Blog: Preparing For Relaunch

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The other day on the tube i briefly PAUSED my current iPod album rotation (Allo Darlin, The School, Allo Darlin, Standard Fare, REPEAT) to have a listen to Regardez, Ecoutez et Repetez. And do you know what? It was DEAD GOOD.

I know, I know, you'd THINK that's how i'd feel, but I was actually quite impressed with it. As with all albums we've EVER done I had bouts of listening to various mixes whilst recording it and then listened to it pretty non-stop in the three months between final mastering and release day, but then pretty much stopped, so the songs now live mostly in my HEAD as the LIVE versions that I do at gigs. Going back to them again, I was really rather pleased!

CONCURRENT with this, I've been doing quite a bit of work on the Database Of ROCK, allied to the forthcoming switchover of the webpage to a different server, and noted that, though Regardez, Ecoutez et Repetez has been selling pretty well it's still a way off catching up with its predecessor, WE VALIDATE! Looking at these figures, and with a listen fresh in my mind, I thought "That's a real shame - in my opinion Regardez, Ecoutez et Repetez is a MUCH better album and deserves to have LOADS more people listening to it. I should sort that out."

And LO! An idea was born - we're going to do a RE-LAUNCH! Now, usually this just means sending out an email and saying "Whoo! Re-launch!" and maybe doing a gig, but this time I thought I'd do something a LITTLE bit different, and stick it on Bandcamp. If you're unaware of Bandcamp it's basically a site where BANDS can upload their albums and PEOPLE can go and download them. The gimmicks of THIS site are that it's [currently] FREE [for the bands], you can download EXTREMELY high quality versions of the songs, there's free streaming of EVERYTHING, and you can add extra tracks and all sorts.

It looks pretty good, so I'm currently working on putting that together. The bandcamp version of the album will be available to download for a FIVER and will come with a free pdf booklet, HAND TOOLED new individual covers for every song and a Super Duper Bonus Track, The Drummer's Lament which I listened to the other day for the first time in over a year and thought "GOOD GOLLY!" as it is QUITE The Thing. Anyway, that's the plan - the actual CD album will of course remain available from the usual outlets (including direct from us) but hopefully this'll be a way of enabling a few more people to HEAR the songs and, with any luck, PURCHASE them.

"This is all well and good", you may be thinking, "but how do you expect to attract these new listeners to the site? MAGIC? EH?" To which I would reply: GOOD POINT. I've been flexing my MIGHTY BRANE on the subject for the past week and yesterday came up with a brand new GRATE IDEA for a video/advert that will be, I hope, sufficiently AMUSING and GOOD to not only get people looking, but also to go and investigate the album. It is, as I believe they say in advertising, a DOOZY of an idea!

I should have the bandcamp page finished in the next couple of days, so I'll put the details in the newsletter next week, and then the video will be heading your way shortly after. In the meantime, here's the OLD promotional video for your delight. I wonder what happened to that "new single" it mentions?


posted 26/3/2010 by MJ Hibbett

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