All right!
First and foremost: huge and very sincere thanks to everyone who’s listened, downloaded, and/or paid for either of the two new albums. The initial reception has been beyond what I’d hoped for, and it’s deeply appreciated.
There are already new reviews of both albums at guitar-muse.com, Mr. Atavist, and Access All Areas. And two new interviews have recently gone live: a very in depth and wide-ranging discussion with Scott Collins at guitar-muse, and a podcast with John Anealio and Patrick Hester at Functional Nerds.
To briefly touch on a couple of common questions:
– There will be no physical release for either album. There are a number of reasons for this, which I may go into at some point. Long story short, though, these are exclusively digital albums. If you’re so inclined, of course, you totally have my blessing to burn the music to disc and listen to it that way.
– iTunes and Amazon will have both albums eventually, although I’m very much of the mind that Bandcamp offers the best options in terms of fidelity and sound quality. Again, more on that (possibly) down the road.
In other news, altruistmusic.com is slowly but surely being rebooted. Social media has totally made me lazy about web updates, but these days I have a renewed appreciation for a central, personally run site. The most significant changes:
– An updated music section, which includes links to several releases (GrannyKart, Darren Nelsen, the New York Guitar Festival concert recording) that got a bit lost in the shuffle over the last couple of years, or that I haven’t really given proper attention to;
– The press section has been updated and expanded, with some new additions that I haven’t previously documented, and a lot of archival reviews and interviews that are available again for the first time in a long while;
– There’s also a new blog site (which you’re reading right now!), along with the usual boilerplate bio, links, and pseudo-third person writing style.
In the immediate future: drumming up more awareness of the new music! If you have suggestions for blogs, publications, podcasts, or other outlets that would be sympathetic towards either release, feel free to drop a line. And ultimately, word of mouth is the best possible promotion – many of you have already posted about the albums, in various forums, and I greatly appreciate it. I’m still squeamish about asking people to do promo for me, but there’s truly no replacement for genuine enthusiasm and interest, and if you can take a moment to spread the word, it’s fantastic.
So, again: huge thanks to everyone for giving the new music a chance. More info (and more music…?) coming sooner than later, I think…
As always: THANK YOU FOR LISTENING.