I have to admit I have had much to detract me from the pleasures of diary writing and the reasons for which will become abundantly clear.
As any straggling remaining readers of my utterances will know, we've just premiered 230503, and as a result, we've acquired some long-dormant momentum.
Firstly, Anubis is now on ProgArchives. That is huge. That site basically forcefeeds overblown music to it's demographic. (Overweight 30 - 40 year old men with egg-encrusted beards, living in a shed on their mother's property, and spending all day on on-line forums debating if Yes is really Yes without Jon Anderson - wait, that almost IS me, isn't it?)
ProgArchives, when you begin to get some reviews trickling in, gives you visability and that said visability gets you an international audience. And it's beginning to have an effect.
The show, whilst I'd love to say went off without a hitch, actually went off with a couple of very big ones. Firstly, one of the support bands exercised musical terrorism and ate away both our soundcheck and line check time. By taking 40 minutes to set up, possibly in protest to the imposing collection of furniture stage left (my keyboards remained set up all night), our set up and sound check time literally disappeared. They effectively hijacked our night. They also had the nerve to make some rather uncomplimentary remarks about us and our 'scale and pretention'.
It's prog rock, you twat... what the hell did you expect?
Musically, they were supremely gifted musicians, but playing atonal free-improv alienated our audience. They didn't heckle. They just left the room. We stayed to be gracious but as their set cruised ever-closer to our start time, I confess all grace evaporated. And boy, does that put you on edge.
Next, the hammond organ shorted out the stage power. We're on stage, trying to get set up, and I'm already grinning, and then everything dies. My samples....
to re-load them takes 15 mintes. That's WHEN you get the source of the power trip isolated.
Had we had our soundcheck, I could have substituted it for the OB3 which was sitting in my car waiting for such a disaster. With no time to spare, I was forced to pull out the (quite frankly) evil inbuilt organ sounds on my roland synths. And thus became that sort of neo-prog keyboard player I loathe.
With curfew looming 65 minutes into a 70 minute set, we decided to make a go of it and hope the samples came on line before I needed them. The keyboard sounds were totally wrong, and I was constantly editing patches on the fly to make up for what I was missing. A terrible experience and absolutely no fun at all.
The first essential sample is the second half of Breaking Water. Where the sea noises and chords accompany Dean's best seagull impersonations. The samples finished loading about 4 seconds before we got there. Crisis 2 avoided.
The upside was an incendiary performance. I think the aggression, frustration and sheer dark energy surrounding the events fuelled the band, and some of those moments are positively terrifying. Anonymity is purely electric.
The performance isn't great. I wouldn't release it. A few moments are truly breathtaking in their feeling and power and others are truly breathtaking in their horror. Bad stage sound, flustering and tuning errors combined to make it truly awful in a few parts.
Yet a show is judged on it's reaction and this was by far our best. The audience stayed with us for our 65 minute set (Steve played very fast!!!!) and made The Collapse a standout track.
The benefit as that the success of the show gave us the chance to do it properly at the next gig. We'd already been invited to do FeatherFest when Mike from Birds Robe offered us the chance to perform 230503 again. I jumped at the chance. To do it at, of all places, the Annandale, which has been a venue I have dreamed of playing for years and years, and my preferred venue to launch it anyway, is a wonderful thing and evidence that regardless how unenjoyable The Wall show actually was for me, that it had been artistically successful and resonated with people.
To put the last show into perspective, however, I heard the unmixed multitracks last night and was surprised at how good it actually was. Much of my ire had been at the poor mixing but when put into perspective it was far better that I'd given it credit for. Still no where near our best, but far far better than I'd initially thought.
We look on to the Annandale with cautious enthusiasm.
Possibly as a result of the ProgArchives thing, we found our online sales have picked up. And to an exceedingly unlikely source. Japan.
So far we've sold 31 copies of the physical CD to Japan, and have been paid in full.
I never expected that people in other parts of the world would be attracted to 230503. I still find it a little unbelievable.
Putting the online store up has been a remarkably good idea.
T-Shirt sales on the show night were gratifyingly robust and people have been spotted in Sydney wearing our beloved Pat on their chest. Lucky Pat.
So with all that happening, it seemed the perfect time to launch www.anubismusic.com. The new site is now up and looks startlingly good in it 230503 inspired theme. You can hear a couple of bits from the album, as well as the live recordings from the Lansdowne last year.
So everything is hurtling forward. 230503 is doing it's job and we're beginning to think about album #2. Demos have been swapped amongst band members and so far we're all pretty up for making something new and exciting.
In the meantime, I'm off to rehearse for the Annandale.
