Marty Willson-Piper

The official home of Marty Willson-Piper

Dare Mason

Atlantæum Flood PRE-ORDERS

One Day (2019)

Hey all from Berlin where I am working on a project with…well, let’s leave that for another day.

Today’s news is that the Atlantæum Flood album ‘One Day’ is now available for pre-order on vinyl and CD on the Schoolkids Records website. It’s the first time I have been involved in a purely instrumental album that wasn’t a jam session. Its moody soundscapes and evocative atmospheres will have you dreaming within a dream and relaxing into a revolutionary reverie of sad melodic guitars, dynamic violins, vivacious acoustics and trembling ethnic instruments. I like it, so will you. 🌖

xxx MWP

PRE-ORDER HERE

A Philosophical Musing About Artistic Pursuit In A Commercial Universe

It seemed like such a great idea and for a while it was, but at some point the pigs started walking on their hind legs.

Using Animal Farm as a metaphor for the collapse of PledgeMusic might not be a perfect way to explain what happened for countless reasons, notwithstanding the perfect allegory that the book already is, but there are parallels. That is, if you unfussily consider the farm to be the big bad music biz and the musicians to be the exploited animals. And as many execs might have been musicians before, I naively thought that we were all in this together and that Pledge and the artists were from the same stock and we were going to take over the farm and run it in a way that encouraged the arts for the arts own sake. Ok, so the connection is precarious on lots of levels, sorry, and of course not everyone is exploited (although some have been called animals) and not all mistreat their wards but in the case of this one organization with its vision of the future, the expectation, then the disappointment of PledgeMusic’s collapse is crushing. It certainly revitalized the idea that we are not in control. Finally we had a system that worked for musicians and fans until the system failed seemingly to greed (back to square one). The disillusionment and failure of this revolution was disconcerting.

Such disappointments have become known as ‘first world problems’ but still, this collapse is hard to take. It may in fact have been almost impossible to destroy something so perfect, but give humans power, give them money and watch them destroy themselves and everything around them, somehow forgetting the actual people that put them in their position and in this case they didn’t have to do much, just supplying the platform then sitting back and watching the money roll in. How could you complicate such a simple idea. You were a trust, a philanthropic society, a bridge between lovers of music, a connection between the creators and the appreciators. There are of course other platforms that seem to work and we need to trust them for next time, otherwise the bad guys have won.

In the world of Noctorum, a labour of love that places me and my oldest friend in a studio for months, exploring the puzzle of songs, just the idea that out there someone that I’ve never met would be prepared to not only support and invest in our musical project but in the event of it all falling apart, would contribute again to its recovery, is both heartening and unexpected.

The actual story of what happened with video and text can be found at the link below which leads to a GoFundMe campaign that attempts to get us back on track financially without compromising our music but also by delivering something worthy of donation. Namely a digital EP consisting of a download of two unreleased tracks from The Afterlife album sessions and two cover versions, one from cult innovators The Sound and the other from the beginnings of future major musical heroes in an early disguise as Buffalo Springfield. Add to this a conceptual drawing of a mermaid’s skeleton, photoshopped into an imagined fossil as cover art, a booklet with lyrics and credits and the possibility to download the cover as a poster, then you have – The Afterdeath EP.

Noctorum – The Afterdeath EP

Making music without costs is almost impossible but with good people sacrificing their time and resources, generosity and effort and with the emergence of the internet we can do it. This of course means we cannot in this case hold the physical in our hands despite our desire to do so. The idea of the tactile might be a thing of the past for some but we are not marrying holograms yet. The Afterlife was released on vinyl and CD, there were illustrated handwritten lyrics from songs past (not quite on parchment, written with a quill). There were internet concerts and live appearances at the end of people’s beds if they wished although they mainly occurred in the living room. There were magnets and autographs, older records resurrected and signed and all this to finance what would be Noctorum’s fourth album.

Noctorum – The Afterlife (2019)

Not receiving all the money donated due to PledgeMusic’s demise led to us making a big decision, cancel the project in full swing or see it through – we decided the latter, finishing the album, mastering it and with our dedicated label’s support manufacturing it and posting it out to all the pledgers, honouring the support and good faith whilst putting ourselves into debt. One might take this moment to say that at least we had the opportunity to do this to ourselves. A lot of artists couldn’t even finish their project and certainly couldn’t afford to mail out the result because the money simply wasn’t there to do so. So we consider ourselves lucky.

We are two weeks into our GoFundMe campaign and we have raised about a third of the money we lost, in return we offer more of our music, more of our ideas as we gratefully continue the uncertain arc of creative pursuit as we resist George Orwell’s dystopian future of doom.

Thank you!

Marty, Dare, Olivia and Stephen

www.gofundme.com/noctorum

THE AFTERDEATH EP

The Afterdeath EP by Noctorum

It’s 104°F as I write this, that’s 40°C which for many people in the world might seem normal except that we are in the Rheinland in Germany where temperatures like this are unprecedented and records are being broken across the continent. We are about to leave for an equally scorching England where in the month of August Dare and I will start mixing some MOAT tracks from the second album ‘Poison Stream’ for a 2020 release and think about writing sessions for a future Noctorum album which might appear anywhere between 2021 and 2025. Historically, despite there being four completed albums, a five year minimum has separated the releases.

But before all this happens we have decided to relegate to the past, the difficulties involved with working with PledgeMusic even though, with enthusiastic support from the public, we were encouraged to make arguably our best album to date, ‘The Afterlife’. As they declare bankruptcy (as we always suspected they would), the biggest tragedy of PledgeMusic is that it was such a great idea and when we hear talk of six figure wages for executives in swanky offices and so many artists unable to honour Pledges we wonder will there ever be justice for bands and their fans. It could have been so simple and we wonder if greed or stupidity was the platform’s downfall – the pain of broken promises lingers.

In our case we raised $28,615, Pledge took a commission of $4,292 (even that doesn’t seem fair now) that means they owed us $24,323. They paid us $10,280, leaving $14,043 to be paid – we never received this amount. Our outlay had to cover the studio costs,  the musicians, mastering, manufacture, the general administering of the project, and postage across the world to all the Pledgers – all this soon swallowed up the whole amount – that is the whole amount that we didn’t receive.

Other bands and their fans have suffered terribly from all this. Promising a record that in the end they either couldn’t afford to record or couldn’t afford to manufacture because PledgeMusic didn’t give them the money they so badly needed to finish the project – and then of course there was the huge expense of the postage for all the items promised. In our case we decided between ourselves – that is me, Dare, Olivia and Stephen at the label, that despite not receiving all the funds, we would see it through and hope that the situation would resolve itself – it didn’t. So as it now stands, all of us and especially Stephen at the label are struggling financially with the costs of honouring the pledges. So with PledgeMusic abandoning us to their villas in the sun, what do we do?

It seemed to me that the only way out of this was to think positive and as it has been some months since the release of ‘The Afterlife’ the time has come for us to unleash the companion piece and appropriately titled ‘The Afterdeath EP’. BUT, the problem is that the cost of manufacture incurs all the same expenses that put us in this position in the first place. So, what we have decided to do is release four songs digitally. Three that have never been heard before and including two songs recorded in ‘The Afterlife’ sessions. The other two songs are cover versions. But we also decided to go ahead with real artwork that is downloadable so you could make your own CD.

The Afterdeath EP by Noctorum

So, welcome to ‘The Afterdeath EP’ – Dancing With Death and The Mermaid are two songs that we didn’t release with the ‘Afterlife’ album for no other reason than we thought the album sounded complete as it was. The Sound’s I Can’t Escape Myself is one of the cover versions. It was recorded for a tribute album that never materialized and has lain on the shelves unloved. The other, Buffalo Springfield’s Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing was recorded for a tribute album that did materialize and we have recently made it available as downloadable rarity through my Bandcamp page but it was originally released by Noctorum.

The artwork is from a painting by Olivia of a skeleton of a mermaid, turned into a fossil by Photoshop genius, Churchhill Garden and The Blue Heron’s main man, Andy Jossi. Not only have we made a booklet, lyrics and front and back cover available for download but we have also made it possible to download the front cover as a poster (landscape & portrait formats).

This is our way of giving you as close to the physical thing as possible without incurring all the costs.

Stephen Judge at our label Schoolkids Records suggested that instead of making this EP available through our Bandcamp page we could make it available through GoFundMe which would allow people to contribute whatever they wanted towards the cause of us trying to claw back some of our losses and at the same time make something worthy available. I would like to thank everyone who has already contributed to this project and for all the great feedback and amazing reviews we have received. We can only hope that our next project does not suffer the same fate (MOAT’s ‘Poison Stream’) as we consider how to refund the costs already incurred.

On how you receive your link to get ‘The Afterdeath EP’ and artwork; once you donate we will receive your email address and we will forward you the link. It’s as simple as that.

Our ultimate goal is to create and release as much original material in different forms as we can. I’m sure most of you are aware that on November 8th Atlantæum Flood will release the debut instrumental album ‘One Day’ on Schoolkids Records – another project supported by Stephen Judge. But in the meantime if you would like to support our quest through the GoFundMe page and help us recover by contributing to ‘The Afterdeath EP’ then thank you in advance, it will be much appreciated as we doggedly continue to make music on our own terms despite the distractions.

xxx

Marty, Dare, Olivia & Stephen

NEW YORK MUSIC DAILY – THE AFTERLIFE REVIEW

“Summer, Germany, then it’s gone” – four more days here before returning to England for August and Noctorum writing sessions as well as an imminent digital EP release of unreleased tracks from The Afterlife and two covers, plus the sad truth about PledgeMusic – all will be revealed very soon.

In the meantime, we were just sent this amazing review of The Afterlife.

Ciao for now

Marty

RELEASE DAY!

Still in love with The Afterlife? The scent of roses is dissipating into the ether, the blood pumping through your heart is slowing, the last tacky Valentine’s Day card lies discarded on the bed. What now? For those of you that didn’t hear the new Noctorum album The Afterlife before today, February 15th is the official release date and it is now available to order and stream if that is your poison.

GET THE LP | GET THE CD

The reaction from those that ordered the album in advance has been somewhere between enthusiastic and rhapsodic. Those unsure about dipping their toes in the water for fear of a sudden chill can now test the album with the confidence of a warm bath. If you use Spotify, Apple Music and all the other streaming platforms like I do as a place to listen to the albums I’m going to physically buy, you can now look before you leap and confidently fall onto the mattress, into the arms of the fireman, safe and sound, rescued by the huskies, justifying your decision to choose this record to love in the war of choices.

THE AFTERLIFE on Spotify

Noctorum’s fourth album, The Afterlife, a collaboration between me and Dare Mason, is out today on Schoolkids Records. Vinyl first pressings are already selling fast, even the CDs are vanishing in a trail of dust, so get your physical copy, with all the artwork and the words now – while you still can.

Thank you to everybody that has sent such wonderful positive feedback to us about the album. See you out there somewhere on the planet Earth, come and talk to me about the music you love. 💿

Marty