Release Notes

A few notes about my latest release and some useful reminders about music releases in general.

I’ve just released a new album of ambient music called Brittle Fractures. 🙌

The days following a release can be slightly disheartening. After a period of such intense “finishing” work there is often a bit too much quiet, the odd tumbleweed even!

But the reality of being a self-releasing ambient, modular, experimental musician and field recordist with a small audience in a competitive market full of amazing musicians, music and labels means that it’s unlikely I will get more than a few listens or sales from this release.

And that’s okay, I’ve almost come to terms with that! :) I love making music and I get a lot from it in many different ways.

So this post is a pep talk to remind myself of that fact, to outline what I have done and what I haven’t done with this release, and why it is a super solid success, and also to remind myself of some other things about releases in general that I would like to keep in mind for the future.

This is what I did:

• I self-released an album on Bandcamp.

• It is digital only, there are no CDs, cassettes, or vinyl.

• I did no up-front promotion work for the album.

• Once I finished it, I released it straight away, sent out some free codes to people, and then made one post about it on Substack, YouTube, Patreon and Instagram!

This is what I didn’t do:

• I didn’t produce a nice collectable CD, cassette, or record.

• I didn’t tease my upcoming album over a period of weeks or months.

• I didn’t make a series of articles and videos about the techniques or equipment I used or the creative struggles I went through while making the album.

• I didn’t release the artwork and a couple of tracks before the rest of the album.

• I didn’t set up a pre-release or a “listening party”.

• I didn’t send the album to reviewers ahead of time.

• I didn’t let Bandcamp know months in advance that my album was coming out so they could possibly feature it in something.

Why didn’t I do all those things?

This album was the result of me finally sitting down and finishing work after not managing to do that for quite some time.

I briefly wrote about that struggle in the release post but essentially my unfinished work had got a bit out of hand. I was having trouble getting to grips with the hours of recordings I’d made. I needed dedicated time to in order to slowly work through, prune and shape the collection into something more finished and coherent and I never seemed to find the time to do that until recently.

Being unable to finish work is a very common creative problem but I haven’t suffered with it for many years now, not until I started making YouTube videos last year! For whatever reason that disturbed my working process enough that I started to never finish tracks.

But for now that problem has gone, leaving this tidy little album in its place!

And it felt important for me to release it straight away to complete that process and allow me to move on to new projects.

Would more people have listened to or bought the album if I’d have done all the things above? No doubt a few more would have. But this was not the album for that kind of patience, investment and complexity.

I don’t want to become too precious with my work just at the moment. I’m not making multi-year masterpieces here I’m still learning and growing and I want to share and document my musical journey regularly.

So this album is a celebration of “unstuckness”, a process that is now hopefully back up and running, phew!

Is this album a success?

• Yes, this album is a great success. I like it a lot.

• I believe it is possibly the best collection of music I have created so far.

• It has allowed me to become “unstuck” and move forward into new ideas and methodologies.

• It is a great addition to my musical journey.

Notes for future releases:

Here are a few other notes about releasing music that I want to write down so that I can refer to them when I am considering my next release:

• Bandcamp allows you to release whatever you like whenever you want.

• It doesn’t have to be a difficult and expensive process any more to make your music available to people.

• You can release one track or 100 tracks.

• You can release something every day, week, month or year.

• You can release it for free, for a set amount, or as part of a monthly or yearly subscription.

• You can release finished work, work in progress, demos, sketches, live performances, field recordings, stems or just sample packs.

People are experimenting with these types of things more and more as ways to release music and sound work broaden out.

If any of this resonates with your own experiences or if you have any more ideas for my list of what a possible release could be then add your thoughts to the comments.

And thank you so much to everyone who has listened, said kind things and parted with their hard-earned cash for my new album. 🙏

Brittle Fractures is half-price until the end of this coming Bandcamp Friday.