album artwork/packaging

david sent me a link to this printing place in st peters called rizzeria. basically, they use risograph technology to do their printing. which may not mean a whole lot to you younglings, but when i was in infants school, pre-photocopiers, the biggest thrill you could get was to be asked by the teacher to take their handwritten sheet of paper up to the front office so that the ladies there could run it through their riso to make stencils for the whole class. so then you got to watch them load it into the machine and wind the drum around which made duplicates in wonderful purple ink. if it was really your lucky day, the office ladies might even let you go over and wind the machine yourself. but i digress...

risograph technology, i have just found out, has not actually died out, but has developed alongside photocopiers, though on a much less ubiquitous scale. and it's these new machines that the rizzeria seems to be running with. none-the-less, it is a very economical option for us, and offers up some interesting creative options and so david's design for the album packaging is going to be aimed at using it.

one thing i need in the next few days is lyrics for all the tracks on the album. the ones i've written i can do (of course) but the lyrics the rest of you have written, could you please type them up, proof read them and send them to me so i can compile them all together and send to david? also, anything you would like to have included in the liner notes - credits etc, please send them to me as well.

the last question that has come to me is whether the album should be called 'love on the second stair' or 'love on the 2nd stair'? i don't really have a preference myself, but i think its probably important to resolve it.

elmer takes the corner and it's...it's...it's gone into the back the net off hughes' head!!! :)

bugger. i just wrote a nice literate, in-depth reply, then had a computer crash and lost it all. let's see if i can remember...

the naming of an album is a peculiar thing. what i mostly don't like is earnestness and seriousness in a title. i much prefer oddness, ambiguousness (in a non-earnest manner) or just silliness (without being tacky), but things that will be memorable because of this. i like 'morpheme' and 'pop songs for edith metzger' for those reasons. 'we float around these days' has the potential to be read as earnest, though i don't think it is. 'i saw this and thought of you' is good. another title i had kicked around for a possible compilation, though for various reasons i've never used, but quite like and think it could work for telafonica, is '3 minute laptop solos' (possibly with 'a collection of' in front of it).

o.k.. discipline in the visual department. let's get some boundaries down now. it worked for the music, let's try it. did you have anything in mind? my only real inclination at the moment is to stay away from pure computer generation. i like the look of paint and printing ink etc. i have no problem with computers as such (obviously), but, as re: our conversation on design last night, vector imagery and flat slickness just aren't really doing much for me at the moment. of course, i'd happily be talked out of that position by some great work...

so what are the boundaries?

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i too, would like to play some music in the garage. though it does take a certain discipline to play songs which telafonica doesn't really seem to have displayed any real aptitude towards (i.e., writing first, practising etc). or are we imagining pure improvisation?

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i said i'd put up a list of possible bands to play with. i have to say, it's been rather difficult. i've generally kept to relatively local bands who we could possibly have a chance of reaching, or definitely have a chance of reaching, but there's a couple of dream ones in there too...

architecture in helsinki
gelbison
cloud control
ollo
the detours (? - would we go down with a detours crowd if they weren't all mutual friends?)
telemetry orchestra
deepchild (in live mode, not dj-ing)
don meers (though i haven't seen him listed as playing live for a long time)
the paper scissors
tooth
the crayon fields (yeah, they're from melbourne, but i really like them)

ummm...that's about it at the moment. this really is tough. i think we just need to play every month or so and hopefully each time a couple of people see us that hadn't before, like last thursday.

what's in a name?

i quite like that phrase as a title. another i had thought of, following a comment you made about the lyrics in listening in for static, is 'we float around these days'. should we have a handful of possibilities and then run them through the discussion/editing process.

i had thought of some sort of hook for the remix, but everything i tried seemed to just fill up the space too much without actually being brilliant, so i decided to let the bass line remain as the hook, accentuated by little things along the way. granted, it ain't pop, but then, dub isn't.

i still like the current telafonica site aesthetically, but think it would be good to change. what i think i'd like changing the most is the number of levels required before getting to the actual content. i do, however, like that, even a few years after it was put up, i still haven't really seen anything quite like it on the web. i think that spirit should remain intact. of course, that will probably mean a longer period of creating.

what is our agenda going to be visually? i think we've come a long way in developing an aural agenda in the last few months, and that has helped create the music incredibly. perhaps a similar system of being really specific about a visual agenda will help us develop the idea. is the website going to relate to album packaging in any way? so perhaps the name of the album and its aesthetic are therefore important considerations in terms of the website. is what we do as a live visual thing going to impact on it all?

sorry i don't have any actual ideas at the moment - just vague feelings. but if we can make those concrete, i think it will help.

i've started making a list of people we'd like to play live with. i think we should exchange lists over the weekend.

lastly, have you had a chance to get all the things from your computer into files i can work with at home?