Spent yesterday working on album art. I first needed a title, I had lots of ideas but I realised that few had nouns in them, images and objects; the original idea of 'Pyjama My Warehouse' is too frivolous, but does have an image, unlike initial ideas of 'Edge of Normal', 'Moments of Terror', 'Fun with Danger'. So I went through all of the lyrics for all songs and noted interesting phrases which included nouns and chose 'The Dusty Mirror', a lyric from the 'Norman Bates' song.
I started work on some cover art but I'm unsure about it, the light dark balance is oddly disconnected with the in mirror/out of mirror drama. The fact that I developed this before coming up with the title has affected things too; perhaps a duty mirror is grey, and baroque, but I like the idea of holding a round mirror, a personal reflection.
I awoke late today after being gripped by many hours of stomach pain in the night, I'll probably never sleep lying down again, having for many years got used to sleeping sitting up due to this pain. I've spent the last five hours on PPL adding tracks to the music database. I've spent years of my life on admin like this, years of filing. That would be a good name for an album.
This album will be my, technically, my 53rd release, although that includes things like the Flatspace Music Packs and the Future Pool and Future Snooker soundtracks, and the few singles. In actual album and EP releases, this is number 40. Not all have been digitally released (The Four Seasons of Dance and The Incredible Journey were burned on the CD-R with a tiny print run of laser-printed artwork), and Synaesthesia has been released and remade four times. Still, I feel I'm am very close to the start, brimming with ideas and energy now. I'm also reminded that digital music is so ephemeral and can vanish as soon as it appears.
We are entering a phase of an explosion and massive change to the way music is made, consumed, and considered. The internet started this but only in the past year have production costs, publication costs, and promotion costs all fallen near to zero. There have been many different phases of music:
1. Church music and performances for aristocrats and rich patrons.
2. Publication and sale of printed sheet music, concerts for a far larger ordinary audience.
3. Recorded music available to almost everyone, promoted by concerts.
4. Concerts promoted by recorded music.
5. Ubiquitous free or low-priced recorded music consumed by and created by almost everyone.
