We had an entirely different post written to post up here but things change so fast these days that we’re going to have to hold off on that for a while.   These days are full of things that aren’t going to see the light of day for a while.  A lot of lab work.  In the era of Twitter and Facebook, etc etc, you do have to pay a little attention to the outside world so you aren’t forgotten in this awesome age of super-fast information and all that.  Besides, we’re too excited about these things going on to not talk about them a little bit.  Hopefully, you’ll find some of it interesting, too.

We’re working very hard on finishing the album but it looks like we won’t be releasing part two of FFFG until January since it’s just too hard to get through all the noise of the holiday season that will be here in just over eight weeks (!) ugh.  Our original intent was to squeeze it in and make it happen, but that reality – along with some other exciting developments – has convinced us that we should probably wait.  We are still planning on releasing a single from it this year, though.  With ‘b-sides’, or bonus tracks or whatever they’re called these days.

All five of the songs for part two of the album are basically done, except for vocals.  This is pretty much how we’ve always done things, but things are a little different this time since poor Rebecca is working on two albums at the same time (and doing a great job at both).  There’s a lot of singing happening.  So, it’s all coming along nicely and we’re very excited about finishing it up and getting it out as soon as possible.

It’s nice to be taking a little bit of time off from playing live, too, to rethink our approach a little bit.  On the technical side, we’re trying to put together more of a ’show’, which we haven’t been able to really focus on yet since we have been worrying up until now about just establishing the band.  So now, we have an idea what all that is going to sound and look like and it’s just going to take a while to put it all together .  It will probably be some time around January before that side of things is ready.

We have been talking a little bit about doing one or two shows in-between now and then, though, of non-Stripmall material.  There are a ton of logistics involved in those, though, so we’re still weighing whether they’ll be able to happen or not.  We’re totally in love with the ideas, but without the proper time and preparation, they won’t live up to our standards.  Plus, it’s just really hard to tell how many people will come out to shows these days.  It’s an unpredictable time, which has forced a lot of us bands and musicians to rethink a lot of things.

We’ve been asked A LOT to do another performance of the Music of This Mortal Coil show we did back in January.  I’m not sure I can adequately express how much work that took.  To do it again is an appealing idea, but it would really have to be the right scenario.  Since the last show, we have corresponded at length with both ‘members’ of This Mortal Coil (including John, who Rebecca is collaborating with on DarkDriveClinic) who have been incredibly supportive of the project and have even offered many ideas and suggestions should we do another.  I wish we had the resources to devote ourselves more fully to these kinds of things.  So challenging and so much fun.

The other show idea, slightly less work involved, would be to do a set of early Halou music.  Again, it’s hard to gauge interest in a show like this, but it seems like there might be enough to make it happen.  We’re looking into it.  Feel free to let us know your thoughts.  I’m sorry to say that our ambitions are seriously out of scale with our resources these days, and it’s important for us to be aware of that when taking on these sorts of plans.

Finally, we’re preparing to launch our Stripmall Architecture Broadcast page, which will host intermittent video updates and performances from us – hopefully on a regular basis.  You can bookmark that page now and sign up for a UStream account so that you’ll be set to go when we launch (maybe we’ll launch once we pass 1,000 likes on Facebook…).

Those are the big things we’re up to at the moment, with much more in the background:  We’ve been talking with some potential collaborators for projects next year, licensing and composing tracks for films and commercials, and even considering a new, very crazy Kickstarter campaign.

(Wrote this very quickly on the run, please forgive errors.  Thx!)

Talk to you soon…

R/R