This year, I had a bit of a panic when I realised I'd only bought a couple of albums in 2009. I can't work out if this is because it's been a particularly bad year for music, or if it's because of current trends to 'listen' to music, and not 'buy' it. I mean, I've come across a lot of new stuff (mostly that I don't like) either on YouTube, or MySpace, or radio, but I can name the albums I have actually gone out and bought this year on one hand.
As a result, I've been looking through people's 'best of the year' lists - from the music journalists' ultra-art lists, through metacritic-style aggregated lists, to random bloggers top tens. It's had the effect of condensing everything I 'missed' in the year into one really concentrated period of music digestion.
After a pretty intense year of listening to pre-mixes, more mixes, further mixes, enhanced mixes, pre-production mixes, post-production mixes and final mixes of our album, listening to other people's music was somehow dulled as an experience, and seemed almost chore-like. Not to mention that you become so uber-critical about everything, that it's difficult to listen to something without analysing every tiny little detail...
But now I somehow feel free of that burden. Our album is finished. Complete. Mastered. Done. And now listening to new music is making me hungry for more. Every time I listen to something I've not heard before, I want to make a beeline for the studio and write. (Of course, this has its own problems, since we don't really have a studio at the moment, but that's another story.)
Of course, the fundamental problem is how can we build on the successes of this year in the coming year?
This year saw our most prolific period of gigging, with what is now an exciting, settled and amazingly talented line-up. Venue highlights have included the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Camden Barfly, 93 Feet East, Hoxton Bar and Kitchen, the Lexington, plus Glade and Hamswell festivals.
There were remix opportunities as well - our remix of Relation's Your Tiny Mind had originally been made the year before, but we got an opportunity to revisit that after it was pulled back out of the bin by Urban Torque and resurrected for the single release. We had two remixes released on singles by One eskimO as well, Hometime and Kandi, and our Kandi mix was even included as part of their US-released EP.
Although it has taken longer than we'd hoped, we now have a very strong album which has retained an excellent balance of styles, now all held together coherently thanks to the work of our producer Richie, rather than the hotchpotch of disjointed tunes that we started with. The transition from two-piece, bedroom-studio electronica to studio-recorded, live instrumentation electronica has worked better than I could have hoped, and gives us huge scope to push even more boundaries in upcoming tracks. Already, we have a whole host of ideas floating around and as soon as we can find a studio, we can get them down!
The studio problem has been a real low point. Whilst we both have our own project studios now, not being able to write/create together has really slowed things down in the last few months. And most of my equipment is in storage... Hopefully this is something we can resolve sooner rather than later, although I do recall that it was while we were both writing separately before that we had our most prolific period of creativity, so who knows? It may even spark a time of more 'grassroots' songwriting - something we have shunned in favour of technology and myriad plugins in recent times.
And then there's the constant underlying problem of sustaining the project. The studio crisis is a great example - now that we don't have anywhere for free that we can put the studio, can we afford to put it anywhere else? How much longer can we continue to shell out for transport costs? Rehearsal studios? Flyers? Equipment? The answer, of course, is that we will keep finding a way whilst the desire is still with us. And at the moment, the desire is very much still with us!
So with Red Sky Part 1, our debut single, already out there and Part 2 to follow in January, a new free track soon after that, a second single in the pipeline, and an album all wrapped up and ready to go, it looks like 2010 is set to massively outshine 2009!
Thank you to everybody who has been a part of it this year, either by buying the single, watching/rating/subscribing/following/tweeting/reposting or anything else online, coming to gigs, emailing us and telling us you like our music... So here's to 2010 and, with your continued support, a great year for Eat More Cake!
And from us, have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.
