I’ve been posting about this all over the place, but I thought I’d summarise stuff into a wee blog post. In short, I released an EP this week. It’s called Out Of Here and it contains tracks from the Cooper365 Project last year and some tracks I’ve written since then. The download includes two bonus tracks that haven’t been posted anywhere in my little corner of the internet before, so if you were the sort to be all dramatic then I guess you could call them SUPER-SPECIAL EXCLUSIVE BONUS TRACKS. I also uploaded a B-Sides EP which is some new tracks I wanted to make available somewhere but which I felt didn’t quite fit with the mood of Out Of Here.
In the run up to the release I was asking people to tweet with a hashtag (#OutOfHereEP), to reblog a particular post on Tumblr, and to ‘Like’ a Facebook Page. One person who did each of these things was then picked out of a hat (which was actually a bowl) to win a download code to get the EP for free. A whole bunch of people did this – way more than I thought would – so I’m really grateful to them (watch the unflinchingly exciting video of the draw happening here). Because, even though they were (sort of) competing to win a thing, in actuality what they were doing was helping me out and spreading the word about it. The last time this happened to me was when I did a similarly shameless giveaway for the release of my book (I talked about how lovely people were during this when I was invited to Oxford to talk on this panel for some reason), and the response surprised me then as well. So, in a round-about way, what I seem to be saying is thanks to everyone who helped out for the sake of helping out. And thank you to those who have listened to it, those who have told me they’ve listened to it, and those who have chosen to download it.
It’s been a few months of planning, writing, recording, re-recording, mixing, producing, editing and other verbs. I’ve never spent this long trying to make a bunch of tracks sound good, and so this was a new experience that I really enjoyed taking on. I work full-time at the moment so it’s been something I’ve been getting on with during my spare evenings and weekends, but as I said in this guest post on The View From Here and in my recent post about why I blog – I do these things because I enjoy doing them. And now that this little project has finished I’ll be getting on with the next one. Here’s something I’m still working on and hoping to finish and make available before the end of the year. And I’m also getting back to novel number 2. I’ll keep you a little bit updated about all of that but, you’ll be glad to hear, not as updated as I’ve kept you this week.
Out Of Here can be found at ardiecollins.bandcamp.com
Ardie – Where is that quote on the album cover from? I’ve scoured the internet, but I can’t seem to find anyone talking about Mae Kaufman or The Trouble With Glory or even just that quote.
Hi. I’m not surprised you can’t find it, I made it up! I’m just trying to deal with the idea that people could be trying to find that out, that’s amazing to me. So thank you! Here’s an answer I gave to the same question on Tumblr and hopefully it’ll answer things a bit better:
http://ardiecollins.tumblr.com/post/20801611317/where-does-the-quote-on-out-of-here-come-from-i-cant
Ardie, i just wanted to tell you i have been listening to your EP nonstop. I think i told you via twitter, but only to further my status as your quasi-internet-stalker (in the most minimally-creepy-way possible!) i just wanted to tell you here again. I love all the tracks and the way the whole album has a running theme in the musicality and the lyrics and the new stuff and revamped old things and, well, everything! It is brilliant and i’m so glad we mutually stumbled across each other on the internet!
Okay, bye and stuff.
Thank you so much! Very kind of you to say so, and it really does mean a lot to hear that. As with everything I seem to do I’m constantly thinking about ways I can improve on the last thing, but coming back to this EP about a week after having released it, I’m still pleased with it as a first attempt at a proper EP, and I was also very conscious of having a running theme in terms of musicality and lyrics, so it’s great to hear someone pick up on that.
I, too, am glad we mutually stumbled across each other on the internet!