Today I picked up the new Shadow Out of Tim stickers and they look great (above right). On my way back I stopped in at Divine Industries and Allen gave me some www.discrevolt.com cards of the new album (also pictured above). We got 100 of these cards which basically you use to download the songs from the new album. It’s a bit experimental but we think there is a market for them. They’re cheaper than buying the album, but you don’t get all the packaging. I myself have always been a packaging guy (for my favourite bands, at least) but I can understand the other side. So we’re interested in ways of making them fly. The band is releasing the album worldwide on the 21st of June, and having the fan appreciation week starting on the 14th, but maybe we’ll make these available to the hardcore fans earlier than that still. Like tomorrow or something. The cards are also vaguely collectible. It will be an interesting experiment, and we may do more cards for the back catalog.
The Last Vault Show
Good rock show last night at The Vault. No complaints about the new material so far! Devon was there and he gave me one of the very first run of Thickets shirts – even I didn’t have one of these, until now! Before the times of computrons and digital garment printers, we made our shirts with a cardboard stencil and an airbrush. Behold!
Also, I made up a group on Flickr, currently with 78 photos and graphics of The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. If you have any Thickets photos, feel free to add to the group! Thanks
Here is the URL:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/383696@N21/pool/
Thursday June 14 is Fan Appreciation Day for The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets!
Thursday June 14 is Fan Appreciation Day for The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets! We’ll have some special events so stay tuned to any of the following sites for more updates:
http://www.myspace.com/darkestofthehillsidethickets
http://www.thickets.net
Facebook Thickets Fan Club: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2201042436
http://www.yahoogroups.com/group/thedarkest
I’m working on new buttons and stickers.
Here’s the blurb I did up for a press release the other day:
When is an H.P. Lovecraft story not a book? When its an album by The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, of course! Following their seven year tour of outer space in support of Spaceship Zero: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, The Thickets return to Earth and the waters off New Zealand in a very special operatic adaptation of Lovecrafts The Shadow Out of Time. In HPLs original tale set in 1913, Professor Peaslee of Massachusetts has his mental faculties swapped by an alien mind and learns terrible truths about life on Earth and beyond. The Vancouver, BC nerdcore bands The Shadow Out of Timtheir third full-length album and fifth CD releasefeatures modern marine biologist Dr. Timothy Vess descent into madness brought on by similar circumstances. The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, a cult mainstay since 1992, take you on a rock n roll tour through space and time, painting sonic pictures of the ocean deep, mysterious ruin-covered islands, and Paleocene jungles. Five out of five Cthulhu scholars agree The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets The Shadow Out of Tim is the perfect soundtrack to occult investigation!
I Competed!
This Tuesday evening was the first annual Ukelele Slam! Contestants performed original songs for prizes. It was announced at the last monthly Ukelele Jam and Joyce and I said “yeah! We should do it!” But we didn’t get our stuff together until the night before. We slapped together a song and performed it at the slam. I think the song itself is sound but the execution was pretty laughable. There were 8 contestants – Joyce and I were the only team – and we placed 7th. It’s a good thing we didn’t place in the top four because we both forgot that those who made it to the second round had to perform a second original song – and we had not even begun to write one! Overall it was a lot of fun and despite our poor ranking the crowd really enjoyed our antics. And our prize for placing 7th was getting our $5 entry fee back. Good-natured fun for all, and now I’ve forced Joyce on stage. Woot!
Now I want to put together an intro to ukelele Slackademics workshop. Who’s interested? I know where to get $10 ukeleles if you don’t already have one.
de4dmeta1 is My Guitar Hero
Watch “A Marine Biologist” on Guitar Hero II in this youtube clip from de4dmeta1. Pretty sweetass. I wonder if we’d get in trouble if we released an actual music video for one of our songs this way. Too bad none of the characters in Guitar Hero wear Lovecraftian monster costumes. Although Pandora’s feather outfit is in the neighbohood.
Yeah, Expert baby!
A Marine Biologist Video Idea (please disseminate)
Marine biologist footage needed for rock video
Are you a marine biologist? Do you want to be in a rock video?
Hello all, this is Toren Atkinson, science lover and lead singer for the Lovecraftian rock band, The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. You may, at http://www.thickets.net/toren/darkestofthehillsidethickets.mp3 [link] or http://www.myspace.com/darkestofthehillsidethickets [link] listen to/download the mp3 for “A Marine Biologist,” a fun little number about bathyscaphes, benthic trawlers, giant squid, etc.
I would like to create a video for this track that essentially features marine biologists from across the globe. The idea would simply be a series of video clips of marine biologists doing what they (you?) do, with text at the bottom of the screen detailing who it is we’re looking at, their location and specialty. So, for example, if we got a clip of Dr O’Shea, it would something to the effect of:
DR. STEVE O’SHEA
AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND (and/or specific institution)
SPECIALTY: THE GIANT SQUID
The footage doesn’t need to be created from scratch just for the video – I’m perfectly happy with any video of any quality where it’s clear who the marine biologist is, and that he/she/you are in their element doing marine biology stuff – whether that be in the lab, on site recording courtship sounds…whatever.
So the entire video would be like a profile of worldwide marine biologists set to our song. Hopefully the video would appear on various music/TV shows–MTV, Muchmusic, and their equivalents, but at the very least it would go out throughout the internet, youtube, on our site, and into your hands as well to do with as you wish.
To make this happen – I need your cooperation!
If you are a marine biologist and want to help out would you:
a) contact me at thickets@uniserve.com and we can work out how to get video footage from you.
b) provide a statement that you give permission for The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets to use the footage and your likeness strictly for the purpose of this music video
c) see also (d) below!
If you are not a marine biologist, can you please
d) spread this around to any marine biologists you know, or anyone you think might know a marine biologist!
THANKS SO MUCH – if we can get this done I think it would be really fun!
Rockonomics: Mastering: The Right Choice
Don C Tyler from LA’s Precision Mastering has mastered many Cake albums, along with Pixies, Barenaked Ladies, Beck, and Devo [full list click on this link]. By the time you read this he may well have started mastering the new Thickets album, on Brodie’s recommendation. Here’s an email we got from him today:
I’ve just previewed the mixes – good stuff. And let the band know I’m a big HPL fan and I won’t have to look twice on how to spell Nyarlathotep 🙂 I hope they tackle The Shadow Over Innsmouth next – that would be amazing.
All the Best,
Don
Looks like we made the right choice!
Rockonomics: Cover update Part 3
First, review the old HPL covers here [link]
This is the practically untouched scan. The finished will be cleaner and the colours will be different. And then there will be other pleasures courtesy of Stewie and Taytay – just you wait and see! Oh well I guess I already spoiled that by posting this [link]
In case there’s any confusion, inside the head of the man is the head of a Yithian [link]
Other pics of Yithians for reference
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Race_of_Yith
Thanks to Mr Bob Fugger for "Colour Me Green"
Rockonomics: Part 2 of the album cover preview
I’m not going to say much about this, except that see also http://www.thickets.net/toren/2007/02/18/rockonomics-mission-accomplished/
