[np: Trainspotting Soundtrack]

Allow me to start my first diary entry of the year with a moment of silence for Hunter S. Thompson, who took his life sometime last night... Nah, fuck that. He'd beat me about the head for that. As I don't have any ether handy, I'll pour out a few thoughts on the subject. Initially I was really sad to hear he had left a huge skidmark on the world and moved on. But in reading about his demise, I came to realize that this wasn't a tragic moment of weakness for a great artist, but more of an in character "screw you" to the world that is so fitting that it shouldn't have been any other way. Thompson was never "meant" to be old. I imagine he woke up yesterday morning, said to himself "Ah, fuck this", and that was that.

At any rate, all I can say is that his work had an immense impact on me in my early twenties, not so much in his excesses, but in his views of the perversion of the American Dream, seeing what it truly amounts to. If he thought it was tainted in the mid/late seventies, I can only imagine what he thought of "American Idol", the ultimate travesty. I take from Thompson's teachings that cynicism, and although the oppresive culture got the better of him in many ways, I can always read his books for a little escape into a world without boundaries.

Yup.

Well the last week has found me working odd hours and tearing my studio apart again. As much as I hate to admit it, I am a firm believer in the necessity of "Feng Shui" in one's studio. Not in that goofy eastern mysticism bullshit kind of way, but in a more practical way. It's really, really difficult to be creative in a space that doesn't have the proper "flow" to it.

The first time I put the studio together in the new space, there were just a number of things a little off about it. I had to walk around the Triton from my chair in front of the computer to get to the other keyboards. There were cables running across the floor (and everywhere else). The mixer and the patch bay weren't labelled. I was using a DJ mixer as a submix of random inputs into the main recording mixer, and it had a really low input/output and hence was really noisy. Trying to work on anything and get anything recorded was just a headache.

So that's bad. In the middle of recording a guitar part, I trhew up my hands and said "screw it". In two hours every piece of equipment was in the hallway. Over the course of the week, I slowly reintegrated each piece of equipment, carefully testing how well it worked with everything else and how it worked with the... Well, not to sound incredibly pretentious, but "the flow of my creativity". I finally finished up tonight, and was really psyched to play around.

And yet all the Feng Shui in the world can't always get the ball rolling. Dammit. I putzed around for a good two hours, without much to show for it. Wasn't a songwriting night, apparently. I'm going to take a stab at it again later on, maybe just play with sounds a bit.

Nothing like a cigarette and a diary entry to get you started again. We'll see where I end up.

Well this last weekend was it. The last show with Amanda and Brian was Friday at the Quest Ascot Room. It was a pretty fun night - but there was something off about it. Maybe that it was our last show and it was kind of sad. But there was just a strange vibe in the room. We had a few people there, not as many as we may have liked, but as many as we may have expected. Only a few people from the tcelectronic scene came, but that was not a shock at all. In fact, that was quite expected as well. We did a set which was alright, but not overly wonderful. The show's line-up was good, but it's difficult when everyone's kind of mellow and downtempo. It's just not exciting. We are not a band that should be playing in a big club setting - we are a band that should be playing during a romantic dinner, or wine tasting or at a coffee shop.

That's why Saturday night was so much fun. Sat night was the first eb show (again) back to just Nick and me. It went really well. We just had it that night - the crowd was very into it - we played very mellow romantic songs while people dined in candlelight, sipped at champagne and as we were told after the show, got very horny. :) always nice to hear ;)

We are working on our next album - which is pretty exciting. We are taking some time off live shows, although we will be performing during Labor Day Weekend in Salt Lake City at a Different Drum Synthpop Festival. We plan on doing a remix album (Upbeat, Etc) that will be synthpop remixes of 6 of our songs. Should be fun to do and perform. I am looking forward to doing a synthpop set. One that people can dance to. Doing the kind of music we do has been a very difficult feat. It's true, you cannot dance to the music we do - it's chill, it's downtempo, it's trippy, it's romantic. Of course if you're a synthpop band, you're going to have more people out there, more people dancing, more people coming to your shows to dance. It's easier - if we wanted to get more people out, we would turn into a synthpop act - have keyboards, a laptop on stage and attempt to look european while we imitated kmfdm, wolfsheim, etc (i love wolfsheim and they're too good to be imitated). but, we don't do the music for this reason. We do it because we love it. We do it because it moves us - we don't do it to fit into some goth scene or so we can be played at the gar bar - the saloon in minneapolis on monday nights. don't get me wrong, i love the saloon - i heart it, in fact, but when i go out to a gay bar, i want to dance to madonna, JT and Britney with my gay boys - i don't want to listen to some goth, synthpop band that nobody knows. we are now not in a music scene at all - but i am glad to get away from the minneapolis music scene. the scene really wasn't important to be in. especially when all other electronic bands in the twin cities were not like us at all. we are moody, romantic music. we don't rock out. we don't get people up and dancing. we don't get people wanting to get drunk. we are a martini/wine/cigar band - and i didn't really find a big market in mpls for that. people in the scene were not very supportive or nice to each other. i don't mean everybody - we definitely had friends within the scene. our last show, we got to hang with LTB (who we really got along with) and we definitely respected a lot of the musicians - the problem with a "scene" is that nobody is really looking to make your band succeed - of couse, they are only looking for their own best interests - - but you can you blame someone for this? isn't that the way life is in general? if only we could stop pretending in the scene that this was not the case. a scene is more of a connection rather than a support system. if i could have just understood this from the get go, it would have made a whole lot more sense. This is why we are taking time off to do our album - - this next one is going to be the best album by far - than the state4 and previous eb album. we have learned a great deal from the past 2 albums and are also writing some better songs.

i really love what we're doing and i'm glad that we have the support system from our fans. we have gotten some great reviews on cdbaby.com - check them out here: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/endlessblue

THANKS to everyone who has been there for endless blue - you have not seen the last of us yet!!!