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Articles - A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To MySpaceThis was originally posted as a blog entry on myspace Well, here we all are at last. I've finally caved in. It's all over - I love Big Brother. I've objected to MySpace quite vociferously in the past. This is not least because I put a shitload of work into setting up a real website - at http://www.mirrorkill.co.uk - but also... well, blech. Look at it. Pre-packaged shrink-wrapped cookie-cutter websites, little boxes into which you're supposed to squeeze yourself. Look at the top of our profile page here, where we've *had* to define our sound. Progressive Industrial Folk-Rock. Pick three of our pre-defined genres. We've always (as so many bands do) resisted defining our sound. We've been describing ourselves as "Mutant Industrial Jazz-Punk Monkeys" for some years now (& only been approximately 50% joking), but it seemed obviously humourous enough that no one was likely to take it too seriously. But now we're Progressive Industrial Folk-Rock. That's not funny, it's shit. It sounds pompous. If I didn't know how good we were I'd hate us. Thing is, it's more pernicious than that. Anyone who posts a blog entry can show you their current mood - by selecting from a dropdown list of predefined moods that you're allowed to express. Where's the entry for "delirious & want to buy a speed boat"? Or "kind of like a radiator, man"? Or "massively annoyed with the limitations of MySpace"? How many people actually use "None, or other"? The fact that it's all ultimately owned by Rupert Murdoch is the icing on the turd, it really is. -- So anyway, as humanity continues its downward spiral towards extinction & flatulent irrelevance, it seems like the Web, perhaps the single most intuitive user interface since the nipple, is actually *too complicated for many people*. When I talk to people about the band, & mention that we've released our album as a completely free download from our website, they wipe the trail of drool from their slack jaws & ask "er... have you got a MySpace page?". Really, I've succumbed to pressure from idiot redneck goons. Amusingly enough, it turns out that Dan "The Bass" Rathbone had, some while ago, signed us up with a MySpace page behind my back & uploaded one, relatively obscure, track of ours. "Great!" I thought "I'll get the password off Dan & sort the page out as I want it". Unfortunately, it turns out that Dan has no clue - not one - what the password might have been. Or which email account he might have used to set it up. So www.myspace.com/mirrorkill is there, but dead (apart from one song). At some point we should probably make ourselves known to the powers that be & wrest back control, but for the time being it can be a monument to Mr Rathbone's occasional moments of extreme daftness. Ah well, what are passwords for but to be forgotten? I have no idea how often I'm likely to update this blog, so don't go holding your breath. Check out the www.mirrorkill.co.uk homepage for lots & lots & lots of other stuff. It's prettier too. That's all, | May 7th 2010: Live Twitter Feed Pulled, FB "Like" button on notice.We'd been experimenting with a twitter feed, using a script to pull in "tweets" (ugh) live from the server to a box on the right hand side of the page. Unfortunately relying on the Twitter server's responsiveness was having an impact on the rendering speed of this page, hence it's been removed. The feed itself is still there, but frankly we've been underwhelmed by the whole concept (expecting MK to express any idea worth expressing in 140 characters or fewer is just unrealistic) so it may well fall into complete disuse. We advise you to subscribe to the mailing list instead for notifications when the site is updated. We've also added a Facebook "Like" button, as you can see. While we're all on Facebook, we're increasingly creeped out by it - just like you. But we've heard rumours that, if Zuckerberg gets his way, this form of "social" linking may replace the standard hypertext anchor as the default mechanism of the web, which may mean it can't be ignored. (Plus it might, conceivably, piss on Google's chips, which is always a plus). We may ignore it anyway. We'll see. If it gets much use it may stay. May 1st 2010: Finally! - The New Album "(Batteries Not Invented)" Is Released.
May 1st 2010: Added Bonus - Compilation/Outtakes Album "Alien Poo Slime" Published.
In some cases it was blindingly obvious why. But in others some gems had been cruelly ignored for reasons which either didn't look so good in retrospect or are long forgotten. This reminded me of my half-arsed idea some while back to compile a few rather fine remixes from Scan Happen, the Tony, Bucking Flair thing & the one pre-2003 track on here, a remix of Year Of The Dog from the now-withdrawn "Natural Freak" album. So consider this release a summing up, if you will; a tying up of loose ends. A final squeeze of the rind of Mirrorkill - The Electric Years. It's patchy & it's entertaining & it's occasionally incoherent & it's experimental & it's potentially incriminating & it's funny. The esteemed Dan "The Bass" Rathbone has supplied, to my specifications, this fabulous artwork, in homage to the infamous Phi Zappa Krappa posters. I've been giggling for hours. & where does the name come from, you ask? A place you don't ever want to go, my friend, that's where. May 1st 2010: Ongoing Projects.Regarding the first two Mirrorkill albums "Shaming of the True" & "Natural Freak"; I find them very hard to listen to now. They were recorded & engineered, very well I might add, by the mighty Ian Dicken at Lancaster Musicians' Co Op. However, as I was paying for the studio time (even if it was only a tenner an hour) I wound up calling them finished before I was ready. In the time since then I've taken to recording & engineering for myself, at home, on a laptop; & I can (& do) take years over them. But there are a lot of fine, well-loved songs on there that we still play today, acoustically, & it seems a shame for them not to have a home on the internet. So I've begun a project to re-record the best songs off these two albums in our current acoustic idiom. Goodness knows how long it will take, but it will be worth it. It will be entitled: "Portrait of the Artist Formerly Known as a Young Man". Also in the pipeline is a new album tentatively named "Worker" (although the last two albums have been tentatively named "Worker" until I thought of a better joke, so who knows?). Current song titles include but are not limited to: pentacles, tentacles, wallet & watch & I suppose we should play some gigs at some point, shouldn't we? Regards, | ||
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| These works are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. All material ©2001-2010 Dave Eggleston unless otherwise noted. Some rights reserved. All songs copyright control. No-nonsense mail & web hosting by Fastmail.fm who we think are ace - & should you sign up, please quote "mirrorkill" as your referrer! Hail Eric! All Hail Morecambia! Yet Another Mirrorkill Communications Production.
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