Coming Soon: The General Electorate's SYNTHETIC BONES (reposted from Facebook)

I’ve been mixing and mastering frantically for the past two months (including three songs that I recorded when I still had bronchitis -- wow, I’m amazed I got any vocals at all on those ones, but they don’t sound half bad!).

This musical side project aims to emulate the synth pop and new wave/new romantic music of the early 80s in its arrangements and melodies, but with very contemporary (and political/social) themes.

And now I’m pretty confident that the mixes are right! I’m still awaiting some remixes by some of the project collaborators, but I think that I’ll be able to upload the basic tracks to CDBaby this week (if not today) for a mid-June release. You’ll notice in the above artwork that I’ve made honorary members of everybody contributing alternate versions/remixes (Ted Potter, Carlos Castañeda Jr., and Mark Sylvester) as well as my actual album collaborators (Dan Lewis and Tom Briant).

The album versions of the back half are slightly different from the digital release: On the digital release, since I have to mix and master for individual track sales, each of the last six tracks is a stand-alone entity. On the hard copies for physical reproduction, the last six songs are designed to segue into one another with overlap and no gap (in the same way that The Beatles did for the second half of Abbey Road and parts of Sgt Pepper’s, or the way that Pink Floyd often did on Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall): that’s just my classic rock coming through even when I try my hand at synth pop!

I’ve basically finished designing the packaging: what you see above is artwork for the inside of the gatefold, including artwork by Mark Paich, who also did the artwork for the last full-length project by The Random Hubiak Band, THE BLEACHED BONES OF TITANS. The piece from which the mechanical whale is taken, “High Esteem,” is also used for the outer album cover artwork. Inside the gatefold you will also be treated to a fold-out lyric booklet with ghosted portraits of the musical contributors. So, since I am ordering 100 copies to give to critics, bloggers, radio stations, and contributors and then, above and beyond that, only confirmed pre-sales, if you wish to obtain a hard copy, contact me NOW so that we can set up a payment ($18, which covers shipping and handling AND a free EP from my back catalogue!).