Hi All,

After a month of being computer-less, I’m finally fully reconnected and functional. The unexpected failure of the replacement computer I’d set up after my earlier unexpected computer failure created some serious obstacles for me… I was unable to post the July installment of ‘Vesicular Distributor’ (or anything else), I couldn’t get any work done, I couldn’t access any of my files, I couldn’t access this website, and I could only get meagre internet access from one of those awful smartphones everyone seems to love so much. This has taught me to keep a written password key somewhere in my studio: these days there are more passwords than I can possibly commit to memory, so if the device with my password manager fails, it shuts me out of a lot of important resources. An old-styley analog backup can be a useful thing.

A public service announcement: do not order a computer directly from Dell! I’ve never been particularly knowledgeable about hardware, so I thought this would be a good way to get some proper tech advice from a sales rep before I bought anything. The result was hardly shy of outright fraud. I didn’t have any internet access at the time, so I called the Dell help line and placed my order on the phone (never do this!); I was sold a brand new computer with a good processor, but sent an old, discontinued computer with a older, slower processor, and was charged more for it than had been quoted over the phone. Fortunately, I was able to return the dud machine and get a refund, but it took endless hours of being left on hold to get it sorted out. And by the time I got my refund I had been left stranded for a month without a computer — which meant being unable to work, which meant being unable to generate any income. Most of you probably already know this and are more tech-savvy than I am, but in case you aren’t: stay away from Dell direct sales! In the age of reckless Amazon indifference, it seems impossible to find honest & transparent dealings anywhere.

On to more positive news: I have the July and August installments of Vesicular Distributor ready to post in time for Bandcamp’s no-fee Friday tomorrow. I’ve also put together a few other things to try to compensate for the month of income I missed in August. Apologies for putting out another clump of stuff all at once: if you can grab it all on the no-fee day tomorrow it would of course be very much appreciated, but everything will still be around after that if your finances are slim.

One of the new things offered tomorrow at the irr. Bandcamp site will be ‘A Darker Shade Of Fat’, the third plundering of my Nurse With Wound live recording archive. The first instance was of course the NWW album ‘Dark Fat’, followed by the outtake & extras irr./NWW collection ‘Dark Drippings’. The original ‘Fat’ was created to be part of a box set of NWW live-derived material, but Steve liked it enough that he wanted to give it a solo release; at that time, the box set was still going to happen, so I started work on some new material to replace the missing ‘Fat’. That is the provenance of these ‘Shade’ tracks. The idea for the box set gently evaporated, so I never needed to completely finish the replacement tracks, and they have languished in their penultimate state for the past 3 years. While looking for something very-nearly-done that I could get ready in time for the 4th, this project immediately came to mind. Just as the cover of ‘Dark Drippings’ was a spin on Steve’s collage for the ‘Dark Fat’ CD cover, the cover for ‘Shade’ is a spin on his collage for the DF vinyl set.

Another item scheduled for tomorrow will be a brandeloquenly-newified album called ‘Nocturnal Emissaries: An Audio Inquiry In Seven Secretions’. This material is an exploration in taking studio improvisation, nudging it part-way into textural abstraction, and then basting the results in a viscous, atmospheric gravy. Intended for the nourishment all sentient beings everywhere, but probably to the taste of only a modest few.

A third item is in preparation, but, if I manage to finish it in time, I’ll post about that when I send out all the links tomorrow.

All the best to everyone,

–msw