25/06/2007

remixes et al

i received the first fruits of our search for some remixes today. i've just got an mp3 at the moment. it's from a guy in a band called this sad machine. they've done 'tape noise' (can anyone think of a better name for that track?). i'll e-mail it to you. let me know what you all think of it. andreas has chosen to do 'this is the new thing' and andy has chosen 'item number'. it's nice how different people are all being attracted to different pieces.

i've fixed all the links now so they all open in new windows. we also received our first blog spam today, we're really moving up in the world.

any progress on web stuff? our various sites are getting stranger - i haven't touched anything but now telafonica.com opens up as a directory menu on firefox, though it still opens them main front page in explorer (only with everything linking back to my pc so it doesn't work). let's hurry up and get rid of it!!

does cell have any time to come and do some more vocal recording? i've got some holidays coming up so plan to get a fair bit of this stuff finished.

20/06/2007

Detach the emergency pod detachment!

Well – apologies for slow to no posting in the last little while. As I think I mentioned on the phone - I’ve been experiencing a period of profound vagueness for about 3 weeks… which I’m sure has limited my ability to write sentences. I cant really describe the situation except to say that I’ve pretty much lost touch with reality to the point that most everyday activities feel like an out of body experience. There is a popular theory developing that I don’t actually exist! I’m doing my best to prove this untrue by finishing sentences and maintaining eye contact during conversation as much as possible. (Not necessarily an easy task!) Either way – the best tactic I can create at this stage for escaping this mysterious limbo is to ride it out… this worries me slightly as I usually like to be proactive when faced with existential crisis.

All my failures are public and all the kids are laughing only at me

Regarding the 4-4-2 website – I can only suggest that I’ll need to go through the site and work out what’s going on. I could probably do this over the next week or so… In the meantime, perhaps we should put up some kind of holding page… because it is a rather ugly break! And as much as you’d like to deny it – people use IE.

Can we please check that we can set all links to open in new windows before we change public links to the blog?

18/06/2007

why does internet explorer suck so much?

i've uploaded the fixed 4-4-2 index page you sent me. it's fixed some of the problem, but it is now trying to link back to my computer rather than the server. now this is just bizarre, because you did the code and i didn't edit it - why is it defaulting back to my computer??!! the same issue is also happening on the telafonica website (which will no doubt be superceded any day now anyway) - all the links and images are trying to be retrieved from my computer, therefore nothing actually works.

of course, none of these problems seem to be occurring on firefox.

17/06/2007

updates

o.k. i've updated the side bar stuff so that all of it is now in html elements rather than the presets blogger gives you. so everything opens in new pages down the side bar now. if we add links in a post, can we use code to open in a new page without overriding the css thing?

so, if there's no further objections, i'm going to switch all external links to this blog to the new address which will mean everyone else gets to see the pretty side graphic as well.

15/06/2007

10 000

it is absolutley beyond my comprehension, but 'the man with the golden sickle' e-single which was released right at the end of december has now officially been downloaded ten thousand times. i'm just really not aware how these things happen and who is therefore listening - i wish it could be tracked! but this month's e-single which has been up for about 2 weeks already has nearly 3000 downloads. so it seems to be reasonably consistent when i get around to advertising it well!

i've been reading the march edition of wire, which is the most recent one locally, and there's some great quotes i need to write down. i'll do that later. but a question - it's obviously done on purpose, but why does arguably one of the best music magazines in the world have such poor art direction? is it reactionary? is it to avoid the ageing process (i.e. if there's no aesthetic then it's a timeless aesthetic)? can music and art not intertwine in a way that is good but not fashion driven? can we pull off something like that?

07/06/2007

non-format

o.k.. this is going to take incredible self control - NO FORMATTING on this post!!

most of the stuff down the side of this blog is reasonably related to what the actual blog is for - i put a 'recent inspiration' thing there for if we ever want to just add a link to a site that may have something to do with what we are discussing or just something we might take on board - you suggested something like this a while back to save making a complete post. so i guess it's kind of like the allb blog, but specific to telafonically inspiring things - feel free to use it.

same with the reviews - i figure the music i'm listening to and what i'm thinking of it will help contextualise the music we make - likewise the allb blog as it relates to visual inspiration.

i put the telafonica releases up but have to agree in thinking they're probably not quite that necessary here as to make them dominate so much. i've streamlined the compilation section and am thinking i'll probably do something similar with our own releases once i get home and can resize the images etc (none of that uploading large images and have html code to resize it down - makes for very ugly residue - something i learned from some obscure designer).

i'm keen to keep as many links to our things as possible there because, especially with the links in from cyclic defrost etc - it's a place that there is a reasonable chance people might make first contact with us, so i think it's good to be able to direct them out from here.

i'm also beginning to like the virb site quite a bit. we had our first friend requests in the last couple of days - 5 in all. as a social experiment, i decided to make 5 friend requests to start with (things like caribou/manitoba, underworld etc) and then see how it grows by itself from people making friend requests to us. probably a bit of an egotistical process, but i'm interested to see how it goes! i also think that the virb site is the one most likely to work as a content base - full release details (there's separate pages for each release on virb), photos, gigs etc. it can be manipulated around as much as the blogger site, so we can keep their aesthetics reasonably close.

i spent last night around at andy rantzen's place - we're planning a retrospective of some sort on 4-4-2 music. it will be a combination netlabel release/limited edition cd-r release/discography website thing. wanna help me!!??

lastly - i'm thinking that a july gig/cd launch may be a little close! how would you feel about playing just like now in september? the band already booked for then is an electro kind of thig called 'sound it out'. their demos are getting a bit of buzz on fbi (including ajax playing it regularly and calling it one of his favourite local things at the moment) and it will be their first ever gig. i think we could fit in reasonably well.

06/06/2007

CSS infighting

If you keep adding your own embedded style formatting to your posts - we continue to be unable to control it without editing individual posts. grrr.

disconnect

It does work well to have links and info down the side of the site. It does feel like it’s changed the focus of the blog somewhat. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it almost seems to place this dialogue at the core and everything else is a side note. I wonder if we could use just links that jump to catalogue, profile, bio etc rather than listing things out so much.

Could we make a new title for ‘other blogs we contribute to’ so it only goes on one line. I was going to do it the other day, but my mind went blank when I tried to make a new title.

Html holes. Urg. I will try to get a look at it asap. Is it the new version of IE we’re talking about?

Interesting comments about the zine thing. It’s interesting when limitations become a design focus. Sometimes this works wonderfully well, but other times it feels… well limited. I think a designer’s motivation for using materials or techniques does bleed into the design – whether it be just by means of sub conscious influence. So, when something is made a certain way just because there was no choice it shows in the design – but when a limitation is embraced, stretched, explored and inverted – the whole thing becomes not about limitations but possibilities.

I’m really interested in the contrast of complex or detailed black overprints on simple bold colours; perhaps coloured paper or colour screen prints, stencils or free painting. I had actually used a coloured circle on the blog header design which I then removed for some unknown reason! It would be great to use a whole bunch of papers in one booklet.

03/06/2007

trackworks

i've been playing around with putting content onto this site - what do you think of it. it's fairly basic in terms of its aesthetic, i'm happy for you to play with it. but that kind of stuff should free up telafonica.com so it can be art rather than information. i'm thinking this kind of content can also go on the virb site, and possibly the myspace site, so that however anybody stumbles across us, they can find out stuff.

also, i seriously need you to dig me out of the html hole that i've created on the telafonica.com site as well as the 4-4-2 music site. neither of them functions in internet explorer. which would be fine, because i hate explorer, but 95% of the world or something uses it by default instead of firefox. both sites work fine on firefox, but both resort to strange link names, or links back to my computer (which therefore obviously don't work) when run on explorer. what's the best way to go about fixing them up?

02/06/2007

d.i.y.

we went in to the zine fair that's part of the sydney writer's festival this afternoon, and bec and i both spent a few dollars here and there on different things. but what it mostly brought home to me is the idea that when i think of handmade, i think of quality that is better and more interesting than mass production. while there was lots to like at the zine fair, a large chunk of it is that nihilistic kind of aesthetic. it has its place and i don't dislike it, i just don't ever imagine wanting to produce it myself. photocopiers, for example, can be used in part of something that looks quite beautiful, it doesn't have to just be low quality because it's cheap. it's something i know we've discussed a fair bit already, but it just confirmed in me that what we think about handmade is because it's what i actually do like the most - not because i've been talked into it!

with that in mind - there's also another project for 4-4-2 music that has arisen in the last couple of days - a bit of a dream release for me - so i'll tell you about that in an e-mail.

soooo....what are we doing for telafonica packaging!!! i do like the idea of a book of some sort with a cd in it, rather than a cd that has a booklet attached. looking at the blog design you did i also like the black and white, but have been thinking that tiny splashes of just one colour are really effective in that context. for example, we both agree that the orange writing is probably a bit much, but i could imagine that if everything is b&w&grey, then, for example, the name 'telafonica' was orange (or whatever colour) it would be really striking. and that idea could possibly be extended into things like the packaging - overlaying single colour screenprints on greyscale prints on nice paper etc.