Monday 22 July 2013

welcome to my life.



welcome to my past.

or perhaps a former present.

whatever way you choose to view it, Anubis Horror, to me, is a memoir. it is a certain time, transposed and reproduced via music.

and music should be all about interpretation, which has left a question mark over how far I should go in explaining my own motives and my own decisions when creating this music.

it has been a long, strange journey, and one thing that I am certain of is that the Hunchbakk saga is not up to date, in an alternative reality, the Hunchbakk album would have been completed a number of years ago, I'd have found the time to work on the music and wrap it up quicker.

as such, when sourcing the spoken word material I restricted myself to trawling through poems from a very specific time frame, Open Myself Up and Teenaging had already been written and recorded, so I simply flicked through the pages until I found these among my original scrawlings and worked my way forward, taking notes of the passing years, as noted on occasion by my past self with great foresight

thankfully, by february 'project resurrection' had excavated a total of ten tracks, each in differing stages of completion, leaving my plans for a twelve track album not so far out of reach, it was then matching these up with my words, what to leave as instrumental, what needs adding, what needs changing and what needs completing.

now, if my memory serves me, then there are no lyrics/poetry on my album that were written any later than 2008 or possibly 2009, and of all the music, every single track on the album apart from one had its genesis in the same back bedroom that I wrote all my poetry in.

the time spent crafting it and moulding it to its final shape has felt like a certain form of regression for me, casting my mind back to my old self, my old bedroom, in my old home, I think the lyrics and the music reflects who I was, and now I'm wondering who it was that I left behind, and who I have become.

living in the past hasn't been easy, and the release felt like an absolution of sorts, a chance to start being me again, right now.


perhaps I shall break down the album further in a handful more posts, but for now, allow yourself to wallow in the past that I couldn't put to rest until recently.br>


Tuesday 2 July 2013

debut album, Anubis Horror out now

of course it isn't unreasonable to launch your album from a country other than the one you live in...

a nice glitzy press conference at perhaps a swanky hotel of some sort

and in this day and age of live streaming and digital media coverage, it could be trending on twitter as soon as the first flash bulb pops


except this isn't the way the Hunchbakk album is launched


Anubis Horror, the debut album from Hunchbakk, released on the 29th June 2013



i picked the date specifically, the 29th being the last day that i am 29, my last day in my twenties, alongside the book that I have written, completing and releasing an album before my 30th birthday on the 30th of June seemed a rather achievable goal to aim for after declaring that it would finally see the light of day this year.

except nobody was informed of the release until late on the 30th June, when I sat down in Byte Burger in Alexanderplatz, Berlin, with my girlfriend and finally found myself gifted with wi-fi.

the album had already been online for over 24 hours, and as my sinister phone connected i had to fend off a barrage of facebook birthday greetings before I could finally announce to a small portion of the world that my first opus was among them.

as we were setting off on our journeys last thursday, album set and ready to launch, I did not conceive such an issue occurring, although we had not booked into a hotel with free wi-fi as we had on our jaunt to Iceland, I imagined that I would be checking my emails every time we sat down to eat, I did not imagine that it would be a struggle to use my credit card every time we sat down to eat, with numerous bars, restaurants and train ticket machines only accepting cash, let alone leeching off a bountiful supply of complimentary cyberspace.

by contrast, Rekjavic was overflowing with gratis googling and my credit card tailor made for well-travelled transactions was welcomed almost anywhere, whilst the majority of Berlin was depleting our dwindling fund of paper money at almost every turn as the city seemed to be stuck somewhere in the Eighties (although the lack of dividing wall and my advancing years seemed to argue otherwise).

and so concludes my masterclass in how not to market an album successfully, remember to leave your worries and your mobile network at the airport and abandon all contact with social networks, heck, even old fashioned means of communication may not be possible if you haven't got enough Euros for a postcard and stamp.

but now back in the UK, I can finally publish this post and possibly hop on the campaign trail.

(did i mention that i have an album out?)