My very big and exciting album cover art announcement!

I'm running pretty late on blog posts right now but I just have to get this in before Record Store Day, because it's kind of the most exciting thing that I have ever done, art-wise!

Last year I was asked by a good friend if I would be willing to do some special album cover art. Not just ordinary everyday special, but artwork for what happens to be my very favorite band, for the past 25+ years: the Legendary Pink Dots. Being asked to do some album cover art for your favorite band is kind of like...well, there's nothing else quite like it. When you've spent a certain number of years of your life writing your favorite band names on high school and college notebooks (or even on steno pads in township committee meetings if life has taken you in that direction), the opportunity to do this for the actual band is pretty amazing.

So, the details are: this is an unofficial Record Store Day release, and the inaugural release of the label Noise Noise Noise, based in California. It will be available in select independent record stores around the country, as well as at the store where the label-owners are based - Factory Records, 440 E. 17th St., Cosa Mesa, Calif. I've never been to the store in person because I haven't been in California in about 20 years, but they will definitely have copies there! They will also have them out where I am, at Vinal Edge in Houston (239 W. 19th St.) and I believe they will be at Sound Exchange in Houston as well (1846 Richmond Ave.). And many other locations around the country, so if you are interested in the LPDs, be sure to check the coolest, most independent stores that you know. :)

While you're at it, read the story of my friends' amazing label, store, and love in this OC Weekly article. It made me cry!! And it's a solid piece of journalism. :D

So, here is the description of the EP from the label itself:
LEGENDARY PINK DOTS - A SCENTED CANDLE E.P.:
All new material from neo-psychedelic musical experimenters Legendary Pink Dots. Three brooding, emotional, quiet, and lovely tracks from this beloved underground Anglo-Dutch experimental rock band! 500 copies pressed: 400 for Record Store Day release, 100 for the band's upcoming tour.

And here is the front cover! 

There is also a totally different back cover which I will post pics of when I receive my copy. It has the same hand-lettered, notebook-drawing kind of look to it. It was done in pen and colored pencil on Bristol board and based on some notebook doodles that I started last autumn.

I've never been in a record pressing plant, but it's one of those things I'd really love to do some day. My friends at the label took some pictures while this record was being pressed, so I am sharing those with their permission:

 

Pretty neat, huh? It's all very magical!

So here is another look at the cover, with some back covers scattered behind it (you can just get a glimpse of it here)...

And below, the inserts...

And here they are all ready to be put together and shipped out.

So if you're a Pink Dots fan, I hope you are able to snag a copy! A million thanks to Dave and Lisa, the folks behind the Noise Noise Noise label, for inviting me to be a part of this, and to the Legendary Pink Dots and Edward Ka-Spel, for allowing my artwork to be associated with their immortal music. It means more to me than words can describe, and I don't think it's ever going to fully set in that I was able to participate in this way. It's the kind of thing you want to go back in time and tell your 17-year-old self!

And whatever your musical tastes are, go out and buy some records on Saturday. :) Support independent music and independent record stores, and keep making and listening to amazing sounds.

Solo album - Dorothy's Ghost, and more musical news

Last month saw the long-awaited release of some early recordings of mine on the UK label Reverb Worship. These were recorded on 4-track under extremely lo-fi conditions in the late 1990s and cassettes were given to a few friends. Now available in a limited edition on cd-r, it includes color cover artwork and matching label art, and can be purchased directly from the label through their website (they accept orders via email, see below) or on eBay. I hope to get myself together technologically in the next few days to post a track or two as listen-only selections on Bandcamp. At the moment I just have some tracks from my experimental project, White Gloves & Party Manners, up there, but check back and before long I should have more...


From the Reverb Worship site:

"Over the course of time, it occurred to me that one of the artists who I really liked a lot, and I wanted to release some music by was Sarada.She has provided some rather lovely vocals to music from a variety of Timothy Renner's musical projects (Stone Breath , Breath Stone and Crow Tongue) plus her own music too.She is also a superb artist and illustrator. Having done a fair amount of "backtracking and musical digging" (more on this subject later on in the year), I eventually asked Sarada if she would be consider doing some music with me.I am delighted to say that she agreed.When the master arrived through my letterbox I was very pleased indeed. Sarada has sent me one of her earliest solo recordings which only appeared on a self released cassette which only got handed out to a small amount of family and close friends.The music on this cassette contains eight wonderful tracks which were recorded by Sarada in the corner of her living room in four track in 1998-1999.What we have here is a real slice of hazy psychedelic wyrdfolk of the very highest quality.It sounds like one of those "lost" recordings that could have been created anytime in the last thirty years or so,  and people "get all freaky" about.To compliment the music Sarada has allowed me to use one of her paintings for the cover design.As a added bonus Sarada has also done a drawing for the cd label.

This cd is available now in a hand numbered edition of 50 copies with artwork printed onto 160gsm bright white card.This cd comes with my very highest recommendation.

UK = £7.00
Europe = £9.00
USA = £10.00
Paypal to roger.linney@btinternet.com
PLEASE EMAIL BEFORE SENDING PAYMENT."

Also available on eBay.


Reviews have been posted on several sites as well:

At The Active Listener

and

In this issue of Bliss Aquamarine

And as a final note this week, on the Stone Breath Bandcamp page, "The Shepherdess and the Bone-White Bird" BOX SET (includes 2CDs + 5" record + booklet - lots of material not available as digital downloads) is available for 20% off. Enter this code at checkout: firewheel

Thanks for looking, and remember to check back with my bandcamp page for some new tracks in the near future!

 

Dark Hollow and Dark Holler

As September draws nearer, things are getting pretty serious with the Halloween stuff popping up. Here are a few more entries in the Dark Hollow art theme by Halloween Artist Bazaar members, as well as a couple of new prints that I have up on Etsy -- which are not Dark Hollow prints, but hey, they are still Halloween.

But another item worth mentioning right now is that over on Dark Holler (see how I did that?) record label, there is a new album available from the band I have been involved with for the past 15 years, Stone Breath. This time around the album is all Timothy and Prydwyn, the pairing that initially drew me to the band when their "A Silver Thread to Weave the Seasons" album was released in the late 1990s. I'm on a bonus track here, but by all means please check out the full album for the most heartfelt, perfect acoustic music you can expect to hear this year. You can also investigate the entire catalog at Bandcamp if digital versions are your thing.

Over in the art department...here once again are my new Halloween works but this time I am talking about the prints that I now have available. You can choose the in 5 x 7 or 8 x 10 inch sizes, and all are in stock as of this writing.

 "Lost in the Dark Hollow" print in 5 x 7 or 8 x 10 by Art by Sarada

 "Cauldron in the Dark Hollow" print in 5 x 7 or 8 x 10 by Art by Sarada

As a side note, I have a few other prints now available of older Halloween art and I will be adding more as the weeks move along their merry way.

"Witch Twins" print by Art by Sarada

"Twilight Tree" print by Art by Sarada

And as promised, here are three more items from other Halloween Artist Bazaar artists. That link right there is to the full HAB shop, but you can also find our stuff on Etsy and other locations...check for the tag HAB, to find a nice assortment!

"Tiny Witch Shrine Box" by Wicked Alterations

"Spooky Tree with Headstone Coffin Box" by Odd Origins

"Will of the Wisp" by Twilight Faerie

Notes from the Gothic Graveyard

About a month ago I was listening to a relatively new compilation 2-CD of "post-punk and dark pop" from 1981-1986 Spain, called Sombras:

Delving into the lesser-explored gothic and post-punk corners of the late-70s through the mid-80s is one of my major musical interests, but there has been relatively little available in terms of reissues of previously unknown obscurities, to my knowledge, so this was an exciting find for me. Since then I've uncovered a few more modern bands that capture that aesthetic (Ashrae Fax, you are amazing), and also found a few private-press albums from that time period that scratch my itch (the 1986 album by the band the Soul Merchants was another recent find). 

The spidery Siouxsie guitars, the echoing empty-room Joy Division drums, and the throb of a Bauhaus bass are all represented in the tracks on that compilation, along with vocals across the spectrum of agony and dolor. It immediately put me in a mind of wanting to gather up pits and pieces of fishnet and spiderweb, silver rings and coffin-shaped things, as I have been known to do since age 14. 

I tried to capture a little of this aesthetic in a new little painting, "Meet Me at the Cemetery Gates," which I have up now. I have vague plans to do more art along these lines, though at the moment I am just of the mind to do cemetery-based paintings with this theme. Among other things, it's fun to play dress-up with paint, putting characters in outfits that I like.

The girls in the painting are both wearing things from my own wardrobe, and carrying purses that I've had at one point or another. Including little details like that is important to me, in capturing that moment where you are hanging out on a spring weekend with your friend taking cemetery photos in 1989. You have to put down your purse, take off your glasses and try to look serious even though you were just quoting the Young Ones to each other.

In fact, here is some photographic proof of myself with a lifelong friend, as we did this very thing some time around 1991. I'm not wearing a gothic gown at this particular moment, but the idea is there.

In fact, armed with black and white film and a home darkroom in the basement, I did quite a bit of cemetery photography back in the day.

And fortunately, New Jersey is full of old and interesting cemeteries and monuments in historic areas.

For now we bid farewell to the graveyard, but I suspect I will do a lot more art along these lines with my musical inspiration. This was never a phase to be grown out of or looked back on with amusement, for me. I love cemeteries, gothic guitars and spidery gowns with even more enthusiasm now -- fueled by several decades of continued musical enjoyment, along with literary and cinematic inspiration, to know that this is a world that will always feel like home to me.

Artist feature: Timothy Renner

Above: "The Benefactor"

The featured artist today, Timothy Renner, also happens to be one of my best friends, for the past 10+ years, and I'm featuring his artwork because it -- along with his music -- is what brought us together in friendship and creative partnership. The image you see above is the cover art for the new vinyl LP being released by our band, Stone Breath, this fall -- "The Shepherdess and the Bone White Bird." As mentioned on the label Web site, The LP will come with a lyric booklet containing psychedelic illuminations for each song by Timothy. Many know him for his black and white, pen and ink illustrations, but he has added bright bursts of hypnotic color to his detailed, visionary artwork for this project.

Natural imagery of skulls erupting from dark blossoms, or blazing within a storm of rainbow fire; sacred images of the Shepherdess, amidst falling leaves or globes of light, are among the inspired pieces in this series.

The quiet, intricate world of his art drew me in before I even heard the music, back in the mid-1990s. Trees, leaves, hands, eyes, sheets of paper fluttering in the wind; the moon, rabbits, moths and birds - infused with what was obviously a complex personal mythology drawing on many sources in religion, art and literature, rooted in a deep love and appreciation for the natural world. Like his music, it had a personal quality that affected me immediately and I felt as though I was finally picking up the strands of a conversation begun centuries before. It affected me enough that I reached out to contact the artist as soon as I gathered the nerve, and we've been working together ever since on musical projects -- Stone Breath, The Spectral Light and Moonshine Firefly Snakeoil Jamboree, Breathe Stone, Crow Tongue and others in between, with many other talented musicians. (I don't count myself among the talented, musically, but they let me sing with them anyway!)


"The Vision of the Face in the Well"

Some of the original artwork used in the booklet for this CD is available for sale at the label Web site, Dark Holler Arts, on this page. The original cover artwork is still available, as are several other pieces -- each comes along with a copy of the LP and some other goodies as well. And, of course, the LP itself is available for $20 and includes a cd-r of all of the tracks -- the link for that purchase is at the very bottom of the page I linked to above.

To see the full catalog of titles available in the music catalog, visit the main page.

"The Shepherdess of the Fiery Wheels"

Illuminated letter from lyrics booklet, letter "I"

To hear music from the new album, or from some of the older releases, please visit the Myspace page at http://www.myspace.com/StoneBreath.

There is also a newly launched fan page for the band over at Facebook.

I can't really do justice to my friend's work in a single blog post so I hope to share more of his pen and ink work later this year. Please visit the sites, take a listen and enjoy!