Hello all, and a very Happy New Year to you!

The final public installment of ‘Vesicular Distributor’ has now been posted. The bonus 13th installment has also been privately posted, and anyone who bought all 12 will be sent a code to get #13 for free. It’ll probably take a few days for me to get all the codes sorted. If you’re supposed to receive one and it hasn’t turned up after a week, please get in touch (irrappext@gmail.com) and let me know. Sometimes wires get crossed!

I’d originally planned for this series to have a total of 26 tracks + 26 panels — 2 of each per month plus 2 more for the bonus — but it’s turned out that I needed one more panel to wrap up the story properly. So the bonus installment now includes the 3 final narrative panels and 3 accompanying tracks (close to 25 minutes of extra audio).

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So what’s in store for next year, you may or may not be asking? I’ll give you an answer regardless of which camp you’re in.

I am going to be doing another monthly single, as it’s proved to play a vital role in keeping my bills paid. The next one will be of a different nature, however. I do have some other narrative ideas in the works, but it takes time to get the text & visuals properly worked out, and I don’t feel up to jumping straight into another one without a break; so while I work out the next storyline, I’ll be posting a ‘Legends of Frogtown’ series every month, culled from the LOFT photo project I started this year. Each frog portrait will be accompanied by a track around 3 minutes long, with each month’s installment including 4 portraits & 4 tracks — so the total amount of audio will end up being approximately the same (the 2 tracks for ‘Vesicular Distributor’ were about 6 minutes long on average). The stylistic approach to the tracks will be very different from ‘Vesicular’, which I’ve taken about as far as I’m interested in going with it for the present. Here’s an example of one of the ‘Legends’ portraits if you haven’t already seen them on my Facebook or Instagram pages:

Aside from that, I’ve got a few more reissue/remasters lined up. The never-released album from 2011 ‘Vulgar Probabilities’ is next on the list. Ozeanische Gefühle will get a thorough scrubbing at some point. An older never-released (and never quite completed) album ‘Not Hidden But Concealed’ from way back in 2000 should be sorted out sometime next year. But I think after ‘Vulgar’, the next two reissues will probably be ‘Dust Pincher Appliances’ from 1999, and a deluxe reissue of the first irr. album ‘An Uncertain Animal’. It’d be nice to finally have all of the releases from the first phase of irr. public activity (1997-2001) fully cleaned up and made available to the world.

Several newer projects have been knocking around, and with luck I’ll find enough time to get some of those finished as well. ‘The Voice Of The Tiktaalik (Or, In The Sunshine Of Your Lungs)’, ‘Future Reveries Of The Eoarchaean Biomass, Volume 2’, ‘The Drowned Sisters Of Doggerland’, ‘All The Mystery Has Gone From The World’ and a couple others are in various stages of completion. A 4-way collaboration between myself, R K Faulhaber, Esperik Glare and Xambuca is waiting for my attention, and so is a collaboration with Recordist Overlord William Davison. And, of course, the essentially-completed-but-suspended-in-gaffa 2018 album ’10 Stations’ (of which some preview tracks have long been posted on the neglected irr. Soundcloud page) still needs to find it’s resolution.

That’s a lot, and there’s more as well, but it won’t all be coming out in a heap. That’s probably at least another 2-3 years’ worth of work, and I only hope I’ll have the good fortune to keep things going that long — and hopefully even longer.

Some of the original art listed in an older news post is still available! Take a look here: https://irrappext.com/2019/10/11/original-art-for-sale/ if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

I wish all the very best to all of you in the new year, stay healthy, happy & safe, and eternal thanks for all your support — particularly this past year!

much love,

–msw