New Jake Vida album “Paths Untrodden” out now on CONTROL VALVE

“Recorded live in studio March 11th & 12th 2012. No edits or overdubs”

– 2 tracks of dynamic harsh noise
– as always…..
THANK YOU FOR DOWNLOADING!!!!!!!!!
http://www.controlvalve.net/

Distribution for digital releases + Metal Pupil EP

Digital distribution I am finding is a hard nut to crack (as I did distribution of my physical releases). What I am finding is that the standard roles of such things as reviews, facebook, forums, and  blogs play the role as distributor whereas with physical releases they played the role as advertisers. Which makes them so much more important.

I closely monitor traffic sources and their patterns and can clearly see the worth of pimping and whoring the blog online, but what tends to bring in much more traffic (and in result, downloads, which are equivalent to physical sales in my new outlook and model) is when people discuss, repost, and review the release on their own without me starting it.

Posts on forums are great only when people interact with them. As I mentioned in a previous post, the memory of the noise scene only reaches as far back as the first page of the forum. Without others discussing the release in the topic, it gets pushed to page 2 and then forgotten. This only leaves one option, to bump the topic yourself. This can look bad and like bulk email, can spoil your reputation and come off as desperate.

Bulk emails through my google group I’ve found is completely useless, no one pays any attention to spam emails, after sending a bulk email out, traffic has small peak, but nothing huge. If anything, it probably has a damaging effect on any sort of reputation I or the blog may have.

The conundrum is than this, if fan generated discussion helps, and self generated discussion hurts, how can one generate and encourage buzz and talk without blatantly spamming and hustling to get heard? Or maybe that is what it takes.

Reviews help a little, though not as much as I’d like them too, again I think this is an issue with the size of our scene. On top of this, many noise review sites in our tiny scene wont review a digital release. Which cuts the available outlets to  an even smaller amount. Making things tougher than they need to be.

Whats worked best for me are the things I have had no part in. Other blogs posting about a release and people posting about it on their facebook status. Imagine on average a person has 300 friends on facebook, two friends give the status update a thumbs up or even better repost it. That’s potentially an additional 600 people who are now exposed to your update. Not all are clicks or downloads, but this kind of exposure is great and helps build a buzz without coming across as a pushy salesman. Other blogs reposting your release info also helps in very much the same way, it reaches people who would not know your release existed otherwise. And maybe their blogs are set up like mine is, to automatically repost blog posts on facebook and twitter. Reaching their fans, facebook friends, followers, and so on.

So whats to do? Release music and hope people dig it enough to talk about it.

I hope my recent transparency helps and encourages others with their projects, whatever they may be. I have a couple more ideas for topics in the coming months that I hope to cover, so stay tuned for more ramblings.

That being said, here’s a new EP called Metal Pupil. From the same sessions that birthed Grip Of Inertia. This track being the precursor that brought on the Metal Lord track from that album. Decided not to include it on the album as I thought it didn’t differ much from what was already on there, but as a stand alone track, it presents well.

New Jake Vida album – Grip Of Inertia (A2I 11)

New album is finished, trying out bandcamp for this release. It’s pay what you want for the download. I’ve set it up so it will also accept a zero amount, so you can still get it for free.

http://artasintent.bandcamp.com/album/grip-of-inertia

The return of Jake Vida, first new recorded material in over 4 1/2 years. Heavily influenced by 90s era Merzbow, Jake Vida sets out to find what made him fall in love with noise in the first place. Recorded live in studio September 18 to December 12 2011. Cover art by Jake Vida.

–

 

A2I #10 REMLAP & WEREWOLF JERUSALEM-COLLABORATION

REMLAP & WEREWOLF JERUSALEM-COLLABORATION
Another out-of-print PBR release.

HERE FOR FREE DOWNLOAD: http://www.mediafire.com/?lzxmgrr06ono9z1

Info via crucial blast, who still have some copies, HERE TO BUY:

Here’s a raging collaboration between Werewolf Jerusalem and Remlap, both heavy hitters in the field of harsh noise obliteration. There seems to be a nonstop stream of Werewolf Jerusalem releases coming out lately, but hell, we not even close to tiring of Richard Ramirez’s blackened static drone project. And teamed up with the Canadian harsh noise outfit Remlap, they deliver another monolithic drone-noise slab that thoroughly blotted out our brains.
The disc features two tracks, each one coming in at just a little over half an hour. The first is a colossal wall of churning low end black static roar, pierced by shards of feedback every few minutes that scream out of the maelstrom. For the most part, it’s a swirling, impenetrable wall of black crunch until the last few minutes, when it suddenly goes quiet, the roar abruptly replaced by a muted, washed out distant rush of static, like the sound of far off waves crashing on a shore, slowly fading into obliveon. The second track is a murkier, more bass-heavy wall, at first almost totally stripped of higher frequencies, a boiling black ocean of sonic magma filled with garbled vokills and blasts of foul septic hiss, suddenly surging into crushing volume six minutes in, erupting into a monstrous level of sonic violence with the higher frequencies suddenly screaming through. It gets pretty fucking vicious for awhile, then descends into minimal crackle and hiss at the end.
This powerful dose of blast-trace was limited to just fifty copies and is now sold out from the label; we nabbed the last available copies, so HNW fanatics need to move quickly. The pro-pressed disc comes in a black and white Xerox cover and is housed in a 6″x9″ plastic zip lock sleeve.

 

A2I #9 BRANDAL & REMLAP – SELECTIVE TIMESTREAM

BRANDAL & REMLAP – SELECTIVE TIMESTREAM
A collaborative effort between Remalp (Jake Vida) and Andreas Brandal (Flesh Coffin). One 2 hour track. A very wide range of sounds, I don’t wish to flavour the listening experience any more, so I will skip the abstract descriptions. Best experienced in a quiet room through head-phones.

The file was too large for mediafire which I usually use. So I tried another site. Please let me know if there’s any issues downloading the file.

 

http://soundcloud.com/artasintent/selective-timestream

Pirate’s Life Part 01: Bore-Dry Ice and Drillbits

While doing some vanity searching online, I came across a couple mp3 blogs that have uploaded some older out of print Pointless Blank Rec releases. Thought I’d share some of them.

Part 01 is Bore’s Dry Ice and Drillbits CDR, which was released in 2007, though work on it began over a year before that. Bore is now better known as Infirmary, and before both of these as Directbrainstimulation, aka DBS. This release started out as a split between me (as JV) and DBS. It took on many forms over a couple months. Was going to be a CD, then a tape, a collab, then shifted to just a solo Bore release. I am not sure why I pulled out of it as a split. Then there were maybe 2-3 versions of the final tracks. Even alternate artwork done by Tisbor (which I can’t find unfortunately) and a remix track from nxfxtxex. Once said and done, probably enough material from both of us for a couple releases.

Here is the blog post with download link.

 

A2I #8 REMLAP-ARCANE PATHS OF AVERSION

Released back in 2007 on PBR, was a reworking of the “Love Is Always Love” material. Was into this concept of using the output of one recording session as the source material for the next and was also in a weird place in my head at the time, overly turned inward. The density, stark artwork, and ambiguous title, all a result of both these factors. Both the sound and mind in a degrading loop inward. Oddly enough, the setup used for this recording was the same set up used for all the Ten Arrows era material. Released side by side with the Fossils/Sleeping Police/Jake Vida split, the JV track on that being titled optimistically as “Turning Points” (available in JV collections 1) in stark opposition to APoA.

Free download mp3 vbr:
http://www.mediafire.com/?u3o444yhhqw6x8n

 

A2I #7 JAKE VIDA-COLLECTIONS 1

A2I #7 JAKE VIDA-COLLECTIONS 1
Collecting the JV track from the split tape with Love Letters on Loveless Tapes from 2006. The Terror Stricken EP on Cloud Valley from 2007, with remix track by Scott Johnson of Fossils fame. And lastly the JV track from the 3 way split with Sleeping Police and Fossils, which was originally released in three different versions, one version each from Pointless Blank, Knife in the Toaster, and Middle James Co.
http://www.mediafire.com/?eza71ax7eep3k5z

More of these soon.

 

A2I #6 Jake Vida-Drowning in Thought

A2I #6 JAKE VIDA-DROWNING IN THOUGHT
This release was originally planned to be the final Jake Vida release after the Ten Arrows reissue. Most of it being recorded after Ten Arrows and documenting some of the final recording sessions from that project’s era. The label that originally was going to put it out has since packed up shop. So, after almost 4 years being in limbo, I’ve decided to offer it up for free download. 320kbps MP3.
http://www.mediafire.com/?61aa3c160t6uhh4

 

A2I #5 REMLAP – ST

Originally intended to release this on vinyl in some form or another, but screw it, media is dead, here it is for free. LAME VBR MP3

http://www.mediafire.com/?y9ckgshlrb050d0

A2I #5 REMLAP-ST
Recorded last year in July and August of 2009, before The Burden is the Catalyst Part 1. Acting as the bridge between the early dense recordings (Thoughtful or Empty, LAKE SHARK HN Split, etc ) and the later more progressive spacial recordings (LIVE, TBITC P1). Ranging from lo fi saturated crunch, to metal abuse, to minimalist pops and crackles.