new music, it is coming (Patreon)

hello guys. 

for those of you who have been grumpy about the lack of new music, there is good news and bad news. the good news is, I've made it. the bad news is, you're gonna have to wait a little while. 

a note: something about writing those ultralong last few posts and seeing all your comments has reminded me to use this platform the way I used to use my blog...to simply check in and tell you how I'm feeling and what's happening. I think the baby changed things...well, scratch that, I *know* the baby changed things. I just haven't had the energy for months to just sit down and write my thoughts out for no reason other than to simply share them. and weirdly, before that, it was the book. the book ate my blogging, because all of a sudden all my thoughts were going into a book draft instead of the blog. then, before I could recover, pregnant. I'm finally feeling back again. 

also/and, I used to host my main blog on amandapalmer.net  it seems like no traffic is going over there anymore and I was just using Twitter and Facebook to try to push people over to the blog because it just wasn't 2003 anymore when people bookmarked blogs and went to check them every day.  at least when I blog here I know you're all emailed, and I figure if I have something to blog about that's massively important, I can use medium. it annoys the fuck out of me that Patreon won't build in technology that allows more then one photo per blog, but sometimes I find myself relieved by the constraint. anyway: 

 so

i left London proper, after giving away a crown of Bowie thorns and came to Essex, where Edward and Imogen Heap both live. I spent all day yesterday in Edward's home studio, putting tiny finishing touches on our record...fixing a vocal here and there, adding synthesized bass to one song, doing an entirely new vocal take of an old song of Edward's that he wanted to rearrange for this record. we listened through to the whole album and decided on titles for the songs that didn't have titles yet. this record is really, really good. the songs are fully collaborative and co-written by me and Edward...some lyrics began with me, some with him, I wrote a lot of the melodic beds and Edward took the lead on a lot of the vocal melodies. we literally merged our heads and poetic worlds to make a new universe. it's so beautiful. and it's very dark, but it's also very light. it's a deep bath of an album. 

all told, we started recording it over a year ago and it it won't be out until this spring...that's how long it's going to take to get it mastered and to get the artwork beautiful and the vinyl made. 

some Things take a long time. 

and some Things don't. I look at the difference between this record - almost two years in the making, with a dozen songs that are super-complicated - and the Thor Thong I just put out...and the dad record...and my head just explodes. they are all work. having read so many of your comments the other day it's astonishing that so much of this stuff is about packaging and perception. some of these Edward songs will have taken 50 hours of work, if you include the violin overdubs and all the mixing and mastering. the Thor song took about 10 hours. but...it feels like it would be criminal to make each song on this album a Thing. do you see how confusing this gets? meanwhile ...I'm so glad the feedback on the Thor song ("The Sound of People Dancing") was so positive. I loved writing it. I'm looking forward to using your feedback to edit it down for public consumption. 

and now...

I'm staying at Imogen Heap's house and I spent a long time talking about this with her today...and I found myself explaining how weird it is that the way I planned to solve this weird problem was to try to divide the Edward record into three Things: an album release and two videos. if I keep the budget for each video at around 10k, the rest of the Patreon money can then get split between me and Edward for those videos and it will cover more of the costs of this album-making and put more dough in our pockets. and it's funny how that's he opposite of how it used to be: you'd LOSE money to make a video that would hopefully make people want to buy your records. weird. 

anyway...

yesterday I was chatting with Edward and asking him if it would help him in his life, financially, if I were to give him an advance on his cut of the Patreon (which he'll get when i Thing the record this spring)...and he said yes, it really would help. he's about to go on tour this fall with the pink dots, they're playing small venues and they split all the profits 6 ways...he's one of those musicians who really is scraping by.  this kills me. he's my hero and such a brilliant songwriter and such a hard-working musician. if it's okay with you, I think I'll try to put one of the songs out early, in September, to give you guys a taste of the record to come and also to unstick Edward's life a little bit.

my friends.  I cannot tell you how much it touches me that I'm able to do that for someone whose songs and music and words got me through my adolescence. it's like the ultimate karmic boomerang. bam. 

we did a photoshoot today for the record...we hired a local London photographer named vikki, and she came out to Imogen's house...we shot in and around the house and studio and in the garden in the rain. Edward brought his six year old daughter, Alice, who brought her favorite dress and got to sport it for the shoot. here's a little iphone shot of one of our set-ups. a few seconds later, we added a baby. everybody was so, so, happy today. it felt like the perfect ending to a perfect collaboration. 

please don't think i'm being corny when I say I feel so grateful that the Patreon is making my dreams come true. I'm making the art and music I want, on my own schedule, and I'm sharing my good fortune with the most deserving people on the planet. 

I cannot imagine  how my life could be any better. 

if you're out there, reading this, please understand - right now in this moment -how much it means to me that you trust me with your money to make art. it's blossoming into something more beautiful than I even imagined. 

xx afp 

p.s. as usual, click through to comment, I'm reading