Rip Offs and Mastering

It's been a while.

Things have been happening - last night I went round to see my friend Ed in his new flat and we sat in his studio for about 6 hours mixing and mastering the ATP album. I am very pleased to say its almost mastered and sounds amazing!

I am still waiting on some clearance from Faber and Faber to use Philip Larkins poems in the track 'Larkin About'. This is holding up the album somewhat and I am hoping they actually allow the track to be released.

Also at the moment my good friend Little Gav is putting together the ATP album artwork.

So - with all that in hand I am hoping to be able to press the album soon and look to get it out there in shops, online etc in July.

Now .....

A few weeks ago I got an email from Pat Kenedy at a company called Crucial Domains. They have purchased amongstthepigeons.com and have asked me if I would like to buy it off them for ... wait for it ... $997!!!

What!

Anyway I wrote to him and basically said his company is a rip off and that cyber sitting on domains is a nasty way to make money.

So I have been thinking - lets all submit the price of $10 as an offer and basically keep wasting their time. If any of you know ways of grabbing back a domain that someone is sitting on please let me know! The link below takes you to the Crucial Domains rip off page.

https://secure.crucialdomains.net/buy.php?amongstthepigeons.com

If anyone wants to email Pat and submit an offer use this address: customerservice@crucialdomains.net

Lets try and put the cat amongst them cyber sitting feathers.

The Old Bill Move Fast

The Old Bill Move Fast by Amongst The Pigeons






Yet another video for you. I admit it is not the greatest of visual treats but the song itself is great. The voice is provided by my friend Tim and the lines are from his novel The Sewerside Chronicles.

www.sewersidechronicles.com

Please check out the site and buy the book, it truely is a great read. Especially if you are into music, fighting the system, or just wanted to remember how life used to be before the government locked down all fun.

I am off skiing this weekend - but whilst I am away things will be progressing with MTBYTT and I am hoping to reveal the official release date in a few weeks.

Who Goes There - The Theme Tune

Some of you may remember a while back I did a post about Nick Griffiths - who wrote the amazing 'In the footsteps of Harrison Dextrose'. We'll alongside that novel Nick has also written a couple of other books about the subject matter of Doctor Who?

One of these books is called 'Who Goes There' and is all about the set locations used in the making of the show. I am currently half way through reading the book and I must say its a brilliant read. Very funny and even if you have no interest in Doctor Who at all you will still enjoy it.

Anyway ... WGT is being turned into an eBook (not a book full of drugs) and Nick asked me if I would like to make a musical intro, a WGT theme as it were. I jumped at the chance and last week I made a few versions - they got sent back and forth to Nick - and after a few edits it was finished.

The track was originally 30 seconds long but Nick enjoyed it so much it became a minute work of art.

I don't have the full details of when WGT the eBook will be out but when it is I strongly advise people to buy a copy as its very, very funny!

I'll keep you up to date with this project - there is also a TV series being filmed and I am hoping I can somehow work with Nick on that project too...

Mocha To Go?

So last week I made a start on ATPLP2. One of the songs I finished is called 'Mocha to go?' and I liked it so much I have uploaded it to MySpace...link below.

Have a listen and let me know what you think. x

www.myspace.com/amongstthepigeons

Draw a line

The week just gone was spent in Belfast, N Ireland.  I was out there with work and spent most of the time in my hotel room making music.  Although my debut album is still not out yet, in my eyes its finished and old.  I need to get it mastered, then pressed, made into cds and mp3s etc, but there is nothing else I need to do.

So this week I started work on the first new ATP songs in about 6 months.  Since last summer I have been tinkering with old songs and wanted to draw a line under getting LP1 out there.

Whilst in my room I started a fresh - a number of clean pages and a whole new story to tell.  It was a productive week.  In all I only finished one new song - a track which was recorded today at Belfast Int Airport, but I also started about another 6.

The one I did at the Airport is going to be called 'Mocha to go' and is a lovely mellow track.  It summed up exactly how my head felt at the time and allowed me to get through 4 hours waiting for a flight.  I played it to Mrs Pigeons when I got home and she said its the best ATP track so far.

The other new ones are in various stages of development, some are 10 seconds long, others 4 mins, but not finished - they are at this stage all demos.  Some of the titles include 'The Latin Word for Amusement', 'You used to be great' and 'To Keep The Night'.

I am dead excited about working on the new record.  Already I think it is going to be a million times better than the debut.  Which maybe I should not say being as it is not out yet and I want you to buy it when it is.

It's late I should be getting to sleep ... :) x

Love Pigeons - first Radio Play

On Sunday night (15th Feb) my track 'Love Pigeons' is getting its first public airing.

In Wolverhampton there is a radio station called WCRfm which can be found on 101.8fm or online at http://wcrfm.com.

On this Radio station there is a DJ called Katy Jay.  And it is her who will be playing the song. So tune in on Sunday night to hear it. Her show starts at 10pm and I'll be on in the first hour.

The song features my good friend Oliver Barron on vocals.  He recorded them on a mobile phone whilst traveling around SE Asia. He emailed them to me to work on here in Brighton.

In the summer I may well be releasing Love Pigeons as a single.  I may not.

But I will be making a video for the song.  Earlier this evening I did a quick casting and found these two actors to be in it:

Amongst The Pigeons - Love Pigeons (demo)

The full video will be much better - I promise!

Pigeon Watch 02 : Man tries to smuggle pigeons in his pants

I saw this in the news last week and wanted to share it with you all:

A pigeon-lover ruffled a few feathers today at an airport in Australia - after customs agents found two birds stuffed into his pants as he attempted to smuggle them into the country, authorities said.

The 23-year-old man, who was not identified, wrapped the pair of pigeons in newspaper and concealed one on the inside of each of his legs for the duration of a ten-hour flight from Dubai, the Times of London reported.

Customs officials in Melbourne said he would have escaped detection if they had not discovered two eggs hidden in his pocket and decided to carry out a full body search.

The officers also uncovered seeds inside a money belt stuffed in his bag, the newspaper reported.

Australia has some of the strictest customs laws in the world since importing new animals or plant life could spread disease across the island nation.

Richard Janeczko, who serves as the country's national investigations manager for customs service, said wildlife smuggling "is not only cruel to the animals involved, it poses a severe risk to the Australian environment and the health of the Australian community."

If the man is charged with wildlife smuggling, he could face a maximum penalty of 10 years behind bars and a $72,000 fine.

Download: Deep Housey

Hello Blog Fans

I have put Deep Housey on iTunes and Amazon as a downloadable single for 79p!

You can help me out by downloading this track and if you have time writing a review, it all helps getting my music noticed.

The debut album will be out on CD and digital formats in June, with a single out in May.

Please forward this onto people you know and basically spread the word.

Thanks as always. Cat x

Click here to buy from Amazon

Click here to buy from iTunes

The Trial & The Beats

About this time last year I was serving Jury Duty at Brighton Courts. Whilst doing Jury Duty you tend to spend a lot of time sitting around waiting to either go into court or be put on a case.

I spent my time working on some new tracks. There was one track I was working on at the time and I sent Mrs Pigeons a txt to say it was going well. She wrote back saying 'I hope you enjoy the trial and the beats', well, there is a title for a song if ever I heard it.

The track was good but lacked something....

When I was a young boy I was given a VHS video by my parents, it was a cartoon called 'Hugo The Hippo'. Hugo was made in 1975 and has become a cult film amongst its many fans. During the time I grew up I must have watch the film over 100 times and pretty much know the whole thing word for word.

I am not going to go into the whole story of the film here but at the end of the film Hugo gets arrested and put on trial.

So....

The thing that my song lacked was vocals and I thought why not use samples from the trial in Hugo on my song. I re-watched Hugo again and took the sample clips from the film and placed them into my song. It sounded great.

Since finishing the song last year I have managed to get in contact with the director of Hugo the Hippo and sent him a copy of my track and some of the other songs. He is now an ATP fan.

He is called Bill Feigenbaum and he now spends his time painting - This is his website!

Better still if you email him he will personally send you a DVD copy of Hugo The Hippo.

Anyway.....

Then this week I finished the last part of the plan. To make a video for The Trial and The Beats using clips from the actual film. And that my friends is what is embedded at the top of this post!

I can not express how much Hugo The Hippo means to me. I love it and think everyone should watch it at least once in their lives. In a small way this is my homage to Hugo and all the people that made it.

I hope you enjoy the track and the video - the song will be on my debut album which is now finished and has been cut down to 16 tracks...more on that soon!

Coo Thousand and Nine

Hope you all had a good Christmas / New Year. I spent NYE skiing in Les 2 Alps.

A very good time was had .... Also did a bit of work on the album and have been thinking of cutting it down from 18 to 16 tracks ....

Maybe.