Well, I had an opinion about this whole leaked album controversy, and can feel your frustration Simon; of having someone take your baby and deliver it before it’s full gestation.
These are bizarre times for artists; pushing the artistic envelope as well as having to be the marketers and develop new marketing strategies that stay true to the art, yet can also cope with the changing market’s on the internet, in the stores, and in the head.
I think there has to be a more communal approach to this whole business; a network of spiritual musicians connecting through the web, creating guerrilla marketing packages, easily distributed through the net over myspace, facebook, twitter, social networking sites. As well as printable posters, fliers, and realworld shpongle keys which unlock virtual content online, a message to spread the word. Also one thing to learn from pop success is that both Trent Reznor, Beck, K-os have formed projects which allow their fans/listeners to remix or recreate their music, and re-uploading it and even having contests, to be released on a cd.
These types of community ideas can prosper once they start because it makes promoting the artist fun, it helps create belonging, continuity, and then new flows of reality can occur. These systems are not only healthy and culturally innovative. They also can be ways that true spiritual hard working musicians can make a living being composers creating the next grand symphonic pulse which beats new life into the masses.
Inspiring creativity and new complexities.
Which brings me to my next statement.
I have only bought one Shpongle album, but I do have all your other material as well, downloaded from many hundreds of others…
and I really wish that I can buy the rest soon, but all my money is tied up in hardware, new midi controllers, new vst software, and the like…
I wasn’t really into much electronic music in the past, and then I discovered Shpongle.
Thank you for the complexity, and thank you for the time and the care put into the sounds that you love, it was so beautiful, so fantastic, so other worldy, and perfectly psychedelic… so much love of the world, the tribe, the fun, the rockstar, the fool, the floyd, the trip, the ladies… mucho love.
I had to become a musician/composer/producer/whatever
I had to fall in love with sound
the complexity of sound
the potential for sound, to not only to move the soul, but to invent a new awareness for other souls, love of sound, will bring new peices of the mind.
...
sorry for pirating your music
thank you for the passion
Your creative souls give hope for the envelope to get pushed into an unexplored part of the fractal.
~Hagan “NoMe” Hagel [LawNome]
I always have to buy the cd of anything thats half decent because it just sounds so much better, I can’t believe that we’ve ‘progressed’ from vinyl, to sampled cds, to compressed sampled mp3’s, what the hell is next?! I suppose kids are already listening to music seemingly quite happy on the shittiest mobile telephone speakers on earth, so who cares how shit the source is when you’re reproducing it on that, dear lord, there are still some of us who do actually care about music, and about the people that have the vision and skills to be able to do it properly!, so we’ll be buying your cds and shit simon!, admittedly, I wouldn’t know of shpongle if I’d never downloaded it first, but shit me, this music of all deserves the most accurate representation of what was truly intended, and its worth the price of proper speakers and gear let alone a few quid for a real, UNfkced with version of what you want to listen to, and the due respect to the people who’ve worked their balls off to do what they really want
So don’t feel you have to wait for the CD out of a sense of duty… do it because you want to hear it in the intended quality…. (btw, there will be a limited amount of vinyl… but as you have probably guessed by now we can’t afford to do a big mega-gatefold Geshtonkenflapper…. but as soon as we get some money in from the CDs we’ll do a double vinyl)
I recently bought my first new vinyl album, The Lone Deranger, which I was extremely excited about, until my friend bought me the first Doors album for my birthday and it’s on really nice 180g vinyl. The Lone Deranger is very wimpy in comparison. I don’t know how nice newer releases are, but please please please press Ineffable on some luscious thick vinyl. I’m broke as fuck cuz I recently lost my job, but I’d probably pay up to $35 and that’s a drop in the bucket for people with a career. I’m tellin you, if you do a real special release for the vinyl or any other medium for that matter, people will eat it up. It is Shpongle 4 after all. This has to be one of the most prolific releases in the company’s history. I feel like Twisted needs to target a higher class demographic by doing releases like high resolution DVD-A (I think you said in another thread that you record in 48khz/24bit). Although the market for this type of product is tiny, you’d only be doing limited runs anyways and audiophiles will gladly pay a premium for this stuff. I’m sure that within a niche genre like this, the percentage of audiophiles is actually much higher than in the general populace. Also, I think it’d be a great idea to give vinyl purchasers access to a FLAC download of the album because as much as I’d like to own both the vinyl and the CD, it just doesn’t make sense to pay for two copies. Speaking of FLAC, why on Earth are there only MP3s available from Twisted Downloads? I’m puzzled because in your quote, you speak about listening to music in its intended quality yet there’s no lossless option. Anyways, another thing that would really garner attention would be a 5.1 remaster of some albums, which goes along with the DVD-A idea. I can’t even imagine how insane a surround mix of Twisted or Are You Shpongled? would be. Set up some polls of what people want and send out emails. I’d really like to hear back from you on these thoughts.
Thanks for listening to me blab on and keep making amazing music.
-Mike
Simon, I love you and Raja. You have both changed my life over the years singlehandedly through your music. Please dont stop doing what you love, despite the horrible state of the music industry and thieves.
Am most shocked at what some people have written as well, but that’s the randomness of society that is out there… I can understand how you would have reacted in this way, Simon.
It’s not just the record industry, the same happens with film.. I’ve got a friend who’s already watched the ‘2012’ film, telling me it was rubbish! (which I think the storyline just may well be, if ‘Day after tomorrow’ is anything to go by, in contrast to the amazing looking special effects that have been presented).
That doesn’t help anything, watching it in its unreleased (possibly before final edit) stage, and then jumping on a forum and having some random twit ‘reviewing it’... Cannot believe it lol!
I really hope that the person responsible gets a swift kick up the ass. There has to have been some information exchange for folks to become aware that it had been uploaded, people don’t just sit there searching for up upcoming albums, do they ?
To be honest I hope this person responsible for this turns to realise how rotten their behaviour is. The record label put them in good faith to review their CD and what, they took this trusted masterpiece of work home to listen to, probably gave a copy to a friend who heard the CD at their place one night while pissed, exchanged the goods and then thy will be done… I hope that twisted makes good effort to send circulations to all the reviewers and make it known how unhappy some of us are.. That’s pretty fucking dodgy.
Best wishes Simon, love your music and hope to see you in Australia again sometime again!!!
Simon, I have thought about the problem of yours and Twisted Records. I did not buy the album yet and I did not yet come to like it from the samples as the previous albums. But I want to help somehow nonetheless.
There are methods, which may seem “magical”, but as a psychedelic music producer and a financially desperate man I think this would be your least problem. It has to do with influencing the world through the power of creating a mental vision, or through forgiveness. The world, as a non-mechanistic field of energy reacts to the directed thought and fulfills one’s vision. Some economic and political leaders are very good at this, though unconsciously.
There is a method called Ho’Oponopono, co-re-invented by dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len and popularized by Joe Vitale. By this method dr. Hew Len healed a whole crew of locked-up, insane criminals in Hawaiian mental hospital, without even seeing them.
So in this way, similarly, you could heal the population of the perwarese and illegal music downloaders, soften their hearts and shift their unconsciousness towards appreciating your work financially.
As a member of the swedish pirate party and a shpongle fan I’d like to say a couple of things. Hopefully it’s not new to you.
Your music will be copied.
Get more fans by using the free copying to your advantage. Talk to the Piratebay and get your album released on their frontpage. Millions and more millions will listen to it, for free, and some of them will become fans.
Use your fans. Sell expensive tickets to amazing shows(I’d easily pay 50-100
As a member of the swedish pirate party and a shpongle fan I’d like to say a couple of things. Hopefully it’s not new to you.
Your music will be copied.
Get more fans by using the free copying to your advantage. Talk to the Piratebay and get your album released on their frontpage. Millions and more millions will listen to it, for free, and some of them will become fans.
Use your fans. Sell expensive tickets to amazing shows(I’d easily pay 50-100$ for seeing your show), posters, shpongly usb-necklaces and so on.
“When the wind rises, some people build walls. Others build windmills.”
PS. The new album is amazing. I wish I’ll be able to pay to see your show in Sweden one day.
Hey Absalom. Screw you. I hope that’s not new to you.
You represent what is wrong with the idea behind using the internet as promotion. You represent the exact, exact thing that is threatening small labels with bankrupcy. You represent the inane fallacy of leaving the transaction between customer and business to the customer alone. Take your shitty quotes and your shitty idea of how to run a business to someone who can afford to see their business dwindle away becasue zit-faced morons behind their computers create an even more shitty ideology about “morals” and the “future” of the music industry. Guess what, it’s not up to you to decide how an artist can make a profit just because you have the capacity to offer people their goods for free. You’re nothing but two-bit crooks who spend your time masturbating over your capacity to tick off executives in giant corporations, when the fact of the matter is that you’re dragging everyone else down along with you in your “ideology”.
You’ll see your work as done when every small label has been declared bankrupt, and you’re left with your precious 128 shitty ripped MP3 files, and a shitty utopic idea that never worked, because you’re too damn na
