So I got a message from Tom saying, in less tender words, “if you want to try and get the album in the charts, releasing it on a Saturday is ill-advised…”

So NOW the album release date is June 28th W00

(Reason we’re waiting three months is so that the release can coincide with VidCon)

There you go! Now it’s a whole month early! Sort of

x

{ 29 comments }

We had enough time today to finish Stay With Me AND Not Just Yet, so now the album is basically FINISHED OMG

We still have to go in for two days (maybe three) in the middle of March, to record all the live drum sounds and mix/master the whole album. But I can sit on my computer and look at this and for now that’s completely awesome:

I was self-involved enough to rate all of the tracks out of 5, but I didn’t wanna influence your opinions this far in advance, so I decided not to show you that bit. (I will say that I gave four of the ten songs a 5 out of 5 rating, but that’s mainly because I’m a twat.)

Stay With Me and Not Just Yet are both love songs with slightly different angles. Stay With Me is more “wow, we’re still together and you haven’t left me yet! I’m so happy about that!”; Not Just Yet is more about spending time with someone (possibly even in a non-romantic sense) and knowing that your time together will soon be over, but getting to enjoy every possible moment before it does. (Thematically it’s also a nice closer to the album – bracket slash wanky)

Lyrics to Stay With Me:

I remember when we met
You turned away
Burned away
We’ll never be the same

The rhymes aren’t perfect but neither are you
Consistently you’re still so much more brilliant than me
Will you stay with me?

And to Not Just Yet:

Goodnight, lay down and close your eyes
All things have to die; but not just yet
I’m here, I’ll always be around
We could both fall down, but not just yet

I hope you won’t regret the time we had
Stolen glances through the darkness, staying close to fight the cold
All the memories that we forgot to make
And the way you fit a lifetime into every single day
So let’s have one more day

The World Is Mine (I Don’t Know Anything) comes out on July 3rd. =D

x

{ 21 comments }

Is how long it took to record Dead And Gone. We made it sound exactly how I wanted it to; a classic old love song, like the Hello Dolly songs from the Wall-E soundtrack, or Elvis’s Love Me Tender. Just one vocal, one instrument, and some occasional other bits. It’s great :D

It’s about surviving with someone and knowing you’ve survived a lifetime’s worth of experience and you’re just ready to live out your days in contentment with someone else. I pictured my nan and grandad when I wrote it.

Take me home
The world is slightly colder now
Both of us are past our better days

Take my hand
And I will give myself to you
Pushing everything out of our way

{ 15 comments }

Before I talk about today’s song, I wanted to let you all know that I’ve added the entirety of Chameleon Circuit’s debut album (my band who write songs about Doctor Who) to the front page of my site in a player, which you can also see right here:

And the lyrics/chords to the songs of the album that I wrote/helped write (Shipwrecked, Journey’s End, Type 40 and An Awful Lot Of Running) are available in the chords/lyrics section.

Here are lyrics to today’s album track, Missing You:

Have I done all I can to make you understand?
What if I fell asleep; would you lie there with me?
I’m just missing you

How did you get inside, only to say goodbye?
I want you more than you know; that’s the only thing I know

I’m getting over you tonight
Won’t wait for you to ask me what I’m doing cos I’ll throw my inhibitions to the wind
I’m strong and I don’t need this anymore
All I have to do is close the door and I’ll stop missing you

But if I didn’t miss you, it wouldn’t be worth it in the end

x

{ 17 comments }

So if you go on iTunes today (in the UK, that is), you’ll see that my EP is in the TOP ALBUMS ON ITUNES. NUMBER 81. It was 79 earlier, it’s slipping a little, that’s cool! And in the Electronic chart I’m NUMBER 3!! Gah! AHH <3

Feel free to tell everybody you know about this release, cos if I can land myself in the Top 100 Albums Chart this weekend, it'd be fucking brilliant :D The best way to share would just be to send the Pokémon music video to people. But don't feel you have to, I don't wanna force you to do anything :)

I'm in the US Chart somewhere as well, but I haven't registered myself for the US Charts because I don't live there or know how to. But, feel free to see where I am in the US charts if that interests you :D

Here are the lyrics for the song we did today, Living On The Underground (we recorded sounds from the Tube and spliced them in ^_^):

x

{ 18 comments }

It’s midnight in America, so it feels like it’s properly out now <3

iTunes link: http://bit.ly/117tunes
Physical bundle: http://dftba.com/117

Here’s a video. ^_^

x

{ 19 comments }

Thanks for all your great comments on the last post :D I got nearly as many hits on my website as I do when I upload a Twilight reading to YouTube, so that was brilliant.

Speaking of which …

117% COMPLETE IS OUT RIGHT NOW!

And to save you the trouble of clicking away, here’s the player for it:

I hope you like the songs, I’m so proud of them :D

To recap, you can buy the songs digitally on iTunes (search Alex Day or 117% Complete – Americans will have to wait until midnight) or buy the EP physically on a CD shipped out by DFTBA, my record label.

If you’re looking at this from Google Reader, click through to my site, cos I’ve made some changes. Firstly, you’ll see a link to ‘Shop’ (which takes you to everything I have for sale through DFTBA) – hopefully that’ll help people be more aware of my physical releases. I also have a Photos page which includes wallpapers you can download, and live shots and other stuff like that.

And, of course, you can now read the lyrics and learn the chords to the music from 117% Complete :)

Let me know what you think guys – 117% is a lot closer to the sound of the new album, so it’ll give you a cool taster of what to expect, but it’s also oriented towards/inspired by the best of great video game music.

I’ll post up a music video for the EP in about eight hours, when I wake up, so that the Americans can buy the song as soon as they see it :)

x

{ 24 comments }

I’ve been having a debate with a YouTuber through my message section, and it ended this morning, so I thought I’d share. This is how it started.

Checking my messages, I open one from kaldunvampireprince with the subject ‘Twilight’.

Where’s your book Alex? Oh yeah you havent written one because u’re a talentless c*nt/ Get off the jealousy car and leave Meyer alone. Millions like her work so go eat some glass.

And you cant sing AT ALL!! Go kill urself.

Brilliant.

(Just to clarify for those that don’t know – I film myself reading chapters of Twilight and vocalising my thoughts spontaneously. Here’s the first chapter:)

Lots of fantastic things here. First of all, I love that I’m lured in with a question. Instead of just “you suck” it’s “oh, hey, Alex, how’s the album coming along? That’s right, IT’S SHIT AND YOU SHOULD DIE”. Bit of a leap.

It’s great that, although he’s passionate enough to use the words ‘talentless cunt’, he still gave himself a cheeky asterisk, so that he wouldn’t offend me; but then powered on through with ‘go kill urself’. And that comes AFTER the glass eating. What a genius.

And I also like “you can’t sing. AT ALL!!” Like if he hadn’t added that I’d have gone away thinking, “well, I can sing, a bit.”

“You can’t sing!”
Well, I’d argue that -
“AT ALL!”

(Bit of background on kaldunvampireprince – he only has one subscriber. The name of his subscriber is KoolGuy532. That’s cool with a ‘k’, people.)

My reply:

“She can’t write worth a damn. She’s not very good.” – Stephen King on the Twilight series. An opinion from someone who HAS written a book, and knows better than me what’s good and what isn’t.

You’re right, millions of people like her work. Millions of people are subscribed to Fred, too. Millions of people can sometimes be very stupid.

Off to kill myself now. I’M HUNGRY FOR SOME GLASS.

I thought that was fine, acknowledging that I don’t know everything about writing but it’s not just me who has this opinion – but apparently this user’s hatred for me runs deeper than this.

You’re not Stephen King. If he wants to make a video slagging her off he’s entitled to. You are not you seem to be trying to get some free publicity from her success. Why dont u focus on creating something worthwhile yourself instead of denigrating her hard work? How do you think she would feel if she saw ur videos? How would u feel if someone created a video slagging off ur music? You need a reality check mate. Glass is too good for you. You need to eat some humble pie and apologise to Meyer. She’s not asking you to read her books so what is your problem?

“Glass is too good for you to eat! You know what you should eat? HUMBLE PIE! RAWWWWR”

“Humble pie” is a pretty shit phrase to use, but nothing will beat “get off the jealousy car”.

I was a bit annoyed that he seemed to think I’m not allowed to express opinions about books because I’m not Stephen King, so I replied with:

Look, everyone has their critics. I’m sure Stephanie Meyer is a big girl who can handle criticism. She’s got enough of it, after all.

I don’t agree with the notion that I’m not allowed to attack her because I haven’t written a book of my own – that’s mental. So only musicians are allowed to express opinions about what music they like or dislike?

I don’t mind if people make videos slagging off my music, because my music isn’t objectively badly written. It just might not be to your taste. Twilight, as a series, is poorly written. That’s my problem.

And at the end of the day, I’m just having fun, people are entertained, so that’s all there is to it.

I dunno – I probably shouldn’t even be writing this blog entry, because I’m not Chad Hurley and am therefore not entitled to analyse YouTube messages. THAT’S THE WORLD WE LIVE IN.

I’m trying to wrap it up with ‘well really, this doesn’t matter that much, so just let it go’, BUT NO. This vampire prince continues to ignore my points and restate his own bollocks ones.

Who are you to judge that it’s badly written? What qualifies u? Do u have a Masters or PHD in English Literature? Just because you’re jealous of her success stop taking your frustration out on her. You write 5 novels and then you can slag her off. Until then u r entitled to say I dont like these books but dont judge her writing and stop trying to get some free publicity from her success because that makes you one gigantic two faced hypocrite. No one knows you except for Twilight. Wow the irony. And I am sending your links to Meyer’s publishers and their legal teams. That should be fun.

What?

I’m not just a hypocrite (what?) I’m a TWO-FACED HYPOCRITE! Fucking hell, sometimes I think language should only be inherited by those that are worthy.

No-one knows me except for Twilight – what?! What about my mum? She didn’t just return from seeing New Moon, walk into the house and say “OH FUCK I HAVE A SON!”

Okay, you completely ignored my point. What I said was – who says that I can only judge books if I’ve written books myself? It’s not a rule in life that only musicians are allowed to tell people their opinions about the music they do and don’t like. When I read a book, I don’t say “I don’t know if it’s good or not, because I haven’t written a book”. People have opinions, and this is mine.

Secondly, I’m not jealous of her success. I laughed when I read that, actually. She’s done well for herself, and I’m happy for her. I just wish she’d done something better.

Thirdly, I’m not trying to get ‘free publicity from her success’ – and even if I was, that wouldn’t make me a hypocrite. A hypocrite is someone who says ‘don’t do this’ and then does it themselves. I’ve never said ‘don’t try to get free publicity from people’s success’. But either way, that’s not what I’m doing.

Finally, ‘no one knows you except for Twilight’ isn’t true, because I’ve been on YouTube for three years and had seventy thousand people watching me before I started that series.

Any other points you’d like to ignore?

As you can see, I’m getting a bit bitter.

So is he.

Don’t patronise me…

1. You are vindictively attacking Meyer on youtube and disecting her books for their writing…not for how they make u feel but for their technical quality. You are not qualified to do that.

2. Yes you are. Why else would you waste your time making so many videos slagging her off? Better? 40 million copies and growing says actually what she’s done is pretty spot on. You aren’t her target market so who are you to judge the quality of her work? You don’t like it that’s fine. But dont go through it page by page critiqueing her work as though you could have done something better.

3. Yes you are a hypocrite. You are attacking her work knowing it will get you some free publicity, you are in essence riding on the wave of her success and therefore biting the very hand that feeds you.

4. 70,000 hits compared to the 250,000+ you got for Twilight? I’d say more people know you now than before Twilight.

Let me summarise u: u r a vindictive shallow individual with no moral compass and questionable musical talent. And really I dont think Meyer gives a shit what u say whereas u r obviously extremely affected by what she has to say. That has to hurt. Ha ha.

Numerical points! And a handy summary at the end! And the brilliant starter: “don’t patronise me”. Learn how to carry out a debate then!

He’s just so sure of himself that it doesn’t matter what I say. “You’re jealous of her!” – “well, no, I’m happy for her and her success, but I just think if something deserves to be that successful, it should be of a higher calibre than it is.” – “NO YOU’RE WRONG YOU’RE JEALOUS OF HER!” Fantastic. We’re now at the point where he might as well be typing ’so nur nur nur’ at the end of his messages.

70,000 hits compared to the 250,000 I got from Twilight? Shit you’re right, I can’t argue with maths. You know my YouTube stats better than me! OH WAIT. You’re obviously completely wrong.

And “Let me summarise u” – this bit is great. I’m vindictive and shallow. I have no moral compass – ?! – the questionable musical talent bit is fair, that’s his opinion, but then he does an about-face. “Meyer doesn’t give a shit what you say!” – I know she doesn’t. But you were the one saying “how would she feel if she saw these videos?” and it was me saying “I’m sure she’s a grown up who won’t care”.

I also noticed he’s started leaving comments on my videos. LOADS of them. All saying roughly the same thing.

“u r an evil talentless vindictive jealous bastad!”
“u brainless twat”
“Alex u r a vindictive evil talentless twat”

EVIL?! He called me EVIL?!?

“stop fucking messaging me I dont care what you have to say!”

He left this as a comment. Wanker.

“Meyer has 40 million books sold compared to your 0 albums…that says it all”

I’ve sold well over 3000 copies of my albums, just so we’re clear on that. No, it’s not 40 million, but it doesn’t change that he’s wrong. It doesn’t say it all, unless the ‘all’ is ‘you’re objectively a cunt’. (ooh no asterisk, I MEAN BUSINESS)

So then I sobbed on to my Mac because Stephanie Meyer doesn’t care about my opinion, and after I cleared away the tears I wrote the following:

I’m patronising you because you are ignoring my points. You’ve done it again here. I’m getting sick of saying the same things over and over.

I’m not a hypocrite. Hypocrisy is defined as “the act of persistently pretending to hold beliefs, opinions, virtues, feelings, qualities, or standards that one does not actually hold.” So if I told people not to smoke, but I did smoke myself, I’d be a hypocrite. If I secretly loved Twilight, but told people I hated it and that it was bad, I’d be a hypocrite. I’m not doing that. Yes, there is a certain irony that the series has got me more attention, but it’s not hypocrisy, so let’s stop making that point.

Second, I didn’t say I had 70,000 ‘hits’ before I did the Twilight books. You can look at the view counts on my old videos to see that’s obviously not true. I had 70,000 ‘people watching me’ before Twilight, meaning subscribers; in terms of views, I had nearly ten million. Twilight has given me another million. So it’s made me 10% more successful. So we’re two for two; I’m not a hypocrite, and people would care about my videos if I wasn’t doing this.

Next: I can’t believe I’m countering this point for the third time, cos you’re just not listening to my rebuttals, but you don’t need to be ‘qualified’ to dissect anything on its technical quality. You can just use your brain and make observations. That’s what makes free speech so fucking wonderful. If you don’t like it, you can feel free to start a ‘kaldunvampireprince loves Twilight’ series.

Last: forty million copies does NOT make her books good!! I can’t believe that you would honestly think the only barometer for success is the number of sales a thing makes. What forty million sales means is that she’s done something that connects with people, but it doesn’t mean she’s done anything with any kind of skill at all.

“But dont go through it page by page critiqueing her work as though you could have done something better.” – I’VE COUNTERED THIS POINT sfghabggs. Blimey, what’s the point of this debate if you’re just not going to listen to anything I say? I’m listening to what you say and I’m countering it and then you just paraphrase yourself over and over again. Imagine this conversation that happens in your idea of the world but not in the real one:

Me: “What did you think of the Lady Gaga CD?”
You: “I don’t know.”
Me: “What do you mean you don’t know?”
You: “I can’t do anything better, so I don’t have the right to critique it.”

Stupid, isn’t it?

You’re completely right in saying that Meyer doesn’t give a shit what I say. That’s why I didn’t care when you said you were going to tell her lawyers and her publishers about this. I’m glad you’re learning. And no, I’m not affected by what she says. I’ll finish the same way I finished last time, since this argument will be caught in a time loop forever, apparently; I’m just trying to entertain people and have some fun, so there’s no harm.

Are we done yet?

Unfortunately I’ve let my temperament get the better of me and I think that weakens my points a little bit, but ultimately I’m still right. I haven’t spent any time debating the Twilight books with this guy – it’s been all about my own feelings and motives, which I obviously know better than he does.

Then I noticed that he was just having a go at anybody in my comments who said anything nice about me, cycling his three comment words ‘talentless’, ‘vindictive’ and ‘twat’. So I decided to end this dance.

hi! :)

I noticed that you’re being very rude to my subscribers so I’m gonna go ahead and block you. Hopefully that way you can calm down and let go and move on with your life.

Bye!

Fin.

Feel free to send this to people who you think might like it xD

My EP about videogames, 117% Complete, comes out on iTunes tomorrow! <3

x

{ 106 comments }

Today, during the recording of Together Tonight, we (Tom) changed the rhythm of the song in its entirety, and almost all of the chords, and the melody. As a result of these changes, I re-wrote a lot of the lyrics to make the words fit the new sentiment, but I also wanted to ‘update’ the song, because a lot of what it was about is just past baggage that I don’t need to be singing about anymore, and I wanted it to feel a bit more hopeful.

It’s a really nice song now. It’s the same song it always was but we made a lot of great improvements today. I tried to hone in on that feeling of sadness you get when people just aren’t in your life anymore, and – for whatever reason, even if it’s your fault – you just want to take steps to bring them back.

I want you to know
The things that I did
I know you were right, I know what you think
I miss our times
The plans that we made
I don’t want things to end this way

So here we are
Together tonight
I hope you’re having the time of your life
Let’s start again
One step at a time
We could have something and I want to try if you want to try

{ 18 comments }

It’s official:

Head over to youtube.com/uploadtour and you can watch introductory videos from all the artists :)

(I lied when I said Charlie was in it. Sorry about that.)

x

{ 19 comments }

I’m nine minutes into a documentary entitled ‘Macheads’. It’s full of the most sycophantic fucking twats I’ve ever seen in my life. I’ve already seen, so far: people with Apple logo tattoos, people who say they “have never knowingly slept with a Windows user”, and one astonishing woman who prefaced her VT by saying “today we’re going to talk about the Apple Macintosh, and how it makes ALL THINGS POSSIBLE”.

The only conclusion I can draw is that Apple must have commissioned this film themselves. It’s the only way it can make sense for it to be this disgustingly pro-Apple. Surely nobody outside of the company would have approved this? Or maybe, at some point, the documentary maker (who has remained unseen and unheard up to this point) will walk in front of the screen and say ‘DON’T BE LIKE THESE PEOPLE’, and that’s the point of it. I can’t fathom the idea that this documentary was made to legitimately celebrate the Apple community. It doesn’t. I love Apple, but I’m fucking terrified of every Mac user I’ve seen in this film, with their weird declarations of how Steve Jobs “knows what we need before WE do” (genuine quote).

The woman on the train just came over the tannoy, rather urgently saying “apologies to all passengers in Coach C – I’ve just found out all the lights have gone out in the coach. I’ll try to find out what’s happened and get that fixed as soon as possible.” I laughed out loud. I wonder how long they’ve been like that? They’re all British, so nobody would have said anything. They’d have all just sat in the dark, mumbling about the lackluster service on First Great Western, not knowing if anyone is even around to hear them.

That said, the view’s probably better through the window without the light reflecting your own face back at you. Well, it wouldn’t be for me. OOH A JOKE

Macheads is now showing some old Apple adverts. This, I can get down with. My favourite part of the hiring process when I applied for a job at Apple was the bit where we got to watch all their old adverts in order. That sounds sarcastic, but it isn’t, I genuinely loved it, I don’t care what you think.

Here are the lyrics to The World Is Mine (I Don’t Know Anything):

My strings are broken and my heart is out of tune
I wanted quiet but all I see is you
I don’t know anything
I stumbled forward and you let me walk away
We both know I’ll be running back to you someday
I don’t know anything

The earth is spinning but my feet are standing still
And the wind is biting but I’m fighting off the chill
I don’t know anything

So let’s pretend for just one minute
The world, the world, the world, the world
The world is mine but you’re not there

They say time’s a healer but my watch can’t tell the time
The left hand’s stuck six months ago and I can’t find the right
I don’t know anything
The pen is stronger than any sharpened sword
But everything I write to you makes me feel like a fool
I don’t know anything

I feel like I can do anything
Why don’t you understand

Why don’t you see what I could be

Why can’t you see
I’d trade in the world for you

I’m now being told that the Mac was “a force to fight beige banality”. I’m fourteen minutes in. Orchestral music is trying to stir my cynical Vulcan brain.

I hope I get to Charlie’s soon.

EDIT: Gave up at 17:39. I can’t begin to describe how inane this ‘documentary’ is to watch. If you’re interested in watching idiots talking about all the AMAZING THINGS their computers can do, like MAKING MUSIC (:O) and DESIGNING T-SHIRTS (!) and BEING NOT WINDOWS (!!) and talking about the Mac ‘revolution’ like they’re in the pissing Rebel Alliance, you STILL won’t get anything out of Macheads, because as well as all that, it’s also a fucking load of toss.

x

{ 29 comments }

I now have inside jokes with only myself. Brilliant. Soon I’ll have inside jokes that not even I get, and then I’ll have rendered this blog useless, as well as my stupid life.

(The iPhone originally typed ‘my stupid lice’. I don’t have lice. Oh, I’m so weird)

This morning is a good one. I woke up naturally at 6, and completely forgot how wonderful it is to wake up early, watch Lost, make tea, shower and just relax before the day really begins.

Tom’s pissed me off already. Remember how we’re wearing a different colour for every day of recording? In co-ordinating our outfits for today (fuck you), Tom revealed he wouldn’t be at home and so only had black. Black. Always fucking black. How can one man wear so much black? As a nickname I call Tom ‘Peacock’ because of a theory I learned while reading The Game by Neil Strauss. Like peacocks, peacock theory suggests that a bright ‘plumage’ will attract women – bright clothes, shiny bags, etc. I call Tom Peacock because of his success wiv the wimminz, but actually, that word means nothing cos he always wears fucking black. I should call him Blackcock. (I’m not settled on that.)

Anyway, picture me on a rainy Hackney day, locked underground, recording my new album, dressed from head to toe in black. I hate blending in. I like being noticed xD

Speaking of narcissism – thanks for your comments on the song lyrics. You’re right, some of them are a bit Edward Cullen, but it’s all part of the duality of the CD; the battle between my confident ‘the world is mine’ self and more exposed ‘I don’t know anything’ side. So for every song with the subtitle ‘I like sex and so would you if you had it with me’, there’s a song subtitled ‘actually I love you a lot and don’t want you to go cos I don’t know what I’d do’. (Apart from Living On The Underground, which is about public transport. THEMATIC DEVELOPMENTS YEAH! it’s not all love songs on The World Is Mine, OH NO.)

Thanks for not giving up on me.

x

{ 21 comments }

From the song we recorded today, sexual lyrics ahoy:

Looks like I’ve fallen in love again
Kiss me, save me, be my closest friend
We’ve waited all year to have tonight
Don’t hold back and I will make you mine

I will make you mine
I will make you mine

It started with a kiss and ended with I’ll miss you, yes I do
So tell me what you want and I will wear that mask for you
We say we’re being truthful but I can’t get near you when I do
I just can’t shake the image of my hands exploring you

Lie down, let me in
I will give you everything
I wear my heart on my sleeve
Touch me and I won’t let you go
Make me what you need
You know what you want with me
I wear my heart on my sleeve
I wear my heart on my sleeve

For now you’re far away but close enough to miss you, and I do
For all the girls in all the world, I’ve got my eye on you
I’m ready for the day when I will get over you, I will do
But first just let me give myself entirely to you

And I’m not gonna lose you
I will fly around the world
If I have to show you
What you mean to me

Looks like I’ve fallen in love again

I will make you mine

All comments welcome :) x

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Turns out it was me who was late. We always start at 10, and today I just forgot that and thought we started at 11. So Tom was actually half an hour late xD

Heart On My Sleeve is over-the-top dance right now. In a good way. Although the overt sexuality in the lyrics makes Tom uncomfortable. It’s not because he’s prudish – I think he’s just concerned that I’ve written a song for Justin Timberlake to sing.

x

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I’m currently on a bus to the studio, a Lady Gaga playlist shuffling through my ears. (Bad Romance just started. OH YES.)

This morning I ran through the song we’re recording today just to make sure I was completely comfortable with it, and as I got to the chorus, something terrible dawned on me.

“This chorus is so bad.”

“But it’s too late in the game now,” I was told, “you can’t change it.”

“I have to! Or Tom will say ‘this song sucks, let’s not record it’. The rest of it is fine, it’s just this chorus …”

So on the train from Elm Park to Mile End, I rewrote the chorus to Heart On My Sleeve. It’s the only song Tom hasn’t heard yet, so I had to trust my own instincts on this one. I’ll have to work it out on guitar when I get there and then lay down a rough mix quick smart. The notes are high, too – it’s gonna be a tea and honey day today.

Tom’s already there, which is mental. He’s never early. Makes me look unprofessional, wandering in late rewriting the song we’re supposed to record today. What a dick.

x

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I love it when DFTBA artists cover each other <3

Here's A Thousand Hours, Dr. Noise style:

x

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Just to give you an idea of the kinda stuff I get sent to me on a daily basis:

I haven’t replied yet.

x

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I found myself, unexpectedly, with a free day this morning. So I sketched out a list of the things I need to do on my educational decree:

So far, all I’ve done are the easy ones: Watch Lost and Post Stuff. I haven’t even done Read Buffy yet.

Points of interest: I rebought Kingdom Hearts lately, so that’s on there; new Twilight video cos that fucking needs to happen; and by the end of this entry I’ll be scribbling off ‘blog my calendar + decree’.

Oh, and ‘try out tour outfit’, cos I’m excited about the new shoes.

Here’s my calendar for the next two weeks:

The 22nd is the day Lily goes home, hence the sadfaces; after that I have a four day block recording tracks 3-5 of TWIM, punctuated by a visit to Charlie’s; I’m recording the Pokémon, What Happened To You video on the 27th for upload on the 1st of March; and then March 1st to the 5th will be a five-day block to finish the album. And I have a BEAUTIFUL BLANK SPACE on February 28th for me to sleep and breathe and chill out.

I know, right: “my life’s so hard, I get to do what I love”, what a prick.

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1) Line-up will include Ed and Tom, and also Charlie :D

2) You can find out more about the other people on the tour and get behind-the-scenes stuff over at youtube.com/uploadtour

3) I bought new Converses today specially for my tour outfit cos I’m a GIRL

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Starting April 2010.

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A text-message conversation between me and Tom:

Me: Should I rename my album to Chocolate Prophecy? I think it’s cool. Discuss x
Tom: Why would you do that?
Me: I thought it was a cool name, genuinely xD
Tom: Sure, but … what does it mean? :P
Me: Just something Lily said about us both eating a Bounty bar at the same time. Not important. And on reflection, ‘TWIM(IDKA)’ sums up the album a lot better.

*pause*

Me: Thank you for this talk <3
Tom: Any time. xx

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So on my front page, you’ll notice that I have an Eventful widget. This allows me to find out where people want me to play, so that I can then arrange my UK TOUR IN APRIL around the places I know people want me.

(More about the April UK tour in a post to follow, suffice to say it’s gonna be a FUCKING BLAST.)

Anyway, according to Eventful’s ‘Top 40′ chart for today, I’m the 11th most demanded artist on the whole of the website. To put this into perspective, directly below me at number 12 is Jon Bon Fucking Jovi. I’m told that on the day I first announced the Eventful page, I was 3rd for the day, beating SLASH ?!?! at Number 5.

What a weird life.

Also, I found out today that you can hear very short previews of all the 117% songs somewhere on the internet. I’m not gonna tell you where, but if you can find it, enjoy the previews. :D

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There was a point, about four entries back, where this blog just became meme-based. There’s now guaranteed to be at least one thing in every entry that only one other person in the world besides me will understand. Fucking memes, man.

This is gonna cross over into the CD booklet, too, which will just be weird. I actually considered having one of the centre pages of the booklet say ‘PAGE LEFT BLANK’, you know like they do in exams? What a pointless idea. I might still do it.

Anyway, since giving you the lyrics of Georgia wasn’t enough of a teaser since you’ve already heard the whole song in acoustic form, I thought I’d let you hear five seconds of the finished track. BUT: then, I went through the song and couldn’t pick a section, cos it’s all so cool that I wanna save all of it for the album release.

So this blog becomes redundant.

(I’ve now sold 125 pre-orders of the 117% bundle :D Thanks so much, guys.)

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Hello! I recorded a song today :D

This entry’s gonna be a total cop-out cos you already have all the lyrics, but the song I recorded today – track 2 of my new album – is Georgia.

Georgia
I never knew who you were
All of the faces on this paper tell me everything

Georgia
I wish I knew who you were
If I woke up and you were gone tomorrow, how would I know

There’s only one question

Do you want Georgia to leave? (No no no)

Georgia
Nikoll Lekaj doesn’t care
And four other people all called Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, want you out

Georgia
Focus on Daniel Reeve
Cos just like Christopher he can be your Superman tonight

Georgia
I never met you, but I think I’m in love

I don’t want Georgia to leave
Do you want Georgia to leave?

On Monday, Oli (our engineer) and myself both turned up in yellow jumpers, so today we co-ordinated to all wear blue. We’re hoping to make it through the rainbow before the album is completed.

We have a little break for a week and a half now, and then we go back on the 23rd and 24th to record the next two tracks – Heart On My Sleeve and The World Is Mine (I Don’t Know Anything) THE TITLE TRACK, YEAH BOIZ.

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Tom summed this up pretty well in his blog entry on the topic, so you should definitely read that, but in short, Tom decided to record a tribute to this song:

So watch the video above – it’s HILARIOUS – and then you’ll understand our tribute. I should point out that Tom recorded it in one take, so you can hear him laughing at himself at points xD

Presenting: “‘Pokémon, What Happened To You’, What Happened To You?”

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“Wanna scratch me back and forth, back and forth, uh huh, run your hands on my waist, pull the fader …”

Listening to Lady Gaga at any time is SO FUN. I’m getting obsessed with this CD. It cheers me up like nothing else, and I’m already in a great mood today.

Why? Because I recorded the FIRST SONG OF MY NEW ALBUM TODAY. ^___^

Parrot Stories was a rock record. This won’t be; it’ll be a dance record. I have much more fun with a backing track. Frees up your hands to be more performy, you have less to focus on and you don’t have to rely on other people.

So here are the rules for you guys while I record my album. There’s gonna be ten tracks – we’re recording them in order – and every time I finish a song (we record one song a session) I’ll tell you what it is and post up the LYRICS for you to enjoy :) deal?

In keeping with the rules, here are the lyrics to the song we did today – track 1 of The World Is Mine, “You And Me”:

We knew it from the start
That we would be together in some way
You needed me and you know I still need you back

Don’t get the wrong idea
We both know what this is and how it ends
But I can’t wait to share all this with you

Let’s run away where they won’t find us now
We’ll hide far away and we’ll be free, just you and me

The time will go so fast
But we will savour every moment that we share
And I will give myself to only you

And when you go back home
I’ll count the days till I can run with you
And see your face and fall asleep for one more night

Also, since we had a bit of time left over, Tom recorded something BRILLIANT which I’ll tell you about in my next post. It’s an early 117% present for you. <3

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Hello! News! Right! Harry Moon!

I’m watching my newest video with Google’s auto-detection subtitles on. Fuck me.

According to the subtitles, the names of tracks 2 and 3 of my new EP are:

“I Hate Barrier Called Week”

and

“Come On, And She Our Crew”

I wrote a new song called Heart On My Sleeve the other day, so that’ll go on my new album The World Is Heinz.

Harry Moon!

(It’s been a weird day.)

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I got an email from Alan a day or so ago saying that, so far, 56 people have pre-ordered the 117% Complete bundle :)

To some people, that number might seem tragic. I have 92,000 subscribers, and I can’t get 92,000 pre-orders, or 920, or even 92?

But let’s look at this another way: this is an EP that’s available to pre-order despite you only hearing one of the songs on it. That’s a hard sell. Before the music videos come out at the start of March, people aren’t gonna know what the songs are like. And in addition, the physical pre-order is part of a $25 bundle. People don’t just have 25 bucks laying around, waiting for Alex Day to release new stuff. Honestly, I’m grateful that anyone is excited enough about my music and the products I put out that they’re placing an advance order for the release. And I know most of the people who’ve ordered are also people that read my blog, so thank you :D

There are a couple people who said they would have been happy to pay 7 or 8 dollars for the EP on its own because they want to have the physical, and while I think it’s very cool that you’d be willing to do that, I do think it’s more money than you should be spending on a three-track disc. I wouldn’t in good conscience be able to offer it at that price. Given that the people who like physical releases are also the people who (in general) savour/cherish physical objects in general, we decided that the bundle would be the best way to make the deal sweet for as many as people as possible. What I would suggest, if you don’t like the t-shirt design (although I think it’s cool :D) is that you could maybe split the cost of the bundle between you and a friend, so they have the shirt and you keep the CD?

In any case, there won’t be an EP-only purchase at this point, because that would be very insulting to all the people that just parted with twenty-five dollars of their money if I suddenly say “oh, now you can buy it on its own for 7 bucks, yeah!”

I promise, next time I release an EP, I’ll make sure I include more than three tracks on it, and all of this will be irrelevant xD

I just multiplied twenty-five by fifty-six. Fucking hell. Drinks are on me.

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I’m sitting in Heathrow Airport and I don’t intend to sleep. :)

I’ve never been to Terminal 3 before. It’s nice. I’m gonna sit reading Jonathan King’s autobiography and when my eyes get too tired, walk around the airport to the beat of Lady Gaga.

There was only one other person on the train here, and they got off at Terminal 4, leaving me to spend one stop in my own world, standing and singing Bad Romance as loud as I could while the music played through my earphones. Big grin on my face, hurtling underground while the world sleeps, feeling so alive. I thought, “I could die now and it would be brilliant, if the train just burned apart, in this great haze of music and joy and isolation”.

But there wouldn’t be anyone to meet Lily at the airport. So I’m glad I didn’t die. That means I get to have another one of those experiences :)

They say life is short, but it’s the longest thing you do, and it’s the only time you get to do it, so I say enjoy yourself :D

(Disclaimer: that’s just my opinion, on the ‘one life’ thing, but it’s one that’s shared by science, and Derren Brown, and Charlie, so … sticking with it.)

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I’ve given in.

I was going to keep all the songs to myself and not let people hear them until March 1st …

But you know what? Here. I asked Alan to add “Pokémon, What Happened To You?” to the pre-order page, so people at least have some idea what they’re spending their money on.

I hope you guys like it :)

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Today is PRE-ORDER DAY for my new videogame EP, 117% Complete! *jumps around with excited things*

AND! It’s not just the physical CD (which looks beautiful – we made the back look like the start screen of a NES game). Because there are only three tracks, it wouldn’t make sense to sell that on its own, so we have a BUNDUL! Yeah!

Head over to dftba.com now and you’ll see a twenty-five dollar burst of fun right there on your screen. We figured this would make the most sense so that you’re not getting ripped off on shipping for a three-track CD, and would provide a cool opportunity to give other stuff to the people that like physical things.

First off, there’s the CD:

You’ve seen the art for that already, and the rest of it is just lovely.

Then there’s the T-SHIRT:

That is also nice :) I figure most people will just buy the shirt cos they like it, and the music will be a nice bonus for them. I think it’s a fun design.

And finally, the badges – I don’t have a separate picture of those but you can see them on the pre-order page and it’s basically each quarter of the EP cover in badge form.

I’m gonna try and get some copies of the EP and the badges shipped over so I can sell them at shows, but the t-shirt is exclusive to dftba.com so if you’re sure you’ll love the music, or you just like videogames and think the t-shirt is cool, the pre-order is right here for you :D

For those that are waiting to hear it, I’m going to be releasing the EP on this site on March 1st, the same day it goes up on iTunes, and we’ll also be putting out music videos for all three songs on the first week of March, over the period of 117 hours. <3 (Alan’s idea, what a brilliant human.)

I definitely would advise, though, if you’re planning to purchase the EP, get the bundle; not cos I obviously make more off it, but because I think these three products are really nice and worth having :)

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My mum got married on Saturday!

I was best man, which I largely discovered was a figurehead title. Usually, the role of the best man is to take care of the groom – but my mum and stepdad were together on the morning of their wedding, so they basically had each other. (I know, I wasn’t happy with it either. I’m a purist. But he lives in Egypt, and went home this morning, so they were entitled to spend as much time together as possible.)

Anyway, that basically meant that I rolled out of bed at about ten thirty, unaware of what was going on, stumbled into the shower while dancing to Lady GaGa (AND I’D DO IT AGAIN) and got myself suited up. (Sidebar: I have a suit now. I needed one for the wedding. I’ve never had a suit before, it’s nice. I got it from Topman, obviously.)

When I went downstairs, everyone that’s ever been related to me seemed to be standing in my living room. I went and hid in the corner with my cousin Danny, where he proceeded to make up things that I was supposed to do as best man, in order to make me nervous. “You’re supposed to take care of everyone! What food are we having later? You don’t know? YOU’RE THE BEST MAN!”

Cue the meme for the day. “Come on Alex, phone the cab for us. Best man duties.” “Can you grab me a slice of cake from the buffet? Best man, innit.” “Drive Nana home. I know you can’t drive, but you’re the best man. It’s your duty.” Fuck off.

Basically it was like being a godfather. Halfway through the ceremony, they said “and now I’d like to call up Alex, who has the rings. Stand there, Alex. Give Tracy’s ring to Emad. Give Emad’s ring to Tracy. Okay, you can sit down now.” I was the delivery man. That’s all it is.

Oh, I did have to make a speech as well. That was quite fun. And then I played some songs cos mum asked me to. Here’s the set list if anyone at all cares:

Hearts
You And Me
A Thousand Hours
Dead And Gone
Debut
Holding On

Hopefully the two new ones won’t leak online before the album release! A JOKE TO MAKE ME SOUND IMPORTANT. Also you’ll notice that Debut isn’t a song of mine, it’s Ed’s, but my mum said she wanted me to play it cos she liked it. (Feel free to click here if you wanna hear it yourself, or search ‘Fortunes Fall’ on iTunes.) When I told Tom I was playing it, he seemed amused by the notion that I could forge a career as a wedding singer of Ed’s hits xD

I played Danny the new EP, too, and he gave me some Sopio decks to play around with. (Backstory: Danny and I developed a card game called Sopio. I moved on to making music while he developed SEVEN DIFFERENT DECKS, some of which are THEMED, and now they’re ALL MINE.)

Bracket slash Maureen

We’re hoping to develop it professionally, approaching companies etc, but if worst comes to worst we’ll refine it to perfection ourselves and then distribute it through DFTBA, hopefully.

Then, yesterday, I filmed the first half of the Hearts music video with a handful of people in Camden. Charlie’s stressed and exhausted from the experience and is gonna edit together what we have so far to see if it’s worth doing the rest. I have confidence it’ll look good, but we need to move on to 117% videos so you won’t see it for a while either way.

The new episode of Lost airs tomorrow night in America, meaning I can download it on Wednesday morning, but it’s already been leaked online and it’s REALLY hard to not just watch it now. I say ‘leaked online’ – if it was full quality it’d be worth it, but it’s filmed on a handicam with crappy audio off a screen, so it’ll be a sub-par experience. And that’s what I’ll keep telling myself.

There isn’t enough milk in the house for tea, but I don’t wanna leave this bed :( It’s Becky’s birthday so we just watched The Lion King. Tonight I am staking out Heathrow Airport because Lily (a fun Australian lady what I know) is coming here for a few weeks and arrives TOMORROW MORNING. It’s easier for me to stay overnight in the airport than it is to travel up in the morning. EXCITEMENT.

(I need to film a video, too. Not a Twilight one, don’t get excited.)

Oh, one last thing: clicky. <3

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I’m not gonna bother cluttering up the internet with my opinion of the iPad, for the same reason I refuse to answer the question “what do you think of the Eleventh Doctor?” – I haven’t seen it (or him) in action yet, so what reasonable opinion do you expect me to form?

(I will say, though, that of the unfounded criticism that has so far been flung the iPad’s way from people with no authority at all, “it can’t be used as a phone” is probably the most stupid. I mean, no, it can’t. Of course it can’t. It doesn’t need to. Neither does your dishwasher, does that bother you as well? What does it take? You really wanna walk around with a ten-inch screen plastered to the side of your face? Idiots.)

Now they’ve used iPod and iPad, do you think they’ll work through all the vowels? iPud next? Okay, I’m done.

I’d like to draw your attention to Sophie Madeleine, who was promoted on bandcamp recently and who’s really good. I bought her album “LOVE. LIFE. UKULELE.” this morning and it’s really nice <3 Click here to hear it for free and hopefully you guys will like it.

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I had another of those very picky conversations with Alan. I think the pickiest thing I said was “that bar needs to extend by 17%, at the moment it’s going by about 22%”. I’m a tosser. I can’t work out if my precise direction is a designer’s dream or a designer’s nightmare. Either way, this is the result:

EP release is March 1st; pre-orders go live on February 1st. =)

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iTunes has a thing called the Gracenote Database. It’s the beast responsible for storing all of the information about a CD, so that when you put that CD into your computer, iTunes can say ‘oh, it’s Greatest Hits Vol. 1 by The Oceanic Six’ instead of just ‘Track 1, Track 2, Track 3′ etc. Any individual can actually help the Gracenote database by filling in the track/artist/album info for an unrecognised CD and clicking ‘Submit CD Track Names’. (If everyone could rename the hidden track of Chameleon Circuit ‘We Are The Daleks’, and submit it, that’d be great. Cos it shouldn’t be called ‘Daleks Never Die’.)

Anyway, I put my new EP into my computer yesterday, six tracks long – the three tracks of the EP, and the three tracks again without vocals so that I can perform them live.

And this happened:

Who are the Mystic Revealers?

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So, guys. We need to talk.

I did something behind your back, and I’m sorry, and I hope you can forgive me.

It was a special circumstance! My friend John was having a baby boy, and I am so happy for him, SO happy for him :D And so were my other friends, the DFTBA artists. So we all got together and … it all happened so fast …

I wrote a new song. Just for the Lullabies album. You were never supposed to find out, it was just for John to enjoy, but … sigh.

It’s called Candy Canes. There it is, okay? Candy Canes. I’M SORRY.

Click here and you can download the album, including my track, for free.

I hope we can still be friends.

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The EP is finished! <3 And the release date has been moved up to March the 1st! Yay and such.

I’ve been trying to limit the number of people that hear it before release, so as to make the day of release a mutually exciting event for myself as well as you guys, rather insultingly referring to those that have heard it as being in the stupidly named ‘circle of trust’. Today I got over myself after Tom had a stern talk with me about how I’m an emotionless drone and I just played it to Becky. I’m now gonna play it for my mum. Tom’s always right about things. What a wanker.

Although he did come out with this today:

“… imagine if I was in charge.”
Me: That would be a dictatorship!
“No, it wouldn’t be! Let’s call it a … monocracy.”

Since the EP will be out on March 1st, I’ve decided to do a launch gig on February 28th, similar to Tom’s launch for Painfully Mainstream; little venue, hopefully Tom and Ed will play for me, and then I’ll play the EP through and do a few other fun things and then I’ll bring copies with me. I don’t know how much they’ll be yet but it’s only three tracks, so it won’t be as much as a full album OBVIOUSLY.

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This isn’t gonna be as entertaining as the last entry. Basically my throat’s a little better so I laid down vocal tracks for the Sonic and Mario songs – the Mario one is, I think, the best vocal I’ve ever done, because it’s all performey and “let’s make this dramatic” and such. If we performed it live, the music would be much more of an experience, it’s very full and theatrical. I really love it.

Your teaser for the day is that, during recording of one part of I Hate Mario Kart Wii, our engineer Oli said, “this is feeling a bit Drop It Like It’s Hot“.

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I haven’t blogged much recently, but you already know that. “Yeah where have you been? What else do you have to do, Alex?” Fuck you.

For the last three days, I’ve developed a sore throat and watched – or, felt – it grow steadily worse. It feels like there’s something lodged in there so whenever I sing, or swallow, or yawn, it hurts. I’ve had so many Strepsils that I’m starting to suspect a Strepsil has got stuck in there and is the cause of my unending misery. (Except for that being obviously not true.)

In fact, when I got home today, my throat was SO painful I could hardly speak, and my mum marched me into the kitchen where I proceeded to consume honey, cough syrup, Lemsip Max, gurgled salt water, and – you guessed it – Strepsils. Is it possible to overdose on Strepsils? What a way to go. Your final moments consumed by the medicinal strawberry flavour as they dissolve your insides away.

My throat feels nearly completely healed, now, but I’m sure it’s just a temporary measure, a result of it being doped up on all the throat mixtures my mother shovelled at it.

Today was the first day of three consecutive days that I’ll be in Dreamtrak Studios recording my new three-track electronic video game-inspired EP. I know that’s quite a long title, so for short I’ve dubbed it “117% Complete” – a Spyro The Dragon reference. (The studio is in Hackney, the same place I recorded Chameleon Circuit. Hackney is where music HAPPENS. That should be their slogan. Does Hackney have a slogan?)

The first song, “Sonic Doesn’t Need A Story”, was all but finished today (the ‘all but’ being that, rather crucially, it’s missing my voice). Tomorrow we’ll start on “I Hate Mario Kart Wii” and on Monday we’ll finish with “Pokémon, What Happened To You?”

So I’m spending the evening tucked up in bed, fully clothed, listening to Dan Deacon, waiting for Lily on Skype, and trying not to move my neck. And resisting the urge to send my new song to everyone on my Skype list who’s online right now with a message saying “LISTEN! NEW MUSIC BY ME! AHHHHH!” It sounds great, it really does. Tom knows exactly what he’s doing and whenever I had a criticism, he’d already be thinking the exact same thing. And we always found a way to resolve/improve what we didn’t like. He’s just brilliant.

I even thought about copying a bit of it to upload here, but I don’t wanna spoil the surprise. I’ll release it on (provisionally) March 15th, and when that happens you can all rush here to click the embedded player and hear it for free just like Parrot Stories, and it’ll be very exciting and fun (although you can also pre-order if you have faith in my/Tom’s abilities). I want that “silence till March 15th” rule to include even my best friends (with exception of Tom, who will help make it, and Alan, who will have to manufacture it). That way the release day means as much to me as it does to you, it’ll be a mutual “ahh let’s find out what it’s like/what people think” experience.

I will tell you that the song very much reflects the Sonic gaming experience – it feels like you progress through ‘levels’, there are distinct sections to it, and I used the melodies from Green Hill Zone, the Sonic 1 drowning music and the Sonic 1 theme as a basis for what I’ll eventually be singing. (Also, one of the instruments – in fact the very first thing you hear – was the result of Tom saying ‘let’s have something that sounds like the Animal Hospital theme! I love that’. Fact.)

Tom and Oli speak in a different language, by the way. “I want the music to release. Take up the attack but then feed through the delay until it oscillates at a 16th beat.” I can vaguely guess what that means, but it mostly sounds like a covert code for my assassination.

It’s less than two hours until my next Strepsil.

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I got The Oceanic Six’s CD this morning and it’s SO GOOD. People should definitely buy it. Now. Go. Buy it. BUY IT <3

So I did an interview with this girl from Seattle called Katie and you can read it by clicking here. Here’s a choice excerpt to get you excited:

Q: You’re just 20 years old. What is a typical day in a life for Alex Day?

A: Every night I set my alarm for around 7:30 and every morning I find myself unable to get up till about 9, silently cursing myself for sleeping in yet again. I’ll debate getting food, but end up reading Lost on-set reports and Dollhouse speculation forums for a couple hours. If it’s been a few days since my last YouTube video, I’ll start thinking of what one I wanna do next, which would require either psyching myself up to get through another godawful chapter of Stephanie Meyer fiction or putting some other plan in place (I have a folder with draft video ideas waiting to be filmed). And at some point I’ll pick up my guitar and warble my way through a cover of Paparazzi by Lady GaGa (which I’m sure thrills the neighbours more and more every time they hear it). I don’t have a job, I should point out, because there are enough kind people buying my album that I can literally just fill up the time, day after day, until the sweet release of death.

Once again, link is right here to read the rest. =D

I came up with a really cool idea for my music, which I’ve run by Alan, and am waiting for him to run by Hank to see if we can actually do it or not. But it’ll be REALLY COOL if we can. ^_^

Hearts video hasn’t got any further, cos it poured down with rain on Saturday, so we’ll be filming again in a couple weeks. Gah. I feel bad for all the people I’m dragging out of their homes to stand about with me in the cold. I might give them all copies of Parrot Stories as thanks. xD

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DFTBA just launched an internal monthly chart thing, which is quite cool:

http://dftba.com/shop/pages/Sales-Charts.html

Holding On is at #8 in the singles chart, and Parrot Stories is at #4 in albums – beaten only by Painfully Mainstream and This Machine Pwns N00bs (which were released last month) and Chameleon Circuit (which is still selling ridiculously well). Exciting stuff :D

My aim for TWIM is to get it to number  1 on the albums, which will mean absolutely nothing, but will be quite cool as a personal goal =)

(I should also mention that Blink, Exterminate Regenerate and An Awful Lot Of Running by CC are in the singles charts at 3, 5 and 6 respectively, which is nice, and that Trock On! is number 6 in the album chart. Disclosure: I’m in a band that writes songs about Doctor Who.)

Video soon – I’ll either be talking about my experiences applying for Mensa, my old Apple Store job, shopping at Topman … god my life is boring. Anyway, one of those.

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I’m always coming up with spontaneous ideas. Usually, the most they amount to is an email to Mickeleh or Alan, or occasionally Hank and John (if it’s YouTube/DFTBA related), saying “what if there was a club at DFTBA, where every month people get sent a CD with a cracked case for free?” or “what if we sold blank decks of playing cards so my subscribers could recreate my video endings?” or “what if I give out a thousand free copies of my album at VidCon?”. (In summary, the first one won’t work if more than three people sign up, the second is something we might do, and the last one is actually something I’m gonna be kind-of doing … I’m gonna burn a seven-track CD with a few Parrot Stories tracks, a few World Is Mine tracks, and one track from the 117% Complete EP, and give it out for free as a ‘demo’ CD thing on plain ol’ CD-R at VidCon.)

So yesterday after I wrote that blog about community spirit, I emailed Alan saying:

Wrote a blog about how it’s nice when artists help each other out and stuff, and it made me think for a bit about those ‘celebrity playlists’ you get on iTunes, where you can find out who Miley Cyrus’s favourite music is and buy it yourself or whatever.

What would be a cool way to do something similar on DFTBA? Maybe every month one of the CDs gets reduced in price, or free shipping on any purchases involving that CD, just for that month – on the recommendation of another DFTBA artist? We’re not allowed to pick anything we profit from, Tom can’t pick Taking Leave or Parrot Stories, but he could pick (for example) Silent Echoes maybe, so then that gets a little incentive and promotion for the month. Like an artist-chosen Pick Of The Month. And then next month, Dr Noise could pick someone.

Problem with this though is we don’t want the same CD getting discounted six times in a year cos everyone loves Hank’s music or Driftless Pony Club or whatever, so maybe this might not work. Or, maybe it’s just a separate idea. What else could we do that publicly showcases artists’ tastes within the label and gives people an opportunity to invest in them?

(Cos that’s always the first thing I do when I suggest an idea – point out all the problems and end with a vague ‘well, maybe this won’t work’ but then I still send it.)

What Alan worked out – and what went live today on the DFTBA website – is the idea of DFTBA artist playlists. Kind of like a Top Ten Chart for DFTBA, available once a month and decided by a different signed artist, allowing us to recommend our favourite DFTBA-branded music to the masses.

(For those that didn’t know I released physical copies of Parrot Stories – I’m signed to an independent record/distribution label called DFTBA Records, co-founded by Alan Lastufka of the fiveawesomeguys and Hank Green of the vlogbrothers.)

I even tried to rank them in order like a proper chart and gave my own little thoughts on each one. Unfortunately, given that I’m the first artist on the site, I won’t get my turn again for at least another year, but I would keenly encourage you all to clicky and give it a read :D I gave Alan all the relevant links so if you wanna hear the songs I recommended, you can click through to the artist’s DFTBA or bandcamp page or iTunes store section.

Yay for helping each other out!

x

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I think, as part of the booklet for The World Is Mine, I’m gonna write about unsigned acts I like. Just recommended people to check out. Not that much, maybe my top three with a little YouTube link or something. Cos one of the things I love most with all this is the community spirit. (My original idea of rattling on at length about the ideas and meanings behind the album was deemed, by me, incredibly pretentious and boring. So now I’ll fill it with fun little facts and such.)

Since I make more than enough from DFTBA sales, I figure the least I can do is buy CDs from other artists when they’re released. So I have – nearly – every release (I never got a physical of Expert because Craig gave me the files when I met him last year, but I’ll order it soon). The DFTBA artists have had a couple ideas to work on collaborations together; we discussed a fun one a while back where we all cover each other’s songs.

Anyway, someone who’s not on DFTBA but is very very cool needs my help, and I thought in the spirit of this entry that I’d help her out. I used to play acoustic shows with her, where she would outshine me night after night, cos it was three years ago and I had no stage presence and played cheesy crappy songs like “Smile” (“when I see her smile at me, it gives me strength, my room to breathe” – OH MY GOD). The only song from those days that made it on to Parrot Stories is ‘Sicily’ – think of that, Sicily being the strongest song in a set of songs.

Anyway, Fran’s wonderful, and she’s in the Vodafone Live And Unsigned competition in the UK, for which she tells me she’s through to the regional final :) If you clicky here, you’ll be able to listen to some tracks and help her out in the competition if you like them. It’d surely mean a lot to both of us if you did ^_^

(No, we’re not dating, you crazy gossips.)

Oh, one last thing to run by you – Parrot Stories. Since I’m releasing The World Is Mine in a digipak (on account of digipaks being more durable and lighter to transport), I’m thinking of converting Parrot Stories to a digipak too. So once we sell our first order of a thousand jewel cases, I’ll just order them in digipaks from then on. BUT: as part of this, since I’m improving the product, I thought it’d be nice to revise the booklet, and make it what I now think booklets should be, filled with fun facts instead of just lyrics.

So thought I’d put that out there, that’s a plan for the future. =) (No, I’m NOT asking you to buy it again :p)

x

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Today was absolutely crazy. =D

There were about a hundred of you, all screaming and going crazy. Before anything had happened. Literally, as I stepped out of Covent Garden station, a mob of people just cheered and screamed simply because I’d arrived.

We only got two shots filmed – the ones with huge crowd scenes – and we’re gonna film the rest in the next week or two. It’ll look great. To anyone reading this that came along, thank you so much :)

x

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It’s a pun, cos of snow.

I’m getting about ten messages a day from people saying “is London still on? THERE’S SO MUCH SNOW OH MY GOD” before them and their computer gets physically shunted under a pile of snow, leaving them only to click ‘Send’ and cling to what’s left of their lives while they wait for rescue from the snow fairy.

There’s not THAT much snow – trains are still running, everything’s fine, and yes tomorrow is still on. I of course would have announced if it wasn’t.

Background for those unaware; I’m filming a music video for Hearts in London tomorrow, details here:

So that’s still going on. Now, of course, it IS likely that it will be snowy and icy and we won’t be able to film anything at all. But if that happens, it’ll just be a gathering. xD However, we should be fine.

x

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I recently watched a TED talk on creativity led by Elizabeth Gilbert, recommended to me by Charlie. As part of this talk, Elizabeth (I hate referring to professionals by their last names) put forward an alternate perception of the creative process to take the pressure off creative individuals; she talked about how it often feels like a song (or a poem, or a piece of art, whatever your forté) just comes to you as if given by something external. She said that when you picture the source of your creativity as something outside of yourself, rather than something you’re always capable of yourself but only rarely able to access, you lose the constant feelings of frustration associated with the inability to tap into said muse. Elizabeth likes to think of creative ideas in the same way dream catchers approach dreams; that they will briefly breeze through you, able to be captured, but if let go will simply drift over to the next creative individual ready to play catch.

So it was, then, that having written the ten tracks for my album, I wrote an eleventh this afternoon, because the winds happened to be heading my way.

It’s called You And Me and I like it a lot – very Impossible Dreams, only without the emotional weight attached. In my track list, it comes third – between Georgia and The World Is Mine. I was inspired by a dreamy Evanescence song I recently rediscovered called ‘Anywhere‘ – I love the lyrics.

Anyway, I’ve started recording what I call my definitives – crappy recordings of the songs on my MacBook, the best I can do without assistance, but that capture the songs exactly as I intend them to sound, with all the pauses and melodic phrases in exactly the right places. I can then listen to these over and over in the build-up to my album recording, making sure I remember the song exactly the way I want to when it comes time to do it properly.

Incidentally, I’ve now booked my recording sessions for the album with my studio engineer Oli. The first session will take place on the 25th of January – the day after the recording of the 117% Complete EP – and then there will be four sessions in February, a four-day block from the 1st to the 4th of March, and a final two days on March 19th and 20th (giving us time in-between to reflect on what we’ve done up to that point and make necessary changes). That also leaves us time to book an additional session or two in April to finish everything off and make it really perfect.

A few people have been asking me lately how I can afford to do this – both the recordings, and the general living my life as a musician. The studio ain’t cheap, let me point out: Parrot Stories cost £550 to record, and The World Is Mine already looks like it’s gonna cost at least one thousand five hundred. I’ve just been very lucky, and very good with the money that’s come my way.

Chameleon Circuit, first of all, was recorded for free, and that continues to sell very well, such that I always get several hundred pounds a month from its sales. I don’t really go out drinking or partying, so most of that goes away in savings. That money paid for Parrot Stories, which has also sold well so far (and which I get a bigger cut of, because Chameleon Circuit has four members), and the money from them both will go towards The World Is Mine. Currently, I have £10,000 in my savings account, some of which I’ll be investing in an equity ISA (when did life become so boring?), the rest I’ll use to invest in things like album recordings and to spontaneously go to New York when Tom’s playing a gig there xD (I sold all my CDs in New York, though, so that helped pay that all back.)

Anyway; the money from Chameleon Circuit paid for Parrot Stories, and the money from that is gonna pay for The World Is Mine, which I’m purposely spending a lot more time on because I can afford to do so and think it’ll definitely be worth it as a result. =)

The best thing I recommend anybody do is, if you really wanna put out a CD, spend a month noting down every single penny you spend, and exactly what you spend it on. (I did it last October and called it K-TOMM – Keep Track Of Money Month.) At the end of it, you may notice you always buy the large meals from McDonalds but never finish them, in which case you can save by buying the mediums. Or you notice that you eat at McDonalds twice a week but could afford to cut back. I noticed that I’m always spending £3 at every Starbucks buying chai tea lattes when I could just buy a Capri-Sun for 70p. All that money adds up. And once you’re saving, just funnel all of it into the album. You don’t get anywhere without taking risks. It doesn’t matter how many subscribers you have – if you make a fucking great CD, it only takes one person to come across it for the ball to start rolling. And it’ll end up paying for itself anyway.

x

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Earlier today, I had a look around YouTube to see if anyone had covered one of my songs or reviewed my album, and I stumbled upon this video.

The idea was done by jonnydarkmusic at first; to take the lyrics of a popular song, translate them into another language and then back into English, and then sing the translated version.

Charlie and myself spent the rest of the afternoon singing songs we’d written, translated back from Yiddish. xD

Of particular interest is this line from Don’t Look Back:

“I can see my breath in front of me, dancing in the air with yours
We both know what we want but we can’t cos we’re so unsure“

It got translated to:

“Before I can hold my breath and dance with you
We both think that we cannot know who we are“

Which, as Becky pointed out, is ‘oddly beautiful’.

Later in the day, while failing to write Trock, Charlie played this Spanish uke solo over an old chord progression I had and made it sound all fun and new, so using the broken Don’t Look Back lyrics as a basis, I wrote THE MYTHICAL TRACK 5.

It’s called Hometown. I have to fiddle with it a bit, but it’s interesting and just what I was looking for – an interesting, different middle song to bridge the gap between Living On The Underground and Dead And Gone.

(Not all the translations were so poetic. “When it gets to midnight, can you take my freezing hands and dance?” became “In the evening I opened the freezer to get a dance?“)

x

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Ten fun facts about the songs on Parrot Stories, GO:

1) A Thousand Hours, No Sacrifice and Hearts were all written in the same week during December 2008, a month when I had no internet access and was subsequently far more productive. I wrote Don’t Look Back a few weeks afterward, as well as three other songs that didn’t make it on the album. (Bonus facts – Holding On and No More were written around the same time in summer 2008, and Impossible Dreams was the last song for the album, written in summer 2009 several months after the rest of the tracks were finished).

2) The line I’m proudest of on the album is “If you ever need me, I’m only a vodka away from you” from No More.

3) My least favourite line is the description of “perfect glossy hair” in Hearts. Imagine being asked to describe someone’s hair in two words and saying: ‘perfect. And glossy!’ – What a tosser.

4) Holding On took its production style from a song by Roses Kings Castles called ‘Horses‘ – in the studio I played the song for Tom and said ‘we need to make it sound like this’.

5) Candy Floss was written under a tree one night with Mhairi in an attempt to write a cute song similar to ‘Birds‘ by Kate Nash.

6) Impossible Dreams was inspired by the rhythm of a Slipknot song called ‘Circle‘.

7) Some of my lyrics sound really creepy. Most of the ones on the new album do, including lines like “Now I know how to make you mine … I won’t let you go” (from You Can’t Trust Me), and “lay down and close your eyes – all things have to die” (from Not Just Yet) but the creepiest one on Parrot Stories is ”She was gonna go, but I said ‘no, I don’t think so’ ” from Candy Floss xD

8) How We Were nearly didn’t make it on the CD. On the night before the final day of recording, I decided to take one of the planned tracks (titled Standing In One Piece, a uke song) off the album and replace it with this one. (It was a good decision.)

9) In the CD booklet for Parrot Stories, Lex is described as doing ‘lighting’ because our engineer in the studio had a lamp shaped like a duck, and Lex looks a bit like a duck (a recurring joke to the joy of all but Lex).

10) The font on the cover of the CD – and the logo of my name on this website – is a completely original font, because it’s the handwriting of Alan (co-owner of DFTBA Records).

ALSO: A worrying amount of people in my last blog post said “wait … you sell physical CDs of Parrot Stories?” – yep, see how on my blog on the right hand side there’s a link that says ‘buy on CD’, and you notice how on every music video I upload there’s a link that says ‘buy on CD’? RAWWR. THIS IS NOT MY FAULT.

Yes, I sell physicals. xD And the physicals have a HIDDEN TRACK (well, sort of) so you’re totally missing out. If the link on the right of this page isn’t enough for you – maybe you’re seeing this through an RSS reader – here’s the link again. Bonus last fact: the last time I checked, I’d sold 599 copies of my album, so you could be the six hundredth! :D

x

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(I just saw a debate show on TV called ‘The Big Questions’ and the question they asked was ‘is the pub more important than the church’ – WHAT? There were a load of ming-mongs all saying “they’re both important in different ways” and at no point did someone stand up and cry “WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE DOING?!”)

According to dictionary.com, ‘pedantic’ is:

overly concerned with minute details or formalisms.

When I was about 3 or 4 (having been able to read much earlier than the other kids in my class), I managed to say this word. Somehow. I don’t know. But instead of going with ‘picky’, I told someone not to be ‘pedantic’.

Which is proof, if anything, that I AM pedantic.

(Another smart-ass story from my childhood; some idiot thug kid walked up to me when I was 12 and said “do you think you’re smarter than me?”, to which I answered “relatively”. He said “what the fuck does relatively mean?” and I said “well, if you don’t know…”)

This brings me on to the issue of CD booklets.

My view is that if someone’s made the effort to buy the physical CD instead of just downloading it on iTunes, they deserve a really cool CD booklet. And I failed on that with Parrot Stories. I just threw the lyrics in, like all CD booklets do, without really thinking about WHAT a CD booklet should actually do. I mean, all the lyrics and the chords to my songs are on this site, so the booklet’s all-but-redundant.

For The World Is Mine I want the booklet to be something I put just as much thought into as the arrangement of the music, not something I put together at the end. I’m thinking of just writing it all, so it’s literally a literary accompaniment to the album – a pamphlet – with meanings of songs, and some of my thoughts, and stuff like that.

Same with the CD artwork and the CD face. I want you to get something out of having it beyond just owning it, and I also want those designs to sum up the duality I’m getting across on the album. When Charlie and I interviewed Carrie Grant for the Chartjackers project, she emphasised how important it was that the music, the voice, the style, the artwork etc all need to say the same thing. It needs to all work together.

I’ll be thinking about this a while, if this conversation I had with Alan during the finishing of Parrot Stories is anything to go by:

Alex Day
Can you put the swirls on in the background, just on that thank-you page for now, and see how that looks?

AlanDistro
sure

Alex Day
cheers

AlanDistro sent file “booklet-parrot-stories4.pdf” to members of this chat

Alex Day
Okay, I’d say to take that horse disclaimer and space it so there’s an even gap between the text above it and the bottom of the sheet. Aside from that I think it’s fine. Or maybe not that far down if it looks weird, but a little further down than it is now at least.

AlanDistro
ok done.

AlanDistro sent file “booklet-parrot-stories5.pdf” to members of this chat

Alex Day
okay cool, cheers. One other thing is I think the quote at the top should have the same thing done to it – moving up so there’s the same amount of space at top and bottom. Aside from that it looks beautiful

AlanDistro sent file “booklet-parrot-stories6.pdf” to members of this chat

Alex Day
Could you move the Parrot Stories title up a bit? Or maybe the quote and the title. And also I think the multi-coloured swirls would be best on the thank-you page, and the single colour swirls on each of the lyric pages.

AlanDistro
good call

Alex Day
I think it’s just that title/subtitle that needs to be moved up a bit actually, not the quote

AlanDistro
ok

AlanDistro sent file “booklet-parrot-stories7.pdf” to members of this chat

Alex Day
Could you move the ‘Alex Day Parrot Stories’ block up a tiny bit? Everything else is spot on, the thank you bit is fine now I think.

AlanDistro
on the front cover?

Alex Day
mhm

AlanDistro
kk

Alex Day
there’s just a little more space above it than below

AlanDistro
well, that is for bleed, that will be cut off, look at the grey cut lines to the right of it, and that will show you where it will be cut

Alex Day
Even with that cut at the top I think it needs a slight upward movement, even if it’s just a few pixels

AlanDistro
ok, let me fix the title and then I’ll send over the 8th and hoepfully final version =)

Alex Day
haha, sorry to be so picky

Alex Day
It should be the last yeah

Alex Day
WAIT

Alex Day
Before you send it

Alex Day
Do you think the name ‘Blanche’ should be unitalicized?

AlanDistro
it does look better unitalicized

AlanDistro sent file “booklet-parrot-stories8.pdf” to members of this chat

Alex Day
I just measured, and the Alex Day/Parrot Stories block needs moving up three more pixels

AlanDistro sent file “booklet-parrot-stories9.pdf” to members of this chat

Alex Day
Hahahaha. The text looks exactly the same.

AlanDistro
it’s not, it’s three pixels higher =)

Alex Day
I’m being a twat. It’s fine. I approve. Go. No more of this. xD

I’ve reverted back to my original plan of having the artwork in orange (the artwork originally planned for the non-album Epigrams And Interludes, for those loyal long-time readers). So that’s where my head’s at now. More to follow.

x

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