Words etc

I’ve been busy. I posted the details of a wacky con on the Crawling Chaos website (shown above). In a nutshell, it appears to operate thus:

• User searches for music or other media
• User is presented with search results, some of which point to Black Box Access
• User clicks on link and is told that the required file was uploaded last week and has been downloaded ~19,000 times
• User immediately thinks “this is popular, I’ll have it!”
• User hands over email & financial details

After this I don’t know as obviously handing over that data to a bunch of crooks is just asking for trouble.
However, as if to highlight their very own scamminess, Black Box Access serve ads which go to websites from which it’s almost impossible to leave with continuous pop-ups and all the usual crap.

So beware. Tread softly young Luke. It’s a major privacy issue.

Harry Secombe

Spinning, with Bendy Sticks

CC GCC Harry2 by Crawling Chaos
Still twiddling with Harry, after all these years. Always, there’s more to do. Again, using Reaper, which I’ve paid for….

Foetus Products

In preparation for our next release, Spookhouse, I’ve set up a proper shop to sell it!  Our intention is to sell everything ourselves via this sole outlet. (Click image for the UK shopping site.)

The announcement is on the Crawling Chaos website here.

Kicking off the shop I’ve reworked (…er…shouldn’t that be ‘am in the process of re-working?…) all tracks from the two previous CD issues.  Finally I’ve had a decent handle of the articles…

Some have been substantially changed which may upset the purists, my current modus operandi being to imagine myself back then using the current software and equipment I now have at my disposal, then to change the existing 2-track recordings to best fit this basic idea.  After all, they’re already in the digital domain – so I may as well try and make them something like how I/we wanted originally, but was thwarted by technology.

In tandem with this, I’ve whipped out some jam and hidden parts in tribute especially to Paul, Jeff & Garry, because this was the core of many creations that appear on those two releases and turned them into something dark and tragic, as that’s how I currently feel about their absence from the planet.

As Steve Jobs once said,

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

Close observers will spot the “new” tracks.  They are there to highlight our jollity, our bleakness, the tiny hidden gems of deftness in improvisational Jeff’s playing and Paul’s lyricism, the randomness of Gazza and the end that must come to us all.

All this stuff is competitively priced compared to the muffled output from the usual on-line stores.

Spookhouse

The Spookhouse design is currently being set.  Downloads from the CD will be available following the CD release.

Other Items

These will be released, mainly as download, for other artists wanting to contribute to to the Foetus Products collective sound resource.  This isn’t a joke.  We really mean it folks!

Technical

I’ve set it up using open-source software on the foetusproducts.co.uk domain.  All links are secure where they need to be using a SSL Certificate I bought from GoDaddy.com, as they were had a special offer going…!  It’s security level is the highest you can get (it uses a 2048 bit key), which means folks should have no qualms about their bank getting raided or whatever if they buy from us.

Users will have a choice of two financial transaction processors – PayPal and Google Checkout for which I’ve set up merchant accounts.  They’re ubiquitous and most people are familiar with their operation nowadays.  I thought about using Amazon, but they don’t currently process for digital items.

The reason that we’ve gone this route harks back to our (i.e. Crawling Chaos’s) independence of spirit – and because our returns will be on par to going the iTunes route, say, for distribution.  We lose about 10% commission in the transaction process compared to a lot more through online download stores.

Dust Mites

I’ve just been adding a few scheduled postings into the Crawling Chaos website.  For those of a mysterious bent, I initially forgot to give a title to the post.  Now because of the way I’ve got permalinks set up on that site and because of the way that WordPress works with its defaults and because the post was the 666th made, the post got called:

http://crawlingchaos.co.uk/666/666/

Crawling Chaos: Homunculus Equinox

I’ve left the page-slug at that but slightly renamed the actual posting to 666 – Spookhouse.  This seems strangely appropriate given the early marketing we used around the time of the original Homunculus Equinox release, don’t you think?

It appears that finally, after much hesitation, the world is going to be able to enjoy the later works of Crawling Chaos which Jeff insisted should be called “Spookhoose“.  These were recorded in the last half of the 80′s.

The Blonde Etheopian

Amended Crawling Chaos Anecdotes page as Holly cryptically says the lyrics derivation of (I’ve Got) Loofahs is wrong.   …er, it’s only about 5 years since I stuck the words up and I clearly ask for corrections (and make them).

But this previously unreleased Harry (Secombe is Coming to Tea) is fine.  Presumably the derivation of these lyrics is okay….;-)

And Shirley, I am being serious. Leslie Nielsen, RIP.

This track is from The Big C.