Sunday, December 16, 2012

3rd album finally released into the wild!

“Life On The Trapeze” 

So, here’s my third album of songs, 16 in all recorded between 2010 and 2012, and covering a fairly wide spread of genres, including jazz/blues, country rock, latin rock, acoustic rock and some odd little snippets of my life in non-genre-specific musical packages. 

I had always planned that I’d be in a position to do a “CD release” gig of some sort to celebrate the release of this one, but that hasn’t been possible. Maybe next album ☺ 


Once again, although I’ve played most instruments myself, there is a collection of 11 other players/singers who have helped me out. It’s a worldwide collaboration on some songs, with players and singers from Australia, the US and Norway. 


It’s the first of my albums where I’ve had members of the Pambula Beach Garage Band collective involved – on “Big Car – No Shoes”. I’m hoping to get more songs done with them for my next album. 


Included on the album is the song “(You Got Me) Spinnin’” which won me the “Artist Of The Year 2011” on the MSI international music website http://msi.icweekly.net/ 


Putting a collection of songs together is a fascinating process. To start, you need some songs worth spending time on, then you need to make the time! This has taken me over a year in preparation. All songs have been re-mixed and re-mastered so the quality is absolutely as good as I can get it. There are a couple of songs which haven’t been heard before, and quite a few that have – they are all originals, and all vastly better mixed than any previous versions. 


I’d really appreciate it if you had a listen to the tracks at http://jiguma.bandcamp.com/album/life-on-the-trapeze 


If you feel that you'd like to do a review of the album, I'd greatly appreciate it. You can buy individual tracks for $1 each or the whole album (download in a choice of digital formats, and including a .pdf lyrics booklet, a “make your own CD kit” and a video of “Safe Hands”) for $10. I’ll also have a limited number of “real” CDs (that you can play in your CD player) for $20 each plus postage (which includes the downloadable album and the other goodies that come with it). I’m also hoping to have it available on iTunes, but that may take a little while. If you’re short of $$, you can just listen. 


Almost forgot, you can also buy some spiffy “Life On The Trapeze” t-shirts @ $15 each from the BandCamp page already listed. 


Hope you have a Happy Christmas break and that 2013 is good to you, Neil

Saturday, December 1, 2012

My "producer's hat"

Although I haven't released too many of my own songs recently (although that should change pretty soon) i have been busy with PBGB. The main result of this has been the production of two videos with Bill Brown for the ABC on camera of Garry Carson Jones, Jem Savage, Ken Vatcher and Dave Crowden. Garry wrote the songs, and the boys played up a storm. It was an honour to be recording engineer on the day and to also manage the mixing of the tracks ready for adding to the video.
The good news is that both videos were made "video of the week" on the ABC South East Music site - two weeks in a row. The video of "Kumeka" has now been included on the national ABC Online site: ABC Local Music – where one of the content streams is “Live to tape”, films and recordings from around Australia.
Bill does a fantastic job of showcasing local talent.

Watch Whatever You Say and Kumeka below: