Zero.

It was truly a golden age. For the first time, we could record songs in decent quality, and in time. Vocal recording was still an ordeal, but at the same time we were still learning how to write proper songs. Truly, it was one of our most creative periods, and although we still managed to churn out a lot of dross, we also managed to write a handful of very good songs.

Roughly in chronological order, these are my personal highlights of 1999-2002:

1. Recording lots of rubbish on our new 4-track tape recorder. My favourite recording is a very avant-garde track which for the sake of argument has always been called Noise Demo, which consists of lots of sweeps and noises from the two synthesisers we owned at the time, augmented occasionally with sounds played in from a tape of someone (not me) singing which I had found in the middle of a road somewhere.
   
2. Recording State of Decay and a six-minute techno-dance-trance jam on Simon's new SH-101 synthesiser (ours is red). Which, in my opinion, is still one of the best devices we own. A few months on, we recorded another wonderful jam, which features Simon playing chords and me jabbing random notes on a second synth.
   
3. Buying an Apple LC and Cubase in early 1999. For the first time, we could record music and keep it in time. We also learnt quite quickly that everything we had written up to that point was largely guff.
   
4. Learning how to use Cubase through The Chaos Theory and Nature of the Beast. We made a few mistakes, to say the least. Most of these ended up on our 2001 EP Behind the Waterfall.
   
5. Spending a year in Germany, learning how to write quite good songs. You can almost see the evolution taking place within the year. Early experiments, such as Carol Vorderman, for some reason never made it through our extensive quality control process. Genesis, our europop-flavoured synopsis of the beginning bit of the Bible, did.
   
6. Ephemeris, technically our fifth album, but our first to be any good. Statistically, more than half of the song titles contained the word "of" or began with the letter S, or both. That album was definitely brought to you by the letter S and the word "of".
   
7. Writing a song about homelessness, called Urban Sprawl, which was an attempt to be a bit less pretentious than Phil Collins, but failed on almost every discernible level. We recorded Part 2 versions for this and a couple of the other tracks on the album, and you could make a good case that they are better than their corresponding Part 1s.
   
8. Zero. A great title, and some very good songs. Also, lots of very long and dreary songs which turned out to be impossible to sing. It might have been improved if we hadn't released it quite so quickly, but at least there were only two songs containing the word "of" in the title, and only three beginning with S this time.
   
9. Electric Avenue, State of Decay, Tower of Babel, Britannica, Closer to the Sun, Swan Song, Blind Youth... For the first time, we had some good songs on our roster.
   
10. Our Greatest Hits album Synopsis, which contained mainly rubbish, because we had only written a handful of good songs at that stage and we were damned if we would put them all on the same CD. We then followed this up by reissuing the first four albums, which has been proven to be the point at which global CD sales started to decline.
    

Next time: 2003-2005.

Looking Back - The 1990s

And so it begins.

Our early history is probably not very well documented. And with good reason - it's not something we're especially proud of. You could view the 1990s as a learning curve for us, starting with next to no equipment or experience, and ending with just a little of each.

Despite that, we did manage to write a couple of good songs (looking back, we had maybe a 4 or 5% hit rate, which isn't too bad), and we did still enjoy ourselves immensely. But rest assured, although most of the early recordings do still exist in one form or another, there is absolutely no chance that you are ever going to hear them.

So, roughly in chronological order, these are my personal highlights of 1992-1999:

1. Writing our first proper song in around 1992, which was called Dangerous and was largely based around The Green Cross Code.
   
2. Pointing two tape recorders at one another and turning songs by the likes of Simply Red and Prince into songs of our own, by shouting over them until you couldn't hear the original any more. Unsurprisingly, in the case of Simply Red, it actually made the song better than the original.
   
3. The original recording of our 1993 EP Amnesia, which was then called Brain Cell, and included the sound of us drinking tea. If we ever turn out to be influential, this will be cited as an early example of sampling.
   
4. Connecting our first computer to our first tape recorder to create sequenced (i.e. in time) music. We used an insanely complex programming language called APL, and wrote all the music in code. There was a nanosecond gap in the music between each verse.
   
5. Recording an album of hymns. For some reason, we never got around to releasing it.
   
6. Writing our own fanzine, Pure Hype, despite not having any readers, or, most of the time, any news.
7. Unscrewing a cassette tape, and sellotaping the two ends of a tape together to create a loop. When played back, this created a very odd sounding "sample", which we even used once for the drums (borrowed from Blue Monday) on a remix of our 1995 track What Makes It Go. Obviously, it didn't keep particularly good time, but neither did it sound much worse than when we didn't use it.
   
8. The Yamaha PSS-380. Oh yes. Bought in Nottingham, in 1997, this was our first foray into the world of digital synthesis. It was a revolution. Not long afterwards, I repaired our first keyboard, the PSS-150, which still works to this day, with all of five different sounds and a drum section which we can confirm does indeed provide all the excitement of being a real drummer.
   
9. Buying our first proper synthesiser, the wonderful Casio CZ-1000, in a second-hand shop in Wagga Wagga in August 1998. We made lots of digital sounds, including some great snare sounds. And some dreadful kick drum sounds.
   
10. Buying our first 4-track tape recorder at Christmas 1998. Now we had a means of properly recording, and even (occasionally) of staying in time. The foundations had truly been laid for the next decade.

Next time: 1999-2002.

Coming Soon - Looking Back

A long, long time ago, I can still remember how the music used to make me something...

But I knew that if I posted more regularly on our blog, it might help me gather my thoughts a bit, which would be A Good Thing.

Where was I? Oh yes, back in July last year, I started putting together a new series of blog posts called 'Looking Back'. And then promptly forgot about them. Until now.

So... every week for the next few weeks, assuming I don't think of anything better to post inbetween, I shall blog my ten favourite moments of each "era" of our history. You may, or may not, enjoy them...

Almost weekly update

Things that I have done this week:

1. Lost my internet connection for a week
2. Broke my mouse
3. Did some tweaks to the Hypernova website
4. Updated our MySpace page
5. Posted the word "nearly" on Twitter

It's good when things happen, isn't it?

Things That Have Happened

Our last post was A Very Long Time Ago. That would be a good song title. Unless someone steals it first. I remember a very funny interview with Meat Loaf once, where he was complaining about how he had announced the title of one of the songs for his next album, and then somebody stole it. I can't actually imagine why anyone other than him would write a song with more words in the title than the song itself, but apparently it's a real problem for people like him.

Where was I? Oh yes. I think maybe I'm getting old, which would probably explain why I keep forgetting things. At the very least, it would explain what happened to my hair. And my teeth.

A lot of things have happened in the last year. One of these was that I turned 30, which was a bit of a non-event as it turns out, and we haven't written any songs about it.

We haven't written many songs at all, actually, but this is definitely something we are trying to remedy. As we've described many times before, we effectively have an album's worth of material which isn't a million miles/years away from being completed, but never quite seems to get there.

The old website mysteriously expired, so we started a new one. Why not go and have a look? It's almost finished.

I moved house. When we started working on Album Number Nine, I was based in Yorkshire, and Simon was based on the edge of Birmingham. Now it's even worse - he's in Southampton, and I'm in Los Angeles. The prospects of us ever playing live become ever more and more remote. Which is a shame, as I would very much like to do it one day.

These actually all sound like quite good excuses, but it's still frustrating that we haven't managed to finish anything for so long. Until now. We have the beginnings of a plan.

But that's all you're getting for now. I'll try and "blog" more often, and if I leave this post with an open ending, I might be more likely to write the next one. The suspense is for me, you see, not for you. That said, I could also leave this post with a half-finished sentence right at the

Static Turkey

As you may have gathered, Röyksopp recently very kindly offered everyone the chance to remix their track Tricky Tricky, a challenge which really seemed to good to miss.

Our illustrious remixing career began in 2007, when Simon took on Erasure's When a Lover Leaves You. I think it's a great version - actually I think it's better than the original, and it certainly sounds more like Vince Clarke. It didn't win the competition, but never mind... Anyway, for some reason that I don't entirely remember, we've never mentioned this before, but if you're curious you can hear it on their official website here (scroll down to entry number 148).

Later in 2007, we had a go at Marsheaux's cover of New Order's Regret for a competition set up by the Electronically Yours website. For reasons best known to themselves, the results of the competition were never revealed - but we can only assume it didn't win!

We then went through a quiet patch on this front, unfortunately missing out on a couple of tracks I'd have liked to have had a go remixing, but there you go...

So then Tricky Tricky came along. As you might expect from a group like Röyksopp, it's a pretty complicated track. When the competition launched, I had a quick listen through to the early entries, and frankly they were rubbish. I thought, I can do that!

Actually, as it turned out, I couldn't. I worked out some of the sequences, and came up with a few interesting parts, but I didn't think it was working at all. Fortunately Simon liked one of the parts (the riff which runs all the way through our version), and so I rebuilt it completely using that. Everything else came together pretty quickly.

I think for the first time on a track of ours, it was recorded entirely using software synths in Cubase - mainly the TAL vintage synths which sound incredibly similar to Junos and SH-101s. I then indulged my recent habit of putting ridiculous amounts of effects all over everything, and Bob was our uncle.

I still wonder if the final mix wasn't quite right - but that's the sort of thing I always worry about. Judge for yourself on our SoundCloud page. The results are announced tomorrow.

SoundCloud

Hello you.

We're now on SoundCloud - you can find us here: http://soundcloud.com/hypernova

I'm working on redesigning the website, but you might not see any difference this side of Christmas. Then again, the chances you'll hear any new material very soon are quite slim as well...

Also polishing off the final vocal mixes for the next album. Not sure what I'll do after that.

Bye bye.

Blind Youth

We recorded this nearly eight years ago. Crumbs.

In fact, it goes back even further - having checked my notes, it seems to go all the way back to the summer of 1997. It would be great to say something about how nice (or, more likely, awful) that summer was, but it was quite a long time ago, and I was sixteen going on seventeen (someone should write a song about that!)

The song was originally called In Another World. It was one of my tracks, and it had music and everything. Well, in a sense - the main downside was that it wasn't especially good. Neither was it too bad though - some of the better musical elements were reused for Noise Gate, one of the tracks for my solo project (more on that another time).

The lyrics, meanwhile, were heavily reworked into Blind Youth. It's about trying to be non-conformist, and ending up doing the same as everyone else, but it's presented in a nice chirpy way, thanks to the music.

My notes also tell me that Simon started work on the music in autumn 2001, taking inspiration from Family Affair by Mary J. Blige and California Love by Dr. Dre. Our influences used to be so contemporary...

It never even changed much from Simon's original demo, which seemed to have it pretty much nailed right from day one. It's got scratching effects on it. We'd done that before around 1996 on a track called Down, but these taken from one of the floppy disks (remember them?) which came with our first sampler. They're probably the same samples that everyone else has ever used...

The vocal which you may (or may not) have heard isn't quite that old, although I'm not sure when or where it actually was recorded. And here's a fascinating fact: Blind Youth was actually the first track for which the vocal was recorded on computer (our first track, that is - I'm not suggesting this was anything particularly groundbreaking). It wasn't completed, as the computer in question didn't have anywhere near enough memory, but in a sense this was where it all began for me!

We put it onto MyFace recently because we thought you might like something different. How wrong we were...

It's only words

I've just noticed that prior to my most recent post, I last posted in December. Before that, it was last August, and before that, May. That's really not very good, is it?

Vocal mixes are plodding along nicely - most of them are very nearly complete. There are a couple more that need a little bit more mixing doing. Then I've got to check the levels on everything, which might take a little bit of time. Finally I'll add some effects, and we're there!

"Words come so easy when there's nothing left to say..."

Something to look at

I just noticed the typo in Simon's post about "4 news songs". Well as you'll know if you read my notes about the songs, only one of them was actually about news. Which is probably a good thing; if someone were to write a song about this blog, it wouldn't be very interesting.

Normally at this point we would make all sort of vacuous promises about progress on the new material. The truth is, we haven't done a huge amount recently, but things may be changing...

To fill in the time until we release something new, I will try to post a message as regularly as I can. I can't promise much content, but, as the song which we almost wrote once went, anything is better than nothing.

Here's a picture what I done:


"And that's pretty much the way that I felt until today..."

More new old songs on MySpace

Hello,

Thanks to Lord Tom of MySpace we have been able to upload 4 news songs to our MySpace page without having to delete any of the old ones. So now you can hear three more songs from the Dusk project and one is a very old track. In no particular order:

• Blind Youth - single from our Synopsis singles compilation from 2002.
  
• House of Cards - b-side to Bulletproof single. Find out what it's really all about.
  
• Never Wanted This - track from The End EP. Find out what it's really all about.
  
• Running with the Wind - b-side to Beneath the Silent Skies single. Find out what it's really all about.
  

2009 is the year of electro pop ...

... it's official because I read it somewhere, probably on the internet. Hang on, maybe I read it here? Anyway, electro pop is supposed to be the next big thing or the next thing that might possibly be big, but probably won't be, or something. It seems to help if you're female and hair like A Flock of Seagulls, but sadly, we fail miserably on both fronts.

Normally, we would refuse to have anything to do with a bandwagon of any description (anyway, by the time you see a bandwagon coming, it's usually too late, unless you have some kind of bandwagon-early-warning device), however, this is a bit different because we're actually on this band wagon (which is probably why we didn't see it coming - we were too busy trying to hang on). To be honest, it's probably the world's slowest moving bandwagon because we've been on it for years now and it doesn't seem to have travelled very far.

Bandwagons aside, we're quite busy doing stuff to do with our new album. Like recording. And mixing. And re-recording. And re-mixing. The wheels are turning, and we're edging forwards. We just need to fix a few punctures. And work out where we're going. And then find somewhere to park ...

2009 is also Chinese year of the Ox, but this is less relevant.

The last post of 2008

Here we go again ...

(List of excuses deleted)

We've done about half a dozen rough mixes of tracks for our next album, with more to come as soon as is humanly possible.

Thank you once again to everyone that has downloaded our iDusk EP so far. The number of downloads has far exceeded our expectations... but then our expecations were very low (always aim low, that way you can't miss). The EP will almost certainly not be available indefinitely, so if you're interested, make sure you act sooner rather than later (early bird, worm and all that).

We wish you a Happy New Year if you happen to be using the same calendar as us. If not, we hope that the next time this planet passes some arbitrary point of your choosing along its orbit of the sun, you will have a happy next orbit, or something.

PS. The jetstream was too far south again this summer. Could someone please sort this out? Hello technical support? Thanks.

All the broken promises

Close your eyes, think of home
So far from you
All the broken promises
None of them came true

OK, not very profound, but never mind. That was from a song we wrote in 2000, called White Noise. It sounded a bit like OMD, but not as good, probably.

Speaking of songs, you might be wondering where the new ones have got to. In his last post Simon said "keep checking back here regularly". For those of you who have (many hundreds, I imagine) you may be wondering what exactly you were expected to find.

So what has changed since August? We have done preliminary mixes on lots and lots of vocals; vaguely decided on what the album will look like; drunk at least 329 cups of tea; umm...

So here's an early New Year's Resolution for 2012 err... 2009. We will complete our new album, and stick it out. There, I've said it.

I'll go away again now.

New old songs on MySpace

Hello,

We've put two new old songs up on our MySpace page. The songs are both taken from the Dusk project, so they are at least new-ish. You can now hear:

• King for a Day from our most recent stop-gap iDusk EP. If you would like to know what on earth it's all about, you can consult Rollo's thesis on the subject here. If you like it, the track is available to download along with the rest of the EP from iTunes


• My Light - b-side on the Consequences single. To enhance your listening pleasure, you can read Rollo's musings on the subject here. If you like it, the track is available on the Electraparade compilation, which you can still download from the following sites: DJ Download, Ministry of Sound or Juno records.

We're currently working on tracks for our new album. I know this because I was doing exactly that before I decided to do this instead. After I've finished doing this, I will go back to doing that, or I might have a cup of tea first. I haven't decided yet, but I'll keep you posted.

For all this and to keep up to date with our lack of progress on the new album, make sure you keep checking back here regularly. I would suggest that once a day should be sufficient for the time being.

All is far from quiet

Why do birds suddenly appear? Thought for the day.

Anyway, we have been very busy making our next album, so I think you'll let us off for not "blogging" very much.

Some numbers:
- About 20 tracks being considered
- 5 are definitely on
- 4 are probably on
- 7 more will have to fight it out between themselves

I've been working on vocal mixes - initially just rough ones, but these will evolve into the final ones over the next couple of months. Simon's just started moving towards the final instrumentals as well.

As regards timescales - well, we'd better not make too many promises at the moment. But if it ends up being Autumn, I'll be annoyed.

Oh, and a special thankyou to everybody who has been downloading the iDusk EP off iTunes - ta very much!