Yes, ya’ll.
I want to thank everyone who bought or pre-ordered Keep Moving so far - especially those of you who jumped in right away on day 1. Means a lot. Your support is a big help.
It’s great seeing your responses and getting your feedback. Super-interesting to see what stands out to people, and what goes unnoticed. I planted a lot of little time bombs in this record, many of which have gone undetected, so far.
As I’ve monitored the activity this week, I’ve found myself reflecting back on the Dirtbike albums that I made back in 2008. There was no proper release. I just allowed the albums to spread organically. They were free. They seemed to find their way into the hands of everyone who wanted to hear them. I wish I could do it like that every time. I could say more on the topic but I won’t.
I’m writing this on Thursday, May 1. Tomorrow is a Bandcamp Friday. Kinda wish I knew that before I made my plan to release Keep Moving on Monday. A week or two I googled: ‘when is the next Bandcamp Friday?’ and the result told me it wasn’t until August. Oh well. So for this one, I’ll offer up a special price on Keep Moving and I’m thinking I may do a blowout price on my entire Bandcamp catalog. Check in on that, if you feel so inclined.
So, just as a reminder of things discussed here recently… I made way more beats than I needed for Keep Moving. The plan is to take all the unused beats and either record another album or possibly two EPs. I’m thinking I probably won’t do any physical product for that but we’ll see. I’ll turn my attention to that material later this year.
There’s also the mega-album with all the lost material in the pipeline. That will likely see the light before the end this year. I’m sure you’ll find that it sounds quite unlike anything else I’ve done before but we’ll talk more about that later. Right now, it’s time to celebrate Keep Moving. You’ll make your own observations and draw your own conclusions. But I can tell you that more attention to detail was paid on this one than any other. My approach was very methodical. There was a lot of meditation involved. Some of the choices made were completely outlandish. I altered my approach to structuring rhymes slightly. I made a point to really dig in on the wordplay. I dabbled in a few other devices. I’m proud of the work. I listened to the album twice on Monday (the second time because I found the first to be so satisfying). Now I’ll probably try to avoid listening for at least a month so that I can come back to it with fresh ears and re-assess. I’ve already made a few notes on what I might do differently next time.
I want to say one more time how much I appreciate the work my homie Sixtoo did to make the album sparkle sonically. I don’t know if this is the sort of thing you notice (no one has really commented on it to me so far) but this album sounds a thousand times better than any of my previous three albums. It’s kinda mind-blowing to me to hear my stuff sound so clean and fat.
So, to sum up, keep an eye on Bandcamp tomorrow, if you’re feeling charitable. You know what the Bandcamp Fridays mean, right? Bandcamp doesn’t take a cut on those days. All the proceeds from sales go direct to the artist. That’s a great thing, for sure. AND: There’s more in the pipeline for 2025. We’ll talk more about that later.
Let’s keep it moving.