Had a show in Melbourne on Thursday, whilst I was down I was lucky enough to catch up with Akouo, one of my favourite producers in the country and someone I was lucky enough to work with quite a lot on Inkstains, spent a bit of time going through beats with him and I picked up a number or two for the next album. Had a few hours tonight spare so I sat down and wrote most of a new song, it deals with the idea of human contact and how a desire for safety and understanding can lead some of us to act at our worst. I hadn't really planned to write on the topic, but I've had a few moments recently where I've been frustrated with the way society limits our closeness with other people, I also love the idea of interconnectivity through energy. Have you ever thought about the fact gravity demonstrates a 'desire' (and I use the word very liberally) for all energy to draw together and reform a singularity? Everything in the universe remains entangled to this day, we're made out of energy, we were (and still are) part of the same system, every particle in our body wants to draw us back into the whole, maybe that seperation is one of the reasons we are so restless as a species.

Wrote these words while the rain beat down outside,

I hope that you can feel that vibe,

I’d love to touch somebody, love and honesty,

To brush your mind while I close my eyes,

They say once we were all connected,

Every piece of energy they ever invented,

And time is just a figment of our lives,

I hope to god they’re right;

I should finally be shopping the first single Inkstains to radio next week, I have probably left the run disasterously late in terms of stimulating JB HI-FI to order more copies, oh well, c'est la vie.

Writing some new material

Had a show in Melbourne on Thursday, whilst I was down I was lucky enough to catch up with Akouo, one of my favourite producers in the country and someone I was lucky enough to work with quite a lot on Inkstains, spent a bit of time going through beats with him and I picked up a number or two for the next album. Had a few hours tonight spare so I sat down and wrote most of a new song, it deals with the idea of human contact and how a desire for safety and understanding can lead some of us to act at our worst. I hadn't really planned to write on the topic, but I've had a few moments recently where I've been frustrated with the way society limits our closeness with other people, I also love the idea of interconnectivity through energy. Have you ever thought about the fact gravity demonstrates a 'desire' (and I use the word very liberally) for all energy to draw together and reform a singularity? Everything in the universe remains entangled to this day, we're made out of energy, we were (and still are) part of the same system, every particle in our body wants to draw us back into the whole, maybe that seperation is one of the reasons we are so restless as a species.

Pushing a single to radio

Man, the idea of pushing a single to radio is so unbelievably daunting. I am an absolute fish out of water, everything from getting a blurb I am happy with, to generating cover letters to go to musical directors, to trying to organise request buttons for myspace and facebook, to working out whether I need to 'press' the single, or whether basic burn jobs will do... the enormity of the decisions I have to make and their potential importance is scaring the hell out of me.

It's crazy this concept that a single song is meant to represent who I am artistically messes with my head, I've made an album, yet I'm trying to use one small contingent part of it to decide the fate of all the other songs. Where do you strike a balance between the music you love making and the music you think radio is most likely to play? What kind of vibe should I aim for? Something that's very reflective of who I am, or something that is reflective of the contemporary music scene and what people seem to want to hear? Is it dishonest of me to go through an album, a great deal of which is melancholy, and filter out the happiest or most up beat track for radio? Should there even be pressure on me as an artist to do that?

Scored my first play on JJJ tonight

Dom Alessio at Triple J was kind enough to give the title track off the album 'Inkstains' a bump on Home & Hosed tonight, was really cool hearing myself on the same program as people like Miami Horror and Art Vs Science, I guess that's what's so cool about a government funded youth station, anything goes.

I've been receiving a fair bit of coverage in blogs in the run up to this album, hopefully it's a trend I can continue with abandon, I like music blogs because the people running them are almost always down to earth, music loving dudes who do it for the love, my favourite kind of people to consort with really.

You can check links to the various plugs (nearly all of which seem to provide a streaming option for one of my songs) here

http://whothehell.net/archives/6181

http://1songday.blogspot.com/2009/10/premiere-phatchance-inkstains.html

http://allaussiehiphop.wordpress.com/2009/10/

Mastering

Took Inkstains in for mastering yesterday at Studios 301 with Andrew Edgson. It was an amazing experience, really took the mixes up to the level I wanted them to be at, I don't know what it is about being in a mastering room, but I felt like I was really doing the work justice by putting it through those processors, and I'm super happy with the end product. It was also amazing hearing the album on those giant Duntech speakers in a properly treated room, felt like really hearing the music I'd been working on for so long for the first time. Jumping between the original mixes and the final masters it's crazy to hear the difference, particularly in the basslines, there's also so much more dynamic range in these final versions.

Nick Findlay (assistant musical director at JJJ) gave a listen to the album and suggested I push the title track as the first single, so that's what I'm going to do, I'm trekking up to Newcastle on Monday for the first day of Sound Summit and to give Dan Zilber from fBI and Dom Alessio from JJJ the new master and talk about servicing the first single nationally. Pretty exciting and busy week for me all told