Hooray! Click here to download the remastered version 3 Smargaid Maerd for free!

This puts to rest unease I had about the previous mixes being too muddy, and therefore suffering a lot in web-streaming players. Over the next little while I'll be updating this around the web so that this version is the one everyone gets to hear. Given my limitations technically, this version is definitive.

For the very select few of you who purchased the FLAC version of the album, you can download from the mmd shop the updated version of the FLAC package free of charge. Just log in, and you should be able to download your copy still. If you have any problems with that please email me and I'll arrange something. For those of you who haven't bought it, you might like to know it's only $10 and sounds much better than the mp3s.

I've also put some time into developing a basic print out version of the album that will go onto CD. I'm doing an extremely limited edition run of these and basically posting them to a few Australian friends who are not so connected to the age of the internet. The CD version is mixed with the tracks blending so it's a slightly more cohesive listening experience. If anyone overseas would love a copy of this then I'm offering copies for $30 each - each made by myself and signed. Please send me a message or email at m [at] thequietrevolution [dot] net and we can arrange something. Again, I'll state the these are very limited.

I feel good to have this behind me finally! Enjoy the improved mixes!

Not long to go now!!

As a little teaser I give you two previously unreleased track that never made it to the album but were part of the same project:

Floatmoment
Lullaby

These just didn't fit the flow of the album but do stand on their own as fully developed pieces. They fall into the category of 'completely performed live' songs using nothing but by guitar as an input. The sounds were morphed and looped on the fly using Renoise, and of course later edited to sound sweet and expansive.

Stay tuned for the remastered version of the album very soon!

Before we move onto bigger and better things let me take a moment to draw your attention to a minor release that's been out for a little while. I give you:

Voice Of God.

You can also get the Renoise version here. This was a half serious half joking entry for a competition run by fellow Renoiser Conner BW, entitled the Mutant Breaks Competition. The song didn't earn any notable placement but earned a few raised eyebrows over at the Renoise Boards.

This track is very unlike anything I've been releasing lately and is not for the faint hearted. In fact, it's crass, brutal and noisy. I went back to the spirit of mid-90s jungle breaks which we used to play around with in Fast Tracker II. There's a few arty twists in this to keep it interesting and no doubt will satisfy contemporary fans of noise-for-noise's-sake texture. I promise to return to regularly scheduled programming of beauty and magic soon.

Speaking of which, looks like activity is warming up with Alex Strain and I again. We've been laying sound groundwork to get through a whole stack of tunes very soon, and we'll even make a cool little 'project website' for the releases too.

Some days you just want to throw your hands in the air and wonder why you even bother.

Consider these points:

- You want to make music but you quickly find you really don't have what it takes. So you go learn by reading up on theory or learning an instrument - and if you take that seriously at all it takes years to anywhere useful. Often you do this against the wishes of your family or community.
- After years of noodling with many things you might come across one or two special musical ideas that make you 'yeah! I want to share this with the world!' only to find there is this thing you haven't addressed called 'mixing' and 'sonic character and texture' you clearly haven't got a bleeding idea about. So you go learn about that and be daunted by the stupid amount of choices you have out there and the absolute quagmire of misinformation about what is regarded as quality.
- You spend a heap of money on hardware that you'll never re-coup on. Most of it you have no idea how to use so you try to be better than everyone else by investing years into learning how to use it all creatively. Repeat this step every 3 years.
- You find software you like but it dies or it's just not good enough. Same goes for versions of operating systems. Meanwhile all the prophets on the internet flame you constantly because your choice is wrong and theirs is right.
- No matter how well you mix your precious songs they still don't ever sounds as good as commercial big name ones, so you spend a little while tearing your hair out over that until you realise the secret word is MASTERING. And you have no clue about it. You either spend a decade or two trying to learn all about it so you can do it yourself, or realizing that you've got to spend large amounts of money you cannot afford to have some professional do it for you so you end up with a result you're probably not happy with anyway.
- You realise that working in digital is never going to be as good as working in analogue, but you keep a stiff lip because you can't afford real analogue gear and it frankly scares you.
- In the meantime you realise that those precious songs you made aren't so precious and they sound like poorly hacked out versions of some fad that's already passed out of fashion. Instead of 'giving up' you take it upon yourself to develop something more 'special' and 'timeless' of course with no support from anyone because it's taboo to actually discuss what makes good song writing and all your peers worried about beatslicers or how to make drums sound more aggressive. Anyway, you spend a decade or a few decades chipping away at this enormous task that you're probably not capable of, while at the same time trying to hold down a job and feed yourself. You find you start talking a lot of rubbish no one understands.
- Just maybe you pull off a whole album of gold; music that you think is just plain amazing and would change the world. What the hell to do?!? You try courting some small 'record labels' to get your self released but lo and behold they say you won't get any money for it, the release will be so delayed it's stupidly out of date, and that your album will reach probably a handful of people anyway. Why? No one buys music anymore apparently. Everyone is downloading it for free -or- they're so sick of the infinite amount of choices between this colour of shit versus that colour of shit so why would they bother to take a chance on you?
- You then think there must be some other way! So you get in on this craze of joining a 'internet social network' where you make 'friends' who aren't really your friends and everyone is DESPERATELY sharing pure inanity just to seek base-level personal validation. Sure, you get a few bits of kudos here and there were people say 'hey nice song, but it sounds like MUD', but that doesn't seem to do.
- So why not just give away all your music for free?!? Hell, those legends in the tracking demo scene days used to do it all the time so why not you? Who wants money for music anyway? What are you crazy? So you make up some website which you think is cool but isn't and offer all your precious music for free. You might have a little bit of savy or investment behind you as you've setup a nice little online shop where you can buy the high quality FLAC versions of your song or buy a physical pressing of your CD, artwork and all. All of this you pay for out of your own pocket. You sell a few token copies, and some people have sympathy for you. Go to bed, wake up next day go back to being a wage slave.
- Maybe while all this is happening you've started a live band and you're doing gigs here and there. This may even be earning you a buck or two, but it's nothing you can live off. Then you're dealing with drunks, hecklers, not selling many CDs, bad venues, noise, smoke, PA disasters, stealing, broken gear, and all other manner of curiosities that you encounter with life on the road. Wake up in the morning: wonder what you're doing.
- By now you're completely baffled and thinking the whole situation is rather Spinal Tap. Nevertheless you're bored at work and decide to pop onto an internet forum or an internet chat channel to talk about your woes and hopefully talk about the dream of writing music again that has some class and magic to it. So on you hop only to find that some loud boyish users are going on and on about 'how this is gay and that is gay' and anything else that's generally base and vulgar. So you pipe up with your opinions and SLAM you're made to look as unreasonable a possible for even thinking about wanting to make a nice song - you try to fight back but before you know it some person has posted a YouTube link about people having sex in animal suits and the conversation moves on. Later on you're talking to some defeatist who does 'music for fun' and thinks you should too. Fun? What's fun?

On days like these you could just give up. But something keeps you going, something keeps you coming back to your music. You keep creating, but why?

- You're clearly stupid.
- You don't have a choice because for some reason this creativity just doesn't turn off. It's something you're born with and if you suppress it you'll go stark raving mad.
- You're operating under some missionary delusion that your music has a good message and that once it interfaces with the social world it will be a contributing factor to positive social change. All those hours you've spent draining power from the grid to work on your creations is worth it because the music will do the right thing. All those barrels of oil to make the CD plastic and ink, all those trees cut and pulped so that you've got nice looking artwork ...need I go on?
- Someone important, influential or special in your life keeps encouraging you to do this because they're unhappy with their life but want you to fulfill their dreams for you.
- You think it's an apt joke that you do something no one really wants you to do in the face of the global military industrial complex, while people are needlessly slaughtering animals out of cultural stupidity, and the decadent elite are busy gobbling up all the land and raising the price of it so you can never enjoy any of it. Sure, it's easy to write a killer groove or a or an uplifting movement while the Earth dies. Give me a break: let's hop on ebay and buy some shit from China that we don't need, or go watch the latest version of Batman and blog about it. REASONABLE.
- You're a masochist, and like suffering. Hell, suffering's pretty cool at them moment, right?
- Why not?
- Maybe something bigger than you that you can't understand needs you to do this. It's your job. It may seem absurd and pointless, but there also is no choice. It's part of a larger hidden mechanism. The little gifts that you create and bring into the world work in far subtler ways than you can ever imagine - their importance is deep and long, almost always invisible.

Discuss.

More here.

Yes you have guessed right. As unprofessional as it seems I have decided to remaster all the songs from 3 Smargaid Maerd. "What?!?" I hear you say... Well, since the release of the project I have had a good opportunity to emotionally distance myself the work and see it sonically for what it really is. I haven't been that happy with how muddy the mixes sound. This is a common error to come across when you're mixing your own creative material, due being 'too close' and precious to the music. Had this been anyone else's music I would have done a wonderful tight and clear professional production on the mix and master. Now with the benefit of hindsight, and slightly better computer equipment to work on, it's simply mad that I don't correct these mixes. This makes even more sense due to the fact that I'm not popular in any significant degree: having the right mixes out there from here on will be for the best. And hey, well established artists remaster all the time (just not a few months after their album is released, but nevermind that).

This work has progressed very quickly indeed. I've also processed all of the mixes up to 96khz sampling, except for two of the songs. A free mastering goes to anyone who can pick those two trouble makers after the release! Yes, some projects just can't be upsampled, but I'm in no mood to write a technical essay as to why this is the case. Things are starting to sound fantastic. If all goes well I shall have this out in the next few weeks. For the very few of you who bought the FLAC version of the album, I will send you an email providing a link to the updated version which shall be yours completely free of charge.

Here's a little shot of some work being done on Renoise:

In between future projects I'll be taking breaks by remastering other older items that have been released here, so that good mixes honour the ideas I had at the time without being clouded with mud or noise. Much to look forward to.