This post is cross-posted from the brand spanking new blog at mattshadetek.com.  In addition to my usual stuff here at Dutty Artz I wanted a place to call my own and talk about some of my less dutty, more clean artz that I am up to. Expect a lot more wordz.

photo by the author in Flatbush, Brooklyn

I assume if you’re reading this blog that you’re someone familiar with my musical output. If not, please get familiar here at my soundcloud page.

Generally speaking I am pretty cagey about my new projects until they’re nearly done. I want to try an experiment this time in going through the process of making an album completely in public. Transparency! Throwing stones in a glass house!

I am risking looking foolish or irresolute in the process and it goes against my normal self promotional instincts. Radical honesty! Career suicide! TMI!

One of the things we do as artists is edit our output before it reaches the public. We do this to hide the work that we do that is not as good as we would like and make our fans believe that everything we make is good. A lot of people will also lie about the process afterward in order to appear omnipotent and more talented than they are. The fact is that for all the awesome work that gets made theres a certain amount of secret crappy stuff that is dead on arrival and the world never needs to know about.

Now before you get scared, I do not plan to share that stuff with you. That would be too much for both you and me to take. What I want to do is open a window into the conceptualization process for my new album project and let you follow along here as it evolves.

So, here are my ideas:

The working title:

Build an island, look inward.

1) the whole album will be 128 bpm

2) it will be a continuous mix, released partially as singles throughout the year.

3) it will be finished before May 2011 in order to be released on Dutty Artz by June 2011, a year after my latest album Flowers.

4) the record will be made in such a way that I can do live performance for it with a laptop and controller, something I stopped doing years ago and am interested to try again.

5) there will be a live visual component which will be integrated into the process early and can complement the live show.

These are my goals. I predict 3 out of 5 will be achieved but let’s see how I do. I will do some separate posts talking about my thinking on each point. One upside I see to this already is that having publicly said this it will be much more embarrassing to give up or drag my feet. Cloud computing accountability. Am I making a mistake in putting my creative business out there in the inter-street? What do you think?

PS: you may also be interested to hear that I thumb typed this whole post while sitting in the back seat of my car with my two sleeping babies in Flatbush Brooklyn while waiting for my lady to finish her doctors appointment. We live in the future!
PPS: Glasshouse is an AWESOME science fiction novel by Charles Stross. Get it from Amazon via my Reading List and help me earn some money.