Sunday 30 December 2012

2012 - a creatives review

Hello friends,

We made it! We survived the Ending of the World. I knew we would, I didn't doubt it for one second. I knew we wouldn't accidentally destroy this magnificent planet, no matter how hard we tried to make things difficult for her, she will always prevail against the tiny arrogant god complex monkeys.

Time for my review of my year. All over the internet people do reviews of the year, in TV, in Film, in Politics, in Sport, in Computer Games, in Board Games, in Conspiracy activity etc. All of the reviews are just one persons opinion, or at best a couple of people who share the typing, but they all claim to have some higher perception on their subject of review. I won't do that, because it doesn't matter one bit what I thought was the best (or worst) TV, Film, Game etc. I'm going to focus on my own life, as I am privileged enough to get to live it here with all of the other opinion generators.

2012 has been another big year for me. Since leaving the daily office grind back in 2011 I have been adventuring around the creative lands in my own unique way. My adventures were very outward and adventury back in 2011, but in 2012 they have, for the most part, been inward facing, introspective and self growthy. There have been smatterings of outward, extroverted and self expressive moments such as the handful of gigs I have done with Donny Stax, the One World festival and my adventures in the land of busking, and if you want to know more about them things then I advise you venture back through my year of blogging, all of them have been blogged about.

Here are my internal reviews of the big sections of this year for me, in chronological order:

At the beginning of the year, I wasn't really sure what was going on. I had been working on my four seasons project (an album a season) and my plans had been to do a winter one to complete up the project. I dropped it, I dropped winter as if it were a cheap mobile phone falling out of a plane and into a frozen lake where it shattered into two thousand and seventy one pieces. The winter album never happened...because I started work on something very different and very special instead.

My whole year had been made exciting and creative thanks to one person, 2012 has been the year of Donny Stax. I checked the Chinese calendar to see if this was meant to be the year of Donny Stax, but I can't read Chinese so I'm not sure if the intricate and beautiful Chinese characters said 'Donny' or not. I know this wasn't the year of the monkey, because I did all my monkeying around back in 09 and 0-10.
Anyway, the winter album dissolved, and 'Fine' took it's place.

'Fine' is still available, it's even on Itunes and Spotify and all the other music sitey places. We made it in a few months, and it contains 'Live Up There' which has been spun several times on BBC Introducing The South as well as making it to their 'Best of 2012' show which is on tonight (30/12/12). It was an ambitious project for a first album, but working with Donny Stax was easy, we clicked quickly and worked at the same pace, 'jet-propelled'. Each time we met at Castle Stax we would knock out a new song. One occasion we even managed to get two songs done in one session. The album came together quickly and by May we were twiddling our thumbs trying to work out what to do next.

Most bands would at this point probably start hitting up the live scene like it was lines of cocaine in a porn stars arse crack, we however, didn't. We did a few live gigs, some open mics etc. but our hearts were in the studio, making new music. So for the summer we worked on a bunch of songs we intended to sell to other artists or record labels for hard hard cash. We had a bunch of them ready by July, but we had no idea how to sell them to anyone...so we released them ourselves.
'Free Music (Donate Now)' came out in August and it is available from bandcamp at http://howboutthatrecords.bandcamp.com/album/free-music-donate-now, done more as an experiment in creating Pop, it was a strange record. Neither Donny Stax or myself really felt that connected to it, so it never got that much promotion or attention. It did however contain the track 'Separately' which has had numerous radio spins on redshiftradio by my good friend Benjamin Stubbs.
The best two weeks of this year were in the summer at One World festival. Big shout out to all my peeps from the Soggy Biscuit Improv group as well as all the other wonders of the One World. I wrote a big blog about that back at the time, which you can read here.

The year has been full of weird coincidences and moments of growth. One World was full of that, but both Abi and I have had loads of bizarre nature moments, sky moments, people moments and moment moments, moment to moment. Now the word 'moment' looks wrong to me, I've written it out too many times.

Anyway, musically, I continued to work with Donny Stax, we moved on to another album project, one more for us and not with the aim of selling any of them. We took our time and tried to construct new and interesting creative explorations of the musical realm. The result of this was released in December and can still be bought from bandcamp at http://howboutthatrecords.bandcamp.com/album/self-aware.

'Self Aware' was our most ambitious record, and allowed us to try many new things. We explored the electronica realm with it a lot more then our previous two records, making up whole tracks around repetitive synth lines. The result is the best of the three records we put out in my opinion. We got a track from it spun on redshift radio again several times. Listen to it here just below all this text. The whole album is very positive and upbeat, looking for solutions to problems rather then getting all down in the mouth about how shizza everything can seem. This is the most positive and self affirming record I have ever worked on, and the title felt very fitting. Mr Stax also upped his game massively for this album, adding singing to his repertoire and some fantastic rapping and crazy song structures. Winning it was, winning, winning, winning.

I also managed to squeeze out a little solo musical effort this year, my very first electronica record. I also wrote a story to go with it. 'Sounds for Drowning Robots' it was called. It had amazing artwork done by Mel Pellatt, and it is available from bandcamp also. http://howboutthatrecords.bandcamp.com/album/sounds-for-drowning-robots

In-between all the music making and crazy moments with the world, I also did a whole heap of busking, quite a bit of computer game playing, and lots and lots of tea drinking. What a good year.

To finnish off this year I went and recorded a new track with Mr Stax called 'We Survived the End of the World', which will feature on our best of album (due out early 2013).

I hope you have had a good year too, tell me about it in the comments if you like :)

Bring on 2013
Happy New Year everyone

Peace and infinite love
                                                                                      [adj] - Andy D Jackson

Saturday 22 December 2012

Survived the End of World - Let's Get Connected

Hello friends and other entities,

So the world didn't end as predicted, what a big surprise, I can't help but feel sorry for the people who had bet huge sums of money on the world ending, they really must be kicking themselves that it's still here and everyone seems to be just fine and alive. Oh well, let's move on shall we.

Without the Mayan calendar giving us advice on what's going to happen in the coming years, it feels like we are being given a bit more control over our lives, and our destinies. Sure there will be people who keep predicting what's going to happen, but without the magical Mayan star calendar for reference, it will be just a bit of guess work.

So it's time to embrace the new age of uncertainty, throw caution to the wind, with open arms for whatever comes, bring it on universe, we are ready and waiting. It's time for us to all get connected, to bond over our commonalities and revel in our differences. United the human race can be a force for great wonders, divided we are capable of ripping each other apart like a pack of wild dogs.

Come on guys, let's get connected (now press play below)


Happy holidays everyone, enjoy them,

Peace and infinite love

[adj] - Andy D Jackson

Friday 14 December 2012

Cats love computers (and we love Cats)

Hello friends,

Some really cool exciting and amazingly funny blogging will be coming your way in the lead up to the end of the world, expect nothing and you will get everything (that's well deep that is, I should become a monk of riddle wisdom or something equally revered by the criminally insane).

To tide you over, here are some pictures of Chiana my crazy cat that love finding new and exciting places to sleep, her new favourite being in the lid of my laptop case.

























This is all to do with how warm the computer is, it is an explainable place for a cat to sleep, but what do you make of one of Chiana's other sleeping places?



















Surely not as comfortable, but, amusing none the less. We call her Pot-a-chini when she sleeps with the spiky sticks.

Coming soon, some music related stuff no doubt.

Peace and infinite love
[adj] - Andy D Jackson

Friday 7 December 2012

Self Aware-ness

Hello friends,

Well it's been out for a week now so it's time for a little catch up with the first ever self aware album. Before that though, we need to do a quick analysis of the artists behind the creation of this groundbreaking record.

Donny Stax & [adj] - consists of Producer/Rapper Donny Stax and Singer/Songwriter [adj] Andy D Jackson. The pair have been working together since the end of 2011, and as 2012 comes to a close they proudly sit back having released 3 albums to the world. At the beginning of June they released their debut album 'Fine', then in August they released their second smaller album 'Free Music (Donate Now)', and then in December they released their third full length album 'Self Aware'. (all currently still available from bandcamp).

This blog is here to discuss some details of 'Self Aware', Donny Stax & [adj]'s third album.

As with their last two records, there are skits that are scattered through the record, and introduction one and an outroduction one too. For 'Self Aware' there is only one other skit found right in the middle of the album, called 'Interval'. The splitting of the album into two parts, or acts as it were, helps the mind of the listener digest the content in a more even and balanced way. Having the break in the middle allows for the mind of the listener to take a break and contemplate some of the deeper meanings and impacts that have been delivered to their subconscious mind via the music.

The album claims (in these little skits tracks) to be Self Aware. Although this technology isn't fully understood even by the people who created it, it has shown itself to be very effective. In over 90% of all trials the album correctly analysed and reported on the listening and interactive learning skills of the participants, with 10% margin of error (which is common place in experiments of this kind...imaginary ones). A control group of participants were played standard non self aware albums to gage their reactions, while a second group was subjected to self aware music for the same length of time. For a full breakdown of that report please visit your local imaginarium. If you wish to take part in this amazing experiment, please select Intro from the album below and then press play. The experiment takes approximately 38 minutes.

To get a full understanding of this incredible technology, you will need to spend several hours listening to it, preferably with friends in an open sharing setting. To achieve the best results it should also be played rather loudly, as loud as you can physically tolerate.

Good luck

Thursday 6 December 2012

How to become a MEGASTAR

HOW TO BECOME A MEGASTAR <3

Hello beautiful friends,

It's tough being such a Megastar sometimes, you have to deal with lots of issues that normal everyday non-mega stars don't have to, like waking up and making your own coffee and wiping your own bottom after toilet time. These daily grinds get in the way of serious Megastaring in and around the house. You want to be a Megastar? Do you think you can handle it?

Well, the first thing you have to do is listen to this short presentation courtesy of a couple of true Megastars....
Press PLAY now
As you can no doubt tell, this is the sound of true MEGAstardom, and it will stay lodged in your ears for several days. Encoded into the music is positive NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming) that touches on your subconscious mind and gives you the super powers you will need to become a megastar. It is highly advised that you listen to this music at least once a day for up to half an hour at a time to achieve true megastardom. In recent tests it has clearly been shown that positive NLP has a more liberating effect on the mind then any therapy because it gets into the mind rather then just skirting around the edge of it. The average human mind is bombarded by negative NLP all the time through constant media in all it's forms, but the most pervasive form of negative NLP can be found in advertising. For further information about NLP just do some googling, you will quickly find many websites about it.

To be a MEGASTAR you have to feel like a MEGASTAR inside, it has to become something deep within your soul, if you are capable of being MEGA in your STARDOM then you will know this, it will be scribed deep within your subconscious being. To help you tap into that inner MEGASTAR I advise you follow the work of Donny Stax & [adj]. They have the secrets and they will reveal all to the lucky few.

So please just pop your email in the box below :D

Peace and infinite love to you
[adj] - Andy D Jackson

Tuesday 4 December 2012

Wake Up In A Good Mood

Hello friends,

Please try and wake up everyday in a good mood, it really does see the whole day through...

Have a listen for some waking up techniques

Now that you are feeling fully awake and aware of the awesomeness that surrounds you, it is time to go and buy an album, not just any album, oh no, this is a state of the art album from the future, the album itself is Self Aware and listens to you while you listen to it. Check it out to experience the future...

Buy it here at http://howboutthatrecords.bandcamp.com/album/self-aware before it's too late...

You can listen to it there too, to get a feel for it (but only buying it will actually help save your soul)

Peace and infinite love

[adj] - Andy D Jackson

Saturday 1 December 2012

Self Aware - Donny Stax & [adj] New Album!

Hello friends,

So you can buy the new Donny Stax & [adj] album right now from bandcamp... just click on this link right here http://howboutthatrecords.bandcamp.com/album/self-aware .

You can have a listen to most of it right here if you would like a taster before rushing off to buy it and support real hard working musicians...yeah...

Here it is, have a listen


And here is a large picture of the cover for you to have a little stare at (be careful though, it can hypnotise you and possibly leave you catatonic for hours)







Peace and infinite love...

I'll write properly about this record in a few days :)