Christmasasaurus Vol. 4: Final Day

Today is the last day I'm accepting the tracks for the compilation and I have to say... even if no one else I asked contributes, this will be a good year.
This is a picture of the tracks I have so far (pre-track ordering):


Clearly, a good spread!

Picking a favorite is actually very very difficult this year.
I'll admit, that in past years I've often found myself pointing to a song or three and being very confident that they were the best ones, the other songs ranging from "very good" to "completely disregarded the concept of the compilation."


Every year when I sit down and start sending out emails, myspace messages, making calls, or (in the case of this year) just straight up asking someone in person about it, I wonder what a good way to portray my idea for the compilation is.

It's hard to sell the idea sometimes.
People get all uppity about how Christmas is perverted.
How it's a Christian holiday.
How it's a commercialized, shallow, superficial wasteland of false joy.
How to all developed countries, it's not about the holiday so much as it is the advertising and selling.


Well, to this I always laugh and say "yes, but who cares?"
But my head is shouting "FUCK YOOOOU."
The latter is of course not the way I like to portray myself or deal with situations, so I refrain.

The goal(s) of the compilation is/are pretty simple I think:

1. To assemble a team of talented, underground, mostly electronic musicians to take what the mainstream does with Christmas albums, and turn it on it's head; to provide fans of underground music a way to celebrate the season with the songs they grew up with being taken in new directions.

2. To see what the artists will actually do with/to such traditional songs.
I want to see the songs, and be able to recognize them, but to either say "FUCK YES" and/or to be totally surprised.
i.e I want to be able to sing along if I feel so inclined, but I don't want to know exactly what I'll be singing along with

3. In the case that there is an original, I want to see if the song can actually integrate in my brain as being a new Christmas song.
I mean... I'm hard to please in that regard.... Stevie Wonder's Christmas song doesn't even register to me as being a Christmas song.

4. I want to be able to host a Christmas party some day and just slap those tracks on a playlist and forget about them until they come up and freak the hell out of the musically or artistically inept.

5. To spread political incorrectness... Merry Christmas Jews! Happy Kwanza whitey!



That list would do a decent job explaining to people, but I am always going to get scrutiny for the concept I'm sure.
Occupational hazard of being an absurdist, extreme, experimental, electronic musician that tries to rally people for something of a mainstream ideal once a year, I suppose.





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In BgO news, and very good news for the number of people who have come to me citing themselves as being "excited", "really looking forward", "really excited", "actually extremely excited", and "SO PUMPED" (among other things) for my next album.
It would seem that after a bit of mixing and recording, I have completed recording the first song for Bad Happy.
I need to do the analog noise break, but then it's done... and I can post it!
It's been met by positive response amongst the select friends I've showed it to, but that is not always a reflection of how the fans feel (Birthday b-b-b-blues fest '09 is the favorite song of almost all of my friends and I rarely have people online tell me they like it)

I'll be happy to have something new that I didn't have to rush through
(I really did have to rush through the Yatagarasu split. I had like two weeks to record all of it, and I spent most of it struggling with a song that got cut.)
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Negotiations on shirt costs have continued and they are driving me crazy.

Well... let's not go with "negotiations" at this point.
Now I'm stuck at the "waiting for email responses" stage again.

I hate relying on other people, and you should too!


Christmasasaurus Vol. 4 will be out really late tonight, really really early tomorrow morning, or just in normal morning hours.
BE EXCITEMENT!