The reviews are starting to come in for “We went to the bottom of the ocean” – all very nice. Indie tastemakers Subba-Cultcha have lots of nice things to say:
Phew! I’m hoping that’s the tip of the iceberg – I’m really pleased with this album and want more people to hear it – so spread the word bloggers, twitterers and social networkers, and get in touch if you need a review copy!
Yesterday I started printing the sleeve for the CD version of “We went to the bottom of the Ocean” with Consumer Revolt (aka Daley Walton). Well, he did most of the printing, I did mainly folding and pinning things up. This was the first ever sleeve printed for the album:
I think you’ll agree, it looks rather beautiful. There are many more where that came from:
A limited run of 100, including prints of 10 images (one for each song) will be available on August 11th, via this website. Until then, you can listen and enjoy the download via the usual route:
The Sound of The Ladies’ first full length album, “We went to the bottom of the ocean”, is available now, here at thesoundoftheladies.com. You can listen to the tracks in the fancy player below (iPhone users click through for player):
and you can download the album by pressing the “download” button (hardly rocket science, I know). You can pay whatever you want for it – noughtpence or a million pence – or somewhere in between. If you prefer to go the alternative route and pay 79p per track on iTunes or similar – the album will be there on August 11th. But you can get it earlier and cheaper here, and I will get a better deal too (Steve Jobs’ golden Porsches don’t buy themselves).
There’s also a “share” button, so you can email, tweet or facebook your chums, or embed the album player in your blog to tell every how much you enjoyed listening to it. If you did enjoy listening to it, please do take advantage of these features and maybe help this record reach a few more people who might like it.
The cover art, and different images for each song, were created by the brilliant consumer revolt – be sure to check out his folksy shop for some of his excellent prints. In due course, these individual prints will make their way into a limited edition CD with a print for each song – watch this space. They are going to be AMAZING. There will also be handprinted non-limited CDs without the plates. Those will be pretty cool too.
The Sound of The Ladies will be performing at Bright Club: Heroes on Monday. For those of you who don’t know it, it’ll be an amazing night featuring music, comedy, and some very clever people talking about Heroes in cool dinky little minilecture type formats. It’s awesome.
Anyway, Bright Club is a The Cross Kings in Kings Cross, which you can find here:
So the new podcast is out at long last, featuring a new version of Bank Burns Down:
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I’m going to be working on a new song for Bright Club: Heroes in a week’s time, which promises to be awesome. I’ll post the details shortly for your delectation.
Hello fellows and fellowesses! At long last The Sound of The Ladies rear their ugly gigging head at the Cross Kings on Wednesday. The gig features Stuart JD Smith and some very special guests* and can be found here: The Cross Kings
126 York Way
London N1 0AX
Look forward to seeing you there, Ladies and Ladyettes…
It’s a common mistake for early blogs to include a lot of posts apologizing for not writing, rather than writing. I’m going to fall into that trap, but with good excuse: the last six weeks have been more than usually hectic in Real Life (RL). In that time, I finished recording my first album, published my first academic paper (32 years young), interviewed for a new job, got engaged, won a Sony award and became an uncle, along with all of the other stuff going on. This means I’m currently planning a wedding and finalizing the details of the album, as well as writing guest blogs for The Londonist (links as they come), writing something new for Bright Club Heroes next month, and working with an accordionist on a new banjo-based arrangement of “Bank Burns Down”…
SOTLwise, the album is the thing – the recording an mixing is nearly done, it just needs a few bits, and for the cover art to be finished by the excellent consumer revolt. Once things gets a bit quieter you can count on more SOTL and less RL… and there is some great stuff in the pipeline. Hang in there.
[EDIT: My Londonist article about Crystal Palace is up on their website, South London fans!]
I know the country has its feet firmly on the ground thanks to the Tory party, but they just encourages me to retreat further into fantasy. And into the aquatic theme of my upcoming album. It was a very nautical weekend for the Sound of The Ladies, performing at the Brighton Sea Life centre – I was alone in not performing from the deck of a glass bottomed boat floating in a tank of sharks – it was like James Bond and schizz. Don’t believe me? I have the footage to prove it (check out the shark at 0:13):
I was the sole landlubber. I preferred to stay ashore and serenade the audience up close. Sharks bedamned.
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You may have by now heard a rumour that the Answer me This podcast won a silver at the Sonys last night – guilty as charged. I saw Melvyn Bragg and Jarvis Cocker so I was happy. And Adam and Joe FINALLY got the gold award they deserve. Commiserations to Richard Herring – he was robbed. By us, I suppose, but I like to think by the gold winners. I don’t like to think of myself as a robber – it does not chime well with my self-image. I may go and help an elderly lady across the road to make up for it.
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Finally, there has been quite a lot of me explaining about science this week - go to martinaustwick.com and click science to see a rather awesome YouTube video and a link to my appearance on Bright Club podcast.
Episode 26 of The Sound of The Ladies podcast is out now, featuring a cover of Deep Blue Sea, an old English folk song popularized by Pete Seeger and introduced to me by Liam Butler.
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On a related subject, The Sound of The Ladies will be peforming at the Brighton Sea Life Centre on Friday (May 7th) as part of Robin Ince’s School for Gifted Children. You can find the Brighton Sea Life Centre here. Expect nautical tunes and some great comedy and science.
Speaking of which, the first episode of the Bright Club podcast is out now - Bright Club podcast features a researcher chatting with a comedian about their work, and is shaping up rather well. I provide the theme music, a bit of engineering expertise, and talk about my research in episode 2! For the moment you will have to survive with the lovely Lucie Green, solar physicist extraordinaire…
The usefulness of not thinking about stuff is underestimated. It’s been my experience that when dealing with difficult or complex decisions, it often does to let the ingredients ‘mulch down’ in the subconscious while the active brain does something better with its time. To wit; the Sound of the Ladies’ debut album is recorded, and is complete, but for a lot of tweaks; drum sounds, reverbs, compression – the kind of stuff that only musos fiddle with, but makes records sound shit/awesome. So, I’m giving it a little bit of time and space, listening to it once in a while, but not actually fiddling around. When mixing and tweaking, one tends to get the equivalent of snow blindness; this is the ultimate antidote. Anyway, rest assured that I will actually tweak in the next few weeks and get it out. I’m too pleased with it to keep to myself…
There’s plenty of RL stuff keeping me busy at the moment – but there’s some fun music stuff like the Sony’s the week after next (Answer me This! is nominated again this year), and a gig at the Brighton Sea Life Centre with Robin Ince’s School for Gifted Children – so no doubt I shall see you around.
