Mellotronists

The announcements regarding the release of our second album 
'Codetalkers' were made in 2005, and I'm sure a number of you can 
remember them for yourselves. The more astute of you out there can also 
have hardly failed to notice that no such album was ever released.

If you want reasons why then you are probably asking the wrong person. 
We worked hard at it for the months following the release of 
'Soundtracks for Imaginary Movies' and came up with a wealth of new 
material, some of which was progressed and some of which was not. That 
which was was immediately set aside for release on 'Codetalkers' with a 
view to it being polished and sequenced for a swift follow-up. The 
remainder was reserved for development and inclusion on our planned 
third album. Within a very short space of time indeed we had fifteen 
tracks reserved as candidates for 'Codetalkers', most of which were 
finished, we agreed.

The album never happened. Steven got busy at his job and never seemed to 
be available and Greg unfortunately got extremely ill and was completely 
out of action for a long period. The album stalled and never got going 
again. Much was spoken of, but nothing was produced and the impetus 
completely fell out of the entire project. By the start of this year it 
seemed to me quite clear that the band had effectively dissolved and 
that the tracks we had spent so much time on would sit on the shelf 
indefinitely. I know that Steven was keen to press up CDs and make a 
real release of them. Whilst I can commend his vision, I always felt 
that it was financially dubious. The pressings for 'Soundtracks' cost us 
a small fortune and Steven in particular lost money on that side of 
things. My view was simpler; this is a hobby and we are never going to 
be able to buy a yacht on the back of the proceeds from Systems Theory, 
so why not get some web space, put up the tracks and let people have 
them for nothing?

I put this to both Steven and Greg and got a fairly muted response from 
them both. One retort was that 'real' reviewers would never touch that 
kind of release and would only deal with real CDs. My opposing view was 
that free tracks would get us a huge amount of publicity and could 
easily be reviewed by people posting their ideas on the Internet. After 
all, the number of paper published reviews we got were negligible 
compared to the on-line reviews.

I kept up this point of view but seemed to be talking to myself. By mid 
2007 it seemed plain that Greg was perhaps too ill and Steven too busy 
to focus on the project any longer, so I put it to both that the tracks 
for 'Codetalkers' and its follow-up 'Overful Noise Cascade' should be 
put on the web for the free access of anyone who wanted them. This is 
what has now happened.

-- 
Mike Dickson - M400 #996
The Official Cynic of Streetly Electronics
Streetly Sample Library http://www.mikedickson.org.uk/tron

Dude, 
just release them on iTunesUK using a nice indie "digital aggregator"
such as http://www.awal.co.uk
iTunesUK sells more product these days than any record shop ANYWAYS,
so it's a "proper" release.
And if people buy the stuff, you get paid.
If they don't, all it cose you was about 2 hours to type up all the
required paperwork and metadata, the cost of a CD-R and the postage
to, erm, Sheffield.
The yacht will still be in the showroom waiting....


--- In Mellotronists@yahoogroups.com, Mike Dickson <mike.dickson@...>
wrote:

>
> My view was simpler; this is a hobby and we are never going to 
> be able to buy a yacht on the back of the proceeds from Systems Theory, 
> so why not get some web space, put up the tracks and let people have 
> them for nothing?
> 
> I put this to both Steven and Greg and got a fairly muted response from 
> them both. One retort was that 'real' reviewers would never touch that 
> kind of release and would only deal with real CDs. My opposing view was 
> that free tracks would get us a huge amount of publicity and could 
> easily be reviewed by people posting their ideas on the Internet. After 
> all, the number of paper published reviews we got were negligible 
> compared to the on-line reviews.
>