First up, The Darcys! A band out of my hometown in Toronto, a friend turned me on to them and holy crap do I get a kick out of these guys! Their self titled album is probably one of my favourite albums of last year and the following music video is from that album.

The best part? Download their 2 albums for free on their website.

Just taking care of some of the legal crap. Basically, I’m not a fan of large labels nor do I like the fact that some unsigned artists get a stigma attached for being unsigned. Personally I’d just rather avoid the whole thing altogether and that’s what I’ve done: the Flame Deluge Band has signed with Any And All Records who will do absolutely nothing for us, cost us anything and we’re not obligated to do anything for them. So what’s the point? No point other than if someone asks us if we’re a signed band, we can say yes and move on.

The more useful bit of news is that all of our music is being licensed under a Creative Commons License! Specifically a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license. Basically, you’re free to copy and distribute the music, make modifications to it (provided you credit us) for non-commercial works.

We’d rather you pay for the work but if it’s easier for you to torrent the shit out of it, we’re not gonna go after you. Send us money if you feel guilty!

The covers for the EPs are done and honestly, I want to show them off! Here they are!

No date on when the EPs will actually be released but we’ll keep you in the loop as soon as they’re available and they’ll be available as free downloads! Everyone loves free stuff!

Don’t forget to check out the discography page! The kinks are still being worked out…

Yeah I know things are quiet on the FDB front as songwriting and recording progresses, but I do have a very quick bit of news — the album has been retitled!

The original title I was working with was “Past Life” but a recent trip to Toronto and an offhand remark later has convinced me to change the name to “Waiting For Saturn”. Why the change? I have my reasons but I feel it fits the album better.

I’ll keep you all up to date as there is stuff to be kept up to date on!

(note: there are always exceptions. The Polaris Prize comes to mind.)

Even worse at the Grammy’s this year was the whole Chris Brown thing (Fuck you Chris Brown, shame on you Grammy Awards.)

There was a great acceptance speech from one of my favourite bands, Foo Fighters. Here’s the speech.

Dave Grohl Speech – Grammys 2012 Foo Fighters… by B8SBV

Apparently Grohl got a bit of flack about it and responded online, clarifying his remarks:

Oh, what a night we had last Sunday at the 54th Annual Grammy Awards. The glitz! The Glamour! SEACREST! Where do I begin?? Chillin’ with Lil’ Wayne…meeting Cyndi Lauper’s adorable mother…the complimentary blinking Coldplay bracelet…..much too much to recap. It’s really is still a bit of a blur. But, if there’s one thing that I remember VERY clearly, it was accepting the Grammy for Best Rock Performance…and then saying this:

“To me this award means a lot because it shows that the human element of music is what’s important. Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument and learning to do your craft, that’s the most important thing for people to do… It’s not about being perfect, it’s not about sounding absolutely correct, it’s not about what goes on in a computer. It’s about what goes on in here [your heart] and what goes on in here [your head].”

Not the Gettysburg Address, but hey……I’m a drummer, remember?

Well, me and my big mouth. Never has a 33 second acceptance rant evoked such caps-lock postboard rage as my lil’ ode to analog recording has. OK….maybe Kanye has me on this one, but….Imma let you finish….just wanted to clarify something…

I love music. I love ALL kinds of music. From Kyuss to Kraftwerk, Pinetop Perkins to Prodigy, Dead Kennedys to Deadmau5…..I love music. Electronic or acoustic, it doesn’t matter to me. The simple act of creating music is a beautiful gift that ALL human beings are blessed with. And the diversity of one musician’s personality to the next is what makes music so exciting and…..human.

That’s exactly what I was referring to. The “human element”. That thing that happens when a song speeds up slightly, or a vocal goes a little sharp. That thing that makes people sound like PEOPLE. Somewhere along the line those things became “bad” things, and with the great advances in digital recording technology over the years they became easily “fixed”. The end result? I my humble opinion…..a lot of music that sounds perfect, but lacks personality. The one thing that makes music so exciting in the first place.

And, unfortunately, some of these great advances have taken the focus off of the actual craft of performance. Look, I am not Yngwie Malmsteen. I am not John Bonham. Hell…I’m not even Josh Groban, for that matter. But I try really fucking hard so that I don’t have to rely on anything but my hands and my heart to play a song. I do the best that I possibly can within my limitations, and accept that it sounds like me. Because that’s what I think is most important. It should be real, right? Everybody wants something real.

I don’t know how to do what Skrillex does (though I fucking love it) but I do know that the reason he is so loved is because he sounds like Skrillex, and that’s badass. We have a different process and a different set of tools, but the “craft” is equally as important, I’m sure. I mean…..if it were that easy, anyone could do it, right? (See what I did there?)

So, don’t give me two Crown Royals and then ask me to make a speech at your wedding, because I might just bust into the advantages of recording to 2 inch tape.

Now, I think I have to go scream at some kids to get off my lawn.

Stay frosty.

Davemau5

Me? I still don’t give a shit about award ceremonies. I’d thank whoever gave me an award, grab their cock and jerk them off, but no gold can ever replace those moments where I play something I’ve written privately to a friend who is moved to tears by it. Just my voice, a guitar and a single audience member.

You can’t buy that, you can’t be awarded that.

You can only earn it with hard work and dedication to your craft.

So, it’s been a week since I even thought about my album and decided to listen to the roughs with the new song added into the mix, I knew exactly where it would go and just plopped it in there and gave the album a listen.

Then I cut 3 songs. So that’s a thing.

With the amount of material I’ve been working with I’ll have enough left over for a second album. So there may be some extra material left lying around on the ground for b-sides up the wazoo so stay tuned for that!

Current standing for the album:

Original number of demos to work from: 21
Number of demos cut: 10
Number of demos that made the album: 11
Original song count for the album: 15
Songs cut to date: 6
Songs added to the album: 4
Current song count for the album: 12
Total amount of songs worked on: 18
Extra solo music from this years FAWM to work with for b-sides: 7
Total amount of music kicking around: 32
Plus, there’s half written napkin ideas kicking around as well.

Christ, there may be material for another 2 albums!

That’s right boys and girls, it’s time for FAWM which stands for February Album Writing Month. 8 of the songs on the album were originally developed during previous FAWMs while the song She Just Lay There was written and recorded during FAWMstock II where a bunch of FAWMers got together in Pennsylvania for a few days of awesome music writing and performing.

FAWM has become quite an important part of my musical writing that I can’t NOT do it. And it’s not too late for you to join as well if you’re up for a challenge!

I’d also like to throw out some shout outs to the Das Binky Recording Collective and Sapient Network for getting some drum tracks back to me over the last few days. They worked out the drums for Rubicon and Creationism, respectively and make a great double whammy on opening the album, really happy with these tracks! Can’t wait for all of you to hear it soon! Keep an eye out on this blog, I’ll be talking about FAWM and how it’s going this year. There’s always hijinks and hilariousness during this time of year and would love to share that with you!

At the moment there’s very little up and running but that hasn’t stopped us from getting the website on it’s feet. Here’s a track from our forthcoming debut album “Past Life”.

She Just Lay There by Flame Deluge Band

Check back soon as we add more stuff!