An update on Inkstains and the rest of my life

So, after months of putting everything in place I have finally locked in my distributor and a mastering engineer I'm happy with. Taking the album for its final master on October 3rd, so I am going to be a busy guy for the next week or so making any final small changes. This leaves me with a heap of the pre-release versions to give out to people in competitions and send to blogs etc. for review so I'm very happy about that. Unofficially the release date is looking like November 27th, I'll be sorting out pre-orders through JB HI-FI and all that shebang too. Very nervous and scared about servicing the first single to radio, I feel like I'm going on a first date with the really hot, cool girl from highschool you've admired from afar and never really understood.

Going the independent route is both scary and potentially rewarding, I like the idea I have a lot of responsibility in making my album go well, it makes me feel like I'm taking charge of things somewhat. At the same time, I would love to be able to focus on the music making process and relax a bit. Oh well, no rest for the wicked, probably should have put this out in 2005.

Dish Washers suck

And everybody knows it. I should not have to wash things before I put them in the washer, that is the point, the washer should wash the dishes.

Pez tour so far

Had the Newcastle show last night which was awesome, capacity crowd and they were absolutely loving it. Newcastle is just one of those towns that seem to get down the front for every act and show a lot of love, which is great. We've got The Sydney gig tonight, I'll be interested to see what the turn out is, it seems a lot of fans are coming out of the woodwork so hopefully we make capacity, it's at The Gaelic club so if you're reading this in the morning there are still tickets available and it should be great fun.

Jepeto

For the last few months I've been working on a song called 'Jepeto' with DJ Ilz. The song draws inspiration from the idea of 'Jepeto' the puppet maker in Pinochio, it's an exploration of the concept of god and looks at the idea of any all knowing deity being this perpetually lonely and misunderstood creature, flawed in exactly the same way as the rest of us. The idea came about when I was thinking about what it would be like to be God, I had this realisation that if you knew everything, if you existed everywhere and in all time you could never learn anything, the whole universe would run like clockwork and you would have nothing to distract yourself from the infinite, particularly if you imagine 'God' existed before the universe itself. If that was the case, would it be wrong to create other consciousnesses and subject them to the same crisis of identity for your own benefit? Would the whole pursuit be pointless anyway? Could you ever make anything that wasn't, in essence, a reflection of yourself anyway?

I've pretty much finished writing, here's the song as it stands now -

Jepeto

I once heard we were made in your image;

And every single crime we’ve committed is your fault;

So if it’s possible, that you’re the one responsible,

Then could I just forget about it all?

Dear Jepeto just sits by his window, watching the children play;

Am I a real boy? Will I ever be a real boy,

Or just another puppet carved out in your name;

I had an epiphany thinking about the bittersweet,

Synergy of love and misery and loneliness and mystery,

That we call life, where we all die;

Where every one of us is just a twig on the tree,

I was thinking if god was just an animal like us,

Had actual life, blood and lived and he breathed,

Then wouldn’t he know loneliness,

A hunger that would eat at him like nothing we could feel to a millionth degree;

Cause if I was aware that I could never die,

I don’t think that I could even live;

Imagine facing daylight, where everything was made by,

Your own hand and no man but you could exist;

There were only constant answers, never any questions,

Constant anger, eternally restless;

No one to talk to and no one to be with;

And everything you touched had no meaning;

Dear Jepeto just sits by his window, watching the children play;

Am I a real boy? Will I ever be a real boy,

Or just another puppet carved out in your name;

So go on, tell me,

Are we just wooden dolls,

I don’t know, about the soul,

Till we all roll home;

So go on, tell me,

Are we just wooden dolls,

I don’t know, about the soul,

Till we all roll home;

Picture the madness of a million different sadnesses,

An infinite reality with infinite insanity;

Where every single minute formed an hour,

Every shower every drop of rain nothing that could stop the pain, powerless;

Yet powerful, all knowing and certain;

Where there was no final curtain and your word the only verdict,

Judge, jury, criminal; all the individual could do,

Was sit and contemplate a total lack of purpose;

So from his desperation and majesty, he shaped from his tragedy,

Space and a gravity, creation and this savagery;

All the possibilities his mind contained,

He tore apart and scrawled upon this page,

And to that end he made himself these little wooden dolls,

And gave us what we later called a soul,

But a soul is just another set of strings,

That are only special because they reflected his;

So go on, tell me,

Are we just wooden dolls,

I don’t know, about the soul,

Till we all roll home;

So go on, tell me,

Are we just wooden dolls,

I don’t know, about the soul,

Till we all roll home;

Dear Jepeto just sits by his window, watching the children play;

Am I a real boy? Will I ever be a real boy,

Or just another puppet carved out in your name;

Cause if it’s some game where he wrote the rules and,

He knows the outcome then how come we get played the fool;

I don’t want to keep my mouth shut,

And be just an outcome or tool,

I just want breach my chest pluck that heart from its cage,

The blood in my veins are my chains;

Because if god exists he’s ignored our pain,

And an angel’s just another word for slave,

So go on, tell me,

Are we just wooden dolls,

I don’t know, about the soul,

Till we all roll home;

So go on, tell me,

Are we just wooden dolls,

I don’t know, about the soul,

Till we all roll home;

Win a copy of my album 'Inkstains' + some other cool stuff

Competition Guidelines

To celebrate the completion of Inkstains, Phatchance and ‘I Forget, Sorry!’ are offering one talented and creative doodler the opportunity to win an exclusive ‘I Forget, Sorry!’ merchandise pack, consisting of all three ‘I Forget, Sorry!’ releases; Mind Over Matter – Free The Wolves, Coptic Soldier – The Past Three Years Diary and a limited edition pre-release copy of Inkstains.

To be in the running for this prize all you have to do is visit –

http://www.drake-designs.com/projects/inkstains/competition/

Download one (or both) of the press shots and doodle your little heart out over the top, the winner will be decided by the ‘I Forget, Sorry!’ family on the 1^st of October and their entry will be featured in the promotional material for Inkstains. So if you fancy yourself quite the scribbler, crayon king or the next Michelangelo then bust out the chalk, crazy pen or MS Paint and show us how it’s done.*

Entries must be sent to iforgetsorry@gmail.com by midnight on the 30^th of September and need to be in high resolution JPG or PDF format. If we receive a bunch of excellent submissions then we’ll see about some runner up prizes, creativity and effort will be rewarded! We’ll contact the winner for their postage details after the prize is drawn.

www.iforgetsorry.com

www.officialphatchance.com

www.facebook.com/officialphatchance

*minus points for penises, moustaches and devil horns

So, I was hanging my washing out

And I had one of those epiphany moments where you realise that maybe we've lost something in the development of society, I just thought about how nice it would be to spend a lot more time out doors, it was probably the first time in a week I'd been outside without being en-route to somewhere, I just sort of took my time with it and hung everything out slowly and I really felt good about having the sun on my face. That sounds really pretentious but I recommend getting outside for a quiet sit in the sun if you haven't had one in a while, shit is underrated (by me).

<3

Does this make me a blogger?

I have been bullied into setting up a Wordpress blog, talk about jumping on a long dead bandwagon. If, however, this proves to be anything like me being bullied into jumping on facebook, twitter and myspace, it will soon be an all consuming pit from which my spare time and productivity never emerge.

<3