all about the timing

Some things are all about the timing

and in this constantly connected, constantly evolving and ever changing world that we are living in this is thoroughly important in the game of 'self-promotion'

so, of course my timing is completely off...


urgh, self-promotion, what an ugly little term, essentially jumping up and down and going 'oooooh, look at me!', this is pretty much the opposite of how I choose to live my life, nothing wrong with a little bit of shameless plugging here and there... but I'd rather kinda just get on with it and hope that the universe shares a little bit of good will with me, hardly a go get'em attitude, I know, but this is simply how I am

thankfully, the modern world makes it far easier to be less show-offish and still get noticed, social media, blogs and unparalleled connectivity make short work of being in touch with people and getting your voice heard.

so of course my timing is completely off...


currently, in a whirlwind of stolen moments and furious activity, I am arranging self-publishing my debut novel, (hey, wasn't that coming out in April?), releasing my debut single (on course to be derailed, but with you very soon-ish), followed by the release of my debut album (in June, definitely in June), so I guess my online banter should make reference to the fact that all these things are happening!

of course my timing is completely off...

it has been nearly a year since I started a new job, a new job that pays ridiculously badly and leaves me with next to no free time throughout the day, compared to my job of 11 years prior to that, which paid poorly but gave me enough free time to try and be who I wanted to be, I felt that was a fair compromise to be honest.

email checking, social networking, actual networking, blogging, researching, all of these were possible if work was quiet, not the case anymore, my time is limited and little indulgences like these are long gone, my social networking presence has certainly taken a hit and prior to this, my last blog post was over a month ago!

of course, my timing is completely off!!!

and of course, the book I grabbed from the library, a book about one man choosing to flee his life of paying exorbitant London rents and instead living out of hotel rooms around the world in a social experiment in keeping costs down isn't just a book about the former mentioned, it is all this plus preparing for the release of his debut book...

as a 'published author' he is often on the blag and making ends meet via freelance work as he builds on his reputation, as the publishing date nears he relays the importance of his online standing and traffic to his frequently updated blog.

(grumble) ok, so my timing is completely off....

I can see the similarities and I can see the differences, both of us gearing up for the release of our first novel, him flying around the world (hey, to Vegas and Rekjavic and erm, the Soho Revue Bar, places I have also been!) and updating his blog and forging his reputation and living off the advance he has been paid, and me, who is selfpublishing, expecting to make no money, and haven't blogged in a while.


and I can see what I have to do, but so much of it comes down to having the time, I no longer have this disposable commodity to do so freely with as I wish, the time that I should perhaps be spending trying to maintain my online presence and keeping the world updated of my progress is instead spent trying to make progress, or trying to make dinner and make the house look tidy and all the other household chores, and then squeeze in a little bit of progress if I can find the time


I guess it's all about timing

Anubis approaching

I can't help but feel excited as little pieces of everything (in my creative world, at least) seem to be falling into place.

The resurrection project that began last year has fulfilled its purpose, and then some..

I was genuinely surprised by quite how far along with my music I had come, even if in terms of quantity rather than quality, although that isn't too shabby either, and a full length album didn't seem such a distant stretch of imagination and ambition.

And now I am very proud to admit that the debut Hunchbakk album is at a completely incomplete demo stage.

12 tracks running consecutively that are now just in need of a bit of a spit and polish before they can be unleashed on the world.

As is keeping with tradition, I wanted my girlfriend to be the first person with a copy of the album to listen to... and since the demise of her previous car stereo, we have been rocking a tape deck, resulting in some rather throwback listening experiences and meaning that I had to record my album demo onto cassette for her

She hasn't always been the biggest fan of my style of music, so I was surprised, and I think she was surprised when she actually said that she likes it, probably down to the not quite so heavy presence of the 'soft suicidal' genre of music that I had previously pioneered and she had the good grace of naming.

And while I keep busy with bringing the finished product up to a standard I am more or less completely happy with, I am keeping with tradition in sending my brother mp3s of the full album, so that he is able to toil away on accompanying artwork for the final release.

This is all bloody exciting for me, it may not be the grandest of releases, but it will certainly be a milestone in my creative processes and make what is essentially a hobby feel a little bit more real.

The invisible age

I can feel it now, creeping up behind me, the cool, chilling breath that tickles the back of my neck. it is following me around and getting closer withe every passing day.

30.

and I can't escape it any longer, it is an age I never considered facing, and yet, in the past few months, the reality of my advancing years is becoming unavoidable.


it feels like a finishing line, that now I am hurtling towards it, only so that I can cross it.

But before I get there, I want to make sure the milestone birthday greets me as a wizened man that has achieved things in his life.

My debut novel only really needs the cover artwork finalising and laying out, and I fully intend to have it published next month.

My debut album is also gaining momentum and I think an end may possibly be in sight for it, ideally with a single released in May ahead of an album release in June, which would be great timing since I mark my third decade on the planet on the thirtieth day of the sixth month of the year of our lord, two thousand and thirteen.


days off recently have been spent recording vocals and intertwining them with the music that has been sat waiting for an accompaniment, waiting for completion. and I just hope that I can pull everything together in time to make it all right, to set myself a deadline and meet it, with a hearty, manly handshake.


and in my 'real' life, things are ok there I guess, everything feels rather wrapped up and in place, with my serious relationship and our home and our plans for the future, the past year's redundancy and current entry level job on a minimum wage are not exactly ideals, hardly part of anybodies 30 year plan, but that is what life has given me, and I still have a roof over my head and a girlfriend that loves me and a family around me to support me and various friends and acquaintances in my life that help to make my life complete so I can't complain really.

But for now, the countdown ticks away the second, minutes, days and hours relentlessly.

Impact Detonation

oh, 90s comic books, what a bizarre, long and twisted love/hate relationship we have.

a relationship that I have revisited since loading a bunch of CBRs onto my gizmo, ready for reading without un-pollybagging my old issues.

back when I first laid hands on my new gizmo and took it to the Lake District with me, I powered my way through Contagion and Legacy, two back to back Batman arcs that spanned the Dark Knight Detective's titles and various spin-offs.

from what I can remember now, Contagion was so-so, and Legacy was marginally better due to the returning threat of Rās Al Ghūl, his daughter Talia and the reveal of her new suitor as Bane, making a welcome return but becoming an ultimately squandered character, since he could never really replicate the impact made since his debut in the Knightfall event.

And the problem was that after such wide spanning, multi-issue, crossing-over, behemoth storytelling that had spun Knightfall into two separate strands of Knightsquest and the seemingly concluding chapter of KnightsEnd, the last thing Batman fans really needed was another all encompassing threat to the comics world and to wallets.

which was exactly what Batman fans got when the KnightSaga span off into the rather oddly timed Prodigal and the runt of the litter Troika, which I have just finished re-reading.

very briefly, Prodigal deals with the fallout of KnightsEnd and the return of Bruce Wayne to the mantle of the bat, who then very swiftly hands it over to Dick Grayson, former Robin. Rendering the climactic climax of KnightsEnd slightly anti-climactic. After this 12 parter, Bruce Wayne comes back proper, unveiling a new batsuit (black, rather than blue and grey, and kind of pointless) and tackling Russian criminals running around being a bit rubbish all over four separate bat-titles with collectors edition embossed covers.

And that was that really, these flailing add-ons that did little to shake things up following such whopping, game-changing and era-defining cross-overs.

It was the age of comics that dragged me in, entertained and enthralled me, but to be absolutely honest... it did have a number of lows lumped in with all those highs.

The 90s was a boom era for new comic books, new artists and new tricks, I still have such a fondness for those days gone by, the regular trips to Barnet or Tottenham to stock up and get my comics fix for the week, yet all the sugar coating in the world won't change the fact thatTroika was perhaps really over stretching the gimmicks, the crossovers, and the reader's patience at the time.

a self-fulfilling prophecy

reflecting back on today's earlier blog, i decided to dig deep, digging way back through my blog posts before realising that my comments as regard to a potential completion date for my debut album were actually posted up on my myspace blog...   waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyy back in those heady days of 2008

and what exactly did i say?

'So far in the last twelve months I have yielded two and a bit tracks that I consider to be a more personal direction for my music, as well as almost a whole remix for a band that insisted there was no deadline to be met and have since split up.' 

'Considering this schedule of output, my vague plan of producing an 11 track album should reach completion around 2012/13 as long as there are no hold ups.'

of course, this was intended as a rather flippant remark, and although i have never claimed to be prolific, i had actually hoped that this would all have been done and dusted sooner rather than later.

as it stands now tho, my vague plan of producing an 11 track album should reach completion some time in 2013 as long as there are no hold ups.

view the original myspace blog here

Nearer than ever before

It would take me too long to find, but i do recall in an old (old) blog post, after purchasing Acid and taking my time to knock up a very small number of tracks, that i calculated the average time taken on them so far, factored in how many tracks i was considering having on an album, and then estimated an approximate arrival time for the finished product.

I am curious to see quite how far wrong i was with that guestimation, but having faced dry spells and computer crashes and changes of alter egos over the years, as well as just plain ol' getting on with stuff that isn't making music, i do declare that this year may very possibly (and hopefully) be the year that a debut Hunchbakk album is completed.

this is still also reliant on being able to salvage the original tracks from previous incarnatons of my computer, a task that i have dubbed 'project resurrection', as i pick through the recovered files saved to dvds and try and piece together what was once created, but foolishly not even saved for posterity in mp3 form

And so far this goes good, revealing that i was actually further along the process than i suspected myself of being, and facing the realisation that providing they all resurrect ok, that i have something like ten tracks so far in the pipeline that should be shaping up nicely for a well rounded, full length release.


expect the next update sometime around..... 2016 maybe?

not knowing.

With over a thousand songs being carried around in your pocket, it is astonishing to think that it could still be difficult to find music to suit your mood, yet, quite simply, all this choice can be rather confounding.

And so my story begins on a rather dull January morning, leaving the house and contemplating the working day and how long it is until my next day off, I need something calming, serene, distracting, and I need it now.

I scroll past bands I love, bands I'm bored of, and artists that just don't seem right for right now, and I settle upon the name Frankie Machine.

I remember very little of why, but I remember I liked it, so I choose this, and after a brief offbeat intro, I am reminded of what held so much appeal as the sound of Nineteen Seventy Three is channeled directly into my ears.

A simple acoustic track that I have missed so much that I play it twice in a row, and as I tune into the remainder of the EP from whence it originated, I wonder how I ever came across this in the first place, what website or blog must have convinced me to right-click and save as, and a most audacious thought of all, how, in this highly informed digital age, do I still have no idea who Frankie Machine is.

I literally know nothing at all about him, other than his name, and due to a couple of skits on the EP, that he had been played on radio 1 by John Peel in the era in which emails were being used by the late fan-favourite presenter.

And you know what? I actually kind of like it that way.

it would take next to no effort to google the name, possibly finding more info than I would need to know, but I won't, cos I actually like having nothing more than my own admiration of a few pieces of music to satisfy me in this age where almost everything is shared, re-posted and ubiquitously linked to facebook.

edit:  since it has always been my intention to share music, i did precocously approach google with caution, purely with the sole intention of letting you hear what i heard

i also believe that the whole EP can also still be downloaded, although i didn't hang around to find out