The New World

luka

Well-known member
Me and Jack love bloodSports. Watching men inflict life changing injuries on one another, that's our favourite thing.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
@IdleRich How is being retired at 40? It sounds wonderful. That's somewhat the goal. Find increasingly frugal ways to live, and develop skillsets to make money efficiently, so I can slowly transition to a few hours of contract work a week to pay bills
Yeah don't get me wrong, I am very lucky and my situation is great. The basic thing is, I don't need to get up in the morning and go to an office and do stuff and that's fantastic cos basically I am very lazy and I hate doing that stuff.
It's only possible cos I moved to Portugal which is very cheap and it is actually quite important that I supplement my savings with DJ-ing and stuff. I'm obviously far from being a big name but just a few things here and there bringing in a few quid once or twice a month makes quite a big difference - especially as the UK government seems to be trying as hard as it can to shaft me with Brexit and reduce the value of the money I have and so on. With that and covid destroying any chance to dj or whatever things are a bit tight just now.
I'm really happy/fortunate that we chose Portugal in that, we chose it cos it was cheap and we liked the way it looked but we didn't know anyone and had no real idea how things would work out for us. But it's happened that we have met lots and lots of great friends, just people I feel will be our friends forever. So really it's that simple that I like the people we met and I like the flat that we live in and every day I wake up and don't tend to have commitments... I like where I wake up and I like the freedom I have. As long as I have books to read, music to listen to and films to watch I never get bored so, yeah, it's kinda what I want.
But I don't wanna just totally lie around masturbating all the time and so we have kinda some stuff we want to do. I mean, I'm definitely not someone who feels bad cos they don't have a job, like some people feel that work itself is noble, I know that it's not and that most of the jobs I have done in my life (not all of them - just about) have been a waste of time. So I don't feel guilty for not doing something like that again - but i do want to use this time to do something that feels more worthwhile and that is the kind of thing I've always wanted to do.
One of the main things I wanted to do is to start a record label. Now the thing is we have the first record ready to go, in fact it's been ready for ages, we planned to launch in March or something but then Covid came along, so the launch was delayed, but basically, it can't go back much further so finally we are gonna release the first record on Invisible Sounds in October, if that works out - by which I mean, if I don't lose all the money I've put into it - I would like to make a profit or at least break even, but if we make a minor loss that's not the end of the world. So if we sell enough copies and I feel that I've done what I could for the guy who made it, then I will feel that that justifies carrying on and doing another release and another and so on.... but if it's a total undeniably embarrassing flop then that would necessitate some kind of re-think of "what the fuck am I actually doing here?" kinda thing.
 

sus

Well-known member
That sounds wonderful. Should me and Nico come move across the pond to Portugal? We got Spanish under our belt but uh, not Portuguese.

That's pretty much how I feel re freedom, culture
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
That sounds wonderful. Should me and Nico come move across the pond to Portugal? We got Spanish under our belt but uh, not Portuguese.
That's pretty much how I feel re freedom, culture
Well you definitely don't need Portuguese. I'm doing my best to learn it but languages are certainly my weak point.
If you're serious you should check it out. If people come here I'm happy to meet up and show them round or whatever. Loads of friends last year but not so many this year for some reason...
Of course it's not perfect, there is a lack of a good music scene and Liza gets very annoyed about what she perceives as cultural weakness in terms of museums and stuff - but, you know, it's a city of 600k people, of course it doesn't have as many world class museums as London. And also she spent a lot of time living between Cologne and Dusseldorf before she moved to the UK, Dusseldorf has an insane number of art galleries for a town of that size, so she's spoiled.
It IS true that the most people here are surprisingly ignorant in terms of culture and gf finds that very frustrating, but I don't. I know lots of people who are enthusiastic about culture and that's more important than knowledge to me. You know, they do paintings or put on club nights or whatever, does it matter if they've never heard of Polanski*?
And anyway, is it that important? It's like when you're little you only like people who are goths (or whatever) like you but when you're older you realise deciding friends in terms of their music taste is lame.
I like the sun (a few years ago was coming back from Amsterdam and plane was delayed and we went outside for a fag and the rain was pouring down, the freezing wind was blowing off the sea and I suddenly thought "why have I lived my whole life in weather like this when I hate it so much?"), I like the food, I like the buildings, I like the prices, I like the people and so on.

*Picked that example cos we were going upstairs to someone's flat and I said how much the stairs and hand rails and the whole look were so reminiscent of the look Polanski had in The Tenant and Rosemary's Baby etc and they all looked at me blankly and said "Who?" - art graduates in their thrities.
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
How much do 1br flats there go, by chance?
To buy or to rent? Either way much much MUCH cheaper than in London - and probably cheaper than wherever you are too. One thing worth mentioning is that a few years ago prices went up as a lot of people started having the same idea as us and moving here. For various reasons it took us longer to get our arse in gear and move than we planned. The upshot was that instead of buying a place in Lisbon we went for a place in a small town just outside. That meant that we could get a nicer place (of course) but, it is weird in that, when we were in London in zone 2 we were further from the town centre than we are now, but to Portuguese people we might as well be in on the moon, they think that we live a ridiculous distance away and they can't understand it. So that does make it hard to get people to come and visit us, certainly for after-parties etc (or maybe people don't like us that much after all) - but, then again, I'm kinda fed up of how it was in London when every time I came home there were like twenty people I didn't know in m living room so I'm happy to change that for a bit of peace and quiet - and sometimes we can see flamingos in the Tagus from our window.
One problem is that AirBnB went kinda mental here and everyone suddenly switched to doing short-term lets with the result that it was difficult for people (locals) to get a normal rented flat and prices for them went up obviously. I understand that that process has been almost totally reversed by the C19 business. I don't know actual prices off the top of my head but I can find out easily enough if you really want to know. Main thing to remember is that apartments are called T1, T2 or T3 depending on how many bedrooms they have, that's fairly standard and so you can compare the price of a T1 in Alvalade or whatever to a T1 in Belem.
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
One of the main things I wanted to do is to start a record label. Now the thing is we have the first record ready to go, in fact it's been ready for ages, we planned to launch in March or something but then Covid came along, so the launch was delayed, but basically, it can't go back much further so finally we are gonna release the first record on Invisible Sounds in October, if that works out - by which I mean, if I don't lose all the money I've put into it - I would like to make a profit or at least break even, but if we make a minor loss that's not the end of the world. So if we sell enough copies and I feel that I've done what I could for the guy who made it, then I will feel that that justifies carrying on and doing another release and another and so on.... but if it's a total undeniably embarrassing flop then that would necessitate some kind of re-think of "what the fuck am I actually doing here?" kinda thing.
So while this thread is totally derailed I may as well plug the forthcoming record a little.... just took a quick pic of the front, doesn't get across the beauty of the whole package but I think you can see that it has a real obi strip down the side with our logo at the bottom. It's got a picture of the artist on the front and inside is a pull out with the lyrics in Japanese and a translation in English.

TaishiDissensus.jpg

I think this is the first track - kinda cinematic psych is how I'd describe it... let me know how many advance copies you want!

 
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WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
Similar point about happiness (pretty sure dopamine and not seratonin - but I don't really know the difference) during gambling. Not knowing whether you are going to win or not seems to more reliably trigger happy-chems then if the player knew they were going to win.

That is, if you are unable to associate which maneuvers/tactics led to which rewards, the anticipation seems to fuel the happiness. Whereas, in situations where you are able to better predict which actions lead to what income, the matter becomes boring.


Come to Britain when Covid calms and go dogging. You're a natural.


No not really. As with what a lot of the evil lies that Luka likes to mischievously spread to further his chaotic aims, there are a few little things in there which are almost half-truths and which make things hard to properly defend yourself from. Like... who was it who famously accused his rival of something which they knew not to be true but he explained to his team "I want to hear him deny it" cos even doing that would link his name with whatever it was he'd been accused of.
So in this case, for example, I grew up near Oxford but in Luka's diseased mind that has become "I went to Oxford university" and so on... I did work in the city for a bit... I have sort of retired now in terms of a day job but a) that happened when I was forty and b) it will only work if I live relatively frugally... you get the picture.
It is a lovely story though, it's kinda my life but a version of it that you might get if it was reflected in one of those distorting mirrors that you see at a
funfair - except this distorting mirror is one made out of a silver reflecting surface and it it is framed in solid gold studded with rubies and it is twisted and so on so that it gives you the most beautiful and gilded version of your life imaginable. At times I find Luka's version so seductive I prefer to go along with it, wondering maybe, just maybe, if I just squinted a little or kinda half-closed my eyes or whatever, then the magic mirror version of my life would suddenly become the real one - my old porsche would turn into a ferrari, the swimming pool would grow to a proper size and so on...

mask040.jpg


reading up on the Wiki now, had never heard of Travellers in my whole life

Wtf? This


as opposed to this

 

sus

Well-known member
So while this thread is totally derailed I may as well plug the forthcoming record a little.... just took a quick pic of the front, doesn't get across the beauty of the whole package but I think you can see that it has a real obi strip down the side with our logo at the bottom. It's got a picture of the artist on the front and inside is a pull out with the lyrics in Japanese and a translation in English.

I think this is the first track - kinda cinematic psych is how I'd describe it... let me know how many advance copies you want!

This looks and sounds great! The video looks good too; did you guys coordinate that, or the artist?

What kind of formats you putting out? Website?
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
This looks and sounds great! The video looks good too; did you guys coordinate that, or the artist?
What kind of formats you putting out? Website?
Thanks man. Basically I had no artistic input whatsoever. We wanted to start a label, we have no experience or anything like that, you could almost say that we don't really know what it even means beyond that we pick music that we like and somehow make it available to people and when people get it, they understand that it has something to do with us cos it has our logo and name on it.
So.... we were here, we wanted to start something and I guess we thought that we needed to find some music that we loved and which wouldn't otherwise come out, and it seemed as though the first place would be amongst our friends and so on, so we kinda always had our ear to the ground - we didn't want to force it, we didn't have any idea like "we must release something by x time" we just wanted to find something we liked and then get it out. Now as it happened, when I was in the UK a load of our friends (including a guy who became my flatmate for a long time) called [Actually leave his name - let's just call him Billy for the moment] were in a band called Fat White Family. Now this band have now become quite famous and over the years they have had quite a large number of personnel. One time just before Billy moved in with us we went round to his house and bumped into their bass player at the time who was also ringing the doorbell - directly from the Letterman Show back to Billy's horrible junkie flat in Hackney must have been quite a come-down but there you go.


Anyway, got chatting to Taishi - I'd actually known him a little for a while before that (he was in a band called They Came From The Stars I Saw Them with Horton Jupiter if you know him and also his own band called Cosmik Onion Field or something) and always thought he was a nice guy, but on that occasion Liza met him too and they stayed in touch basically.
Long story short, like virtually everyone who comes into the orbit of Fat White Family, Taishi was quickly chewed up and spat out - he was soon out of the band and shortly after that he moved to Berlin. But luckily Liza (particularly) stayed in touch with him and while emailing he sent her a load of songs he'd recorded and that he wished he could get released. We heard the songs - we thought they were great, and that was just exactly what we were looking for of course.
So, a perfect mix - a band with great songs and no way to put them out, a nascent label wanting to put something out but lacking any great songs.
So we spoke to him and agreed to do it, and then I asked for help and advice from loads of people that I knew who run or have run or worked for labels or whatever. One guy put me in touch with a bloke to master them in Denmark, another recommended someone to cut the record and so on.
And really, all I did was put Taishi in touch with he guy who mastered them and just kinda stood back. In fact to me it's really important that I DIDN'T get involved at that point (@woops will know what I'm talking about here but I've seen loads of people taking the label boss or publisher role but then suddenly half-way through trying to exert artistic control by saying "I hate that song take it off the album or I'm not paying for it" and so on), the mastering guy was brilliant, there was a long back and forth between Taishi and him in which he would keep asking for a minor tweak here or there and then he would change it a bit and then Taishi would listesn and make anther change and so on and so forth. Until it sounded as close to how Taishi wanted it to sound as he could possibly get it.
So eventually the files that were mastered to the best of our ability (but again I stress, I did nothing except pay for this to be done). Next step, I spoke to the guy who cuts them and, although he is based in Nottingham, he cuts them in Poland to avoid VAT or something. Whatever, anyway, after a load more work such as making the design for the cover and so on (Taishi came up with it and got itt shot by a girl we both know in Berlin) and he also really wanted the obi strip - you know what I mean, the thing down the side with Japanese writing on it that can be slid off. He was adamant that he wanted that to get the feel old Japanese imports.
After that he wanted a pull out with the lyrics in Japanese and, in fact, the nearest I came to artistic input was creating the English equivalent, in that he sent me the lyrics and a crude translation but I wrote them into sentences that made sense in English if you see what I mean.
So, yeah, I paid for the mastering, I paid for the cutting and for the guy to render the design that we sent him (which was made by Taishi and Britta in Berlin) as a front and back cover with a lyric pull out and obi strip. And this guy did all that and then sent us a big pile of records - a load to me to distribute from Portual and some for Taishi to distribute from Berlin.
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
We got the records in Nov or Dec last year, we wanted to wait until after Christmas and in fact we didn't really want to do it right after Christmas either so we pencilled in a release date for the first Monday in March or something. Plan was to do like a launch party in Berlin with him playing and we would go over and dj, also a party in a small rock bar thing in East London in which I've dj-d a couple of times and to which one of my friends over there is connected. We gave the promos to some DJs here and a copy (strangely enough you might say) to Lena WIlikens when she played here in Portugal cos she's kinda a mate of ours and she liked it and she actually played it on one of her radio shows (well, I never heard it but she told us she did and I see no reason to disbelieve her) and we were all good to go....
.... and then obviously covid came along and fucked all that up good and proper.
So we've got piles of the record in my spare room and I guess Taishi has too but the release date got pushed back and pushed back. And basically we finally decided that there is no end in sight so we're just gonna go for it and put it out in October. We have bandcamp set up and we have a number of shops here in Lisbon who have agreed to stock it and I think he's got a few shops in Berlin that will do the same and basically soon it will come out and hopefully enough people will hear it and like it - and kinda cynically (is it cynical I dunno) I'm hoping that it won't hurt at all that he was in this band who are pretty big and have a passionate following, and who hopefully will at least promote it a little bit. We've got our radio show here to promote it and another based in London and I'm a member of lots of record collector groups and music groups and even forums like Dissensus, plus I'm hoping that I can send copies to music journalists I know such as David Stubbs and Joe Muggs or whatever, and I just hope it sells enough copies to.... well, first target is it sells enough to not be embarrassing, second target is we break even, third target is we sell them all and need to print another run (which will be cheaper to do cos we won't need to re-master it).
So yeah, it's gonna be a big thing for us in a few weeks - I just hope it does well enough for us to feel that we have done well enough for Taishi. I think it's a great record and he deserves to be successful, and I want it to do well enough that I feel that we're not wasting our time, and, if so, then we will look for another killer record that we feel needs to be released and we can go through it all over again with a little bit more knowledge and so on and, hopefully, without another killer virus coming along and messing it all up for us (and possibly I think it did cause a few other people a bit of inconvenience too from what I've heard so I shouldn't moan about that for too much).
So... yeah, that's the story I guess. I should say I've been very lucky to have friends who recommended the cutting guy and the mastering guy who both turned out to be brilliant.
Anyway, fingers crossed I guess - and let's just hope that all the record collectors and so on have a bit of money left over after months of being laid off or whatever to buy a killer slice of Japanese psychedelia....
 
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sus

Well-known member
Aw shucks, it sounds like you guys were getting a little bit of momentum and then it all got slammed in its tracks.

Very relatable targets—you got your tiers of not embarrassing, breaking even, selling out. In States university admissions processes those are "safety," "match," and "reach" goals.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Aw shucks, it sounds like you guys were getting a little bit of momentum and then it all got slammed in its tracks.

Very relatable targets—you got your tiers of not embarrassing, breaking even, selling out. In States university admissions processes those are "safety," "match," and "reach" goals.
There was definitely an element of that - and also now an element of frustration. You know, when they turned up and I saw how fucking nice the physical object was I was genuinely wet-tipped, same goes for hearing what they sounded like* - in fact the quality of the whole thing was better than I ever dreamed when we started the idea of pressing the record... but sadly, some of that enthusiasm has wanted, just naturally from looking at the big pile in the bedroom.
I should say though that on the bandcamp you will be able to buy "farts in a jar" ie the soundfiles of any individual song for a pound or so I think, or the whole album for a it less. Also, Taishi has made a tape and also sells t-shirts which I may link to. Basically if you want to there will probably be nothing stopping from joining the legions of Jaguar No Me superfans....

*previous to this though I almost had a heart attack cos Taishi got the records first and he emailed me to say "the sound keeps going up and down in volume and you can only hear it out of one speaker" - only later did he point out that he was listening to it on his friend's knackered record player that was only one step from being thrown out. I actually couldn't believe that he did that... typical artist with typically artistic temperament and lack of practicality in his thinking I guess.
 
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