Saturday 24 January 2015

Stargrace's EP Progress

The mastering is now complete for Stargrace's new EP, 'A Place Unholy'.  For a sneak peak at the tracks in this EP go to her Soundcloud page:

https://soundcloud.com/stargrace/stargrace-ep-1-montage


Monday 19 January 2015

REVERB NATION: Never a truer word was spoken

Your Trending Song:
How can I tell you?
was played over 20x this week
Header Image
Congrats Mike Davis! You've got a smoking tune.

https://www.reverbnation.com/mikedavisfans

Thursday 15 January 2015

GETTING ALL PHILOSOPHICAL LIKE

I do not actually see any great difference between what I do with Gonzo Multimedia, and what I do with The Centre for Fortean Zoology and its attendant projects. Indeed, at the Weird Weekend back in August no less than three of the speakers were actually people who are Gonzo artistes, plus another two who have appeared on a number of occasions in the pages of this magazine. Basically, it is all about encouraging a literate and intelligent interest in things which are challenging to the mainstream, because if we never challenge the mainstream then nothing will ever change and society as a whole will never progress.

This coming year, together with my friend and colleague Martin Eve, who is best known as electron composer 4th Eden, we are launching a new umbrella project called 'Wyrd'.  Wyrd is a concept in Anglo-Saxon culture roughly corresponding to fate or personal destiny. Their concept of fate, wyrd, was stronger than that of the Classical Pagans as there was no resisting it. The word is ancestral to Modern English weird, which retains its original meaning only dialectically.

Some of you may remember that about ten years ago I was involved in publishing a magazine with this name, and indeed there  may well be a revival of said magazine. But it is more than that. The company I own, CFZ Publications, exists basically to give a voice to authors who would otherwise be unlikely to get published.  It is about taking the profit motive out of publishing; a concept which has sometimes turned around and bitten me in the bum as people who I thought I was helping have turned round and accused me of trying to profit from their genius. However, although some people have totally missed the point and disappeared into a cloud of their own self-importance, other people have grokked it immediately and remain close friends and collaborators to this very day. Wyrd is an attempt to do something similar but in other artistic media, utilising the new technology and the burgeoning social media to play games with form, and subvert any recognisable business practises.

Wednesday 14 January 2015

Looking forward to the new EP by Stargrace

Just remember, we are all getting ahead of ourselves here. We don't even launch until April Fool's Day


Over on her website, the lovely Stargrace writes:

I am pleased to announce that the creation of my EP begun today featuring 4 of my favorite but never released stargrace songs. I am pleased to work with Martin Eve (4th Eden) and Jon Downes (Wyrd Records) on the first of hopefully many works. Hope to keep you posted!

And what we can do is give you a little taster:

PLEASE ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE MYSELF

As I have intimated recently, Martin Eve and I are at the heart of a new venture - Wyrd Music. This is an extension of what I have been doing with music and theatre over the past ten years and is intended as a sister project to the CFZ Publishing Group.

Working on vaguely Fortean and Anarchist, and strictly anti-capitalist lines, in the same way as CFZ Press, Fortean Words and the others put out books strictly because we want to read them, and because we think they should be out there whether they make a profit or not, Wyrd Music aims to do the same for music.

Although it doesn't officially launch until April Fool's Day, a Blog, a website, a Facebook page, and some free music will be up in the webiverse in the next few days and will always be plugged shamelessly on the CFZ and Gonzo blogs. Why? Because I can.

So mote it be.

RAINES EXPLAINS: Wyrd