The Diseases of England Special Edition Package
What a year! I think me and Simon have made more things this year than in any previous, thanks to the different things we decided to make for the packages of our fourth album Diseases of England. We’d already started crowd-funding (directly through our sites) in October 2012, and released the first tracks from the album to backers of the project around then, and the second part at Christmas. We made two videos: ‘Class’ and ‘I Used To Sing’ with some help from Al Rhythm guitarist and the team at Turtle Canyon.
We were overwhelmed by the interest people had in the packages, and eternally grateful to everyone for sharing at the pre-order stage. In the January snows which blocked off our street it kept the lights on and the internet running 🙂
Our 'Cars' car in January
Julia Indelicate in the January snow
In February we launched a Kickstarter campaign SPECIFICALLY for VINYL copies of Diseases of England. We made a little video in the freezing cold on top of a hill in sussex to show you how much we wanted you to pledge for it, so we too could hold the beautiful thing in our hands. We had no idea at this point that it was going to work, and we enjoyed it’s production being entirely in your hands. It worked! If you have a copy, and are that sort of person, you might want to see how many Illuminati references you can find on it.
At the still-not-sure-if-this-is-going-to-get-made stage of the Kickstarter, simon made a little song to encourage Vinyl Junkieism…
Also in February we recorded Part III of Diseases of England with Austen Jux-Chandler at Keith Totp’s Dean Street Studios in London. Every session we’ve done at Dean Street has been wonderful, and testament to Keith’s genuinely being awesome, but this one in particular felt special. Singing at the end of ‘Dovahkiin’ felt good; it felt like the end of the album. Making albums with barely any budget, in a tiny amount of time, can be extremely stressful and fighty, so it’s always pretty astonishing when it comes together at the end. The amount of work Simon did on much of the mixing and mastering of the tracks, along with all the artwork (for literally everything) would have broken lesser men. BUT HE DID IT. I am proud of us, and so thankful that people like the results 🙂
The Clapping take feat. Keith Totp, Simon Indelicate, Charley Stone, David Barnett, Fran Graham, Emma Cooper and others
In April/ May Diseases of England COMPLETE was released! You can get it here:
http://corpor.at/A345
We played some fabulous shows to celebrate, welcoming Emma Lewis (Drums) and Nick Kos (Bass) to the lineup (WE LOVE YOU). My favourite quote from the shows came from Ms Charley Stone: “Kick down the doors! There’s something going down in Waco”. I like her. She’s the one I like.
…and people started to receive their pre-ordered packages. I say this in the manner of someone who has forgotten quite HOW MANY TRIPS I made to the post office at this time. Being a band with an admittedly limited but nevertheless global audience, yet still running as a small business from a house, is fascinating stuff. You make EVERYTHING, so you POST EVERYTHING. It is quite a feat. For the most part the mailing part involved walking up and down the (annoying) hill over and over and over and over again posting boxes containing cds and lyric books and art books and DVDs and magazines and tshirts and posters and tarot cards and jewellery and dolls and fudge and photographs and collectibles. Me and the post office? We’re like totally mates now. They humoured me despite the SHEER VOLUME of packages going out. I have never posted out more of our stuff than I have this year. They deserved holiday chocolates 🙂
Despite almost always having trouble with accepting help (I’m obviously a massive control freak, something I must try to remedy in 2014), this time around we got Grahm of Port Byron Illinois to handle much of the postage in the USA. You saved us serious money man, we owe you many free puppets and books 🙂
I also accepted help from Lydia, here is a picture of her helping me with box sets. She saved me literally hours of work. You rock.
FOR PART TWO of my review, GO HERE: http://www.indelicates.com/2013/12/30/julia-indelicates-review-of-the-year-2013-part-two/
1 Trackback