All the tracks for the first volume of Absurd Exposition compilations, titled "I'll Keep It with Mine", have been submitted.
Download/listen here.
The initial hope was to have 15-20 Canadian bands doing their thing, similar to pretty much every compilation album out there, but the more bands I asked, the less tracks I was getting. Several bands had nothing to offer and weren't going into the studio soon enough for this, others had technical issues get in the way, still others ceased to exist as bands, and, as is typical in these situations: the majority of people simply did not reply to my requests.
With all of that going on I realized there was no way I was going to get 20, or even 15, tracks by the end of September. The idea then was to do a smaller compilation of 10 or so bands and do it every six months. The hope now is that, since the compilations will be much shorter, people will actually listen to all of the bands involved, which is the key purpose of this endeavour, and not skip to the bands they're familiar with while immediately tossing the rest. This time around it's only going to take up 18 minutes of your time over 10 tracks. Here's who's involved in this quick mess:
AASIESIEUX, BRIDGEBURNER, BURNING GHATS, DETROIT, KALI, NIGHT MOTHER, OPIATE, OUT OF SIGHT, WOLBACHIA, and WORLD OF ONE.
Philosophical moment: I personally think that too many people are starting bands. There's nothing wrong with the theory of everyone having a good time picking up an instrument or turning some knobs, but when it gets to the point in which it's at now where every day there's a new release announcement for ten bands you've never heard of, it just gets over saturated with nonsense. It takes a lot of effort to sift through a bunch of meaningless garbage in order to find even one good band and most people don't have the time for that. All of it sounds the same and most of it shouldn't have been invested in. How this relates to the compilation is that everything I just mentioned was going through my head almost daily. I was struggling to find the need or see the reason in doing a compilation and I don't know if I really found one, and perhaps doing this just makes me guilty of everything I just said I hated. Either way, there are definitely some good tracks on here from some good bands, you can decide what's good and what's not. No haystacks here, just all needles plain as day.
So, that's that. Thanks to everyone who got something in to me properly and on time. Thanks to those couple bands for filling in the gaps at the very last minute, too. To those with technical and/or studio issues: the door is open for the next volume. Anyone else interested in submitting a track for the next go around (April 2012), send me an email.
Extra thanks to Letitia Loughridge for doing the cover art. Whoever wants to put some time into designing the cover for the next volume, please get in touch.
Playlist:
Ghast / Abandoner
Monitor - Monitor
NON - God & Beast
Opiate - First Document
Wreck of the Hesperus - Light Rotting Out
Watching:
Carlos
Hans-Joachim Klein: My Life as a Terrorist
Iconoclast
Reading:
Special Interests #6
Searching for meaning in an existence that appears forever meaningless.
it seems easy to say there are too many bands out there when you look at the grand scheme of the world but try putting a show together in a smallerish scene that isn't just the same 3-5 bands who play every show and you'll find yourself thinking differently. it's more a matter of having the internet exist and there being such an overload of information to take in.
ReplyDeleteI did shows for 4 years in a small town that I still live in today (2 years since my last show), so I can understand where you're coming from in some respects. But on the other hand, the amount of show requests I got were ridiculous. Even if I liked every band that emailed me, I'd have to do at least one show a week to get them all dealt with. Coming from a smaller scene I'm sure you know that less is more in terms of shows. Too many shows and people start to pick and choose which ones to go to. Nothing wrong with that but compare it to less shows where the turnout increases substationally because there wasn't a show the week before and there's the point I'm trying to make. One local promoter just started doing way too many shows and it was negatively effecting not only the shows I put on, but her shows as well and the entire "scene" as a whole. I stopped because it was getting to be too much. We have nothing now, but it's better than losing money (from both a touring band and promoter standpoint).
ReplyDeleteThe internet is both a blessing and a curse.
And coming from a label/distro perspective: the amount of emails I get for people wanting me to release or distribute their material is insane. Sure there are some great people getting a hold of me who are genuine in both the music they're creating and their own being, but again, weigh that against the countless other garbage emails and the ratio is laughable.
Maybe I'm just worn out from dealing with it for all these years, but that's where I'm coming from with all of that. Not to mention I'm ridiculously picky.
oh, hey Bryan.
ReplyDelete