What? 'Spalpeen' is definitely a word.

Happy Monday, youngfolk!

This year's edition of the magnificent Encounters Film Festival has announced its Official Selection, which I'm excited to say includes my latest film Speed as well as Laura-Beth's The Gift among what looks like an absolutely stellar line-up. For those of you paying attention - yes, I was on the preselection team for the festival again and no, I didn't get to preselect the films I worked on. But I would have in a goddamn heartbeat because I'm a lovably unscrupulous spalpeen and, frankly, they're delightful.

Other personal highlights include some films/filmmakers recently covered on Skwigly, such as Michaela Mihályi and David Štumpf's SH_T HAPPENS, Theodore Ushev's The Physics of Sorrow, Andreas Hykade's Altötting and Robin Shaw's The Tiger Who Came To Tea. 

Of course this will be a digital edition and you can find out more info as it comes via the festival website in the coming weeks.

That reminds me, following up on my earlier post regarding Speed's inclusion as part of Fest Anča's Extremely Short Selection of Extremely Short Films - it looks like that one is indeed going ahead as a physical edition. Obviously they have precautions set up but it'll be an indoor screening, so if you swing by then be sure to be safe and, y'know, make sure you don't hug your nan for a while. At any rate it'll be this Friday 11pm at the Stanica Žilina-Záriečie in the EKSEKF 2 programme.

Back to Skwiglyville, we've wrapped up our second batch of Skwigly Film Club episodes, so if you're not yet caught up then head over to the site to catch our recent watch-throughs of George Dunning's Yellow Submarine and Jonathan Myerson's The Canterbury Tales. Also if you want to weigh in on what we look at next then be sure to keep an eye on our Twitter and cast your votes during the playoffs.

If you fancy something else to listen to then you can siphon a previously-unreleased upload I dusted off over the weekend into your trembling little earholes. This is an alternate, non-explicit edit of the opening track to my 2015 LP The Birdcage plucked from a pile of prospective b-sides for the next EP that will hopefully be going up soon. It was quite a long time ago that I put this one together so I don't remember much about making it other than having some fun with the funky-worm synth during the bridge. Anyways, here it is:

Struwwelpeter · Act Right (Clean Edit)

Weren't that purtey? Right, now scram, ya ingrates.

If you have 48 minutes to kill

Happy new year, ya filthy animals.
Alongside the usual animationey chunks I'll be expectorating into the world over the coming months I'm keen to have 2018 be a year for some new - or, at the very least, unheard - music of mine. Rather than get ahead of myself and outline what I have planned - because whenever I do that on here it pretty much guarantees it won't pan out (remember when Sunscapades was supposedly going to be done by last May?) - I'm first going to tackle the long-overdue expanded digital release of some old albums.
Kicking things off I'm happy to say the fifth Struwwelpeter album The Birdcage, originally released May 2015, is now available on a wider variety of platforms as of today. These include iTunes/Apple Music, Amazon and Spotify among others. You can give the Spotify version a whirl below - it's free, fun and the health risks are slim:

Hopefully some of the other Struwwelpeter albums will see the light of the day as well, which would be nice as a lot of them have been OOP for a fair few years now. I'll play it by ear. In the meantime the original digital release is still available on Bandcamp and, for you old-fogeys, compact disc. Whatever's your pleasure.

Idle Distraction

For no particular reason here's one of a handful of covers I put together during the period I was writing and recording The Birdcage a couple years back:
Usually for each album I end up doing a bunch of covers either to teach myself some previously unexplored process in Reason or just for the gits and shiggles of it all. Then I tend to just kind of forget about them.
While I've covered Faith No More in my live shows a bunch I don't usually have the audacity to make any studio recordings of their work but this is one that sort of weirdly fit into the universe of The Birdcage, arrangements-wise. Plus with each passing year my life resembles that of its lyrical protagonist more and more.
As the wry sampling near the end suggests one the many reasons I'm fond of this particular tune is that it always put li'l me in mind of the underwater levels in Super Mario Bros. I think if I ever go on The Voice this will be my audition song.
Apparently when Faith No More were making Angel Dust the working title for this song was 'Macaroni and Cheese'.
Eeeyup.
You can tell I'm procrastinating, can't you?
Well...back to work I guess.

Birdsong

Earlier this year I released my latest album The Birdcage digitally, bucking a long-established tradition (2009 - 2010 - 2012 - 2013) of releasing my projects right before the holidays so as to probably be too late to arrive on time, marketing genius though I am.
Now that the seemingly unconquerable mountain that is Project Group-Hug has been conquered (for now) I've had a snatch of time to finally release it on CD for you traditionalists out there. CDs were these shiny round discy-wotsits from the long, long ago. Ask your parents.
So for those of you who fancy your indie music with an extra retro vibe, pick up the fifth Struwwelpeter album The Birdcage at Amazon today! It comes with fancy-shmancy new artwork, lyrics booklet and a bonus hidden track to boot. Well, it isn't that hidden now.

The extra song is in fact one of the first songs I ever wrote, way back in 1997. My balls were in mid-drop at the time and so it's only ever existed as a warbly, adolescent whine recorded on cassette (don't even bother asking your parents, I'm not sure I even remember what those were all about) until I re-recorded it during The Birdcage sessions as an experiment to see if it held up. And did it? Well...sorta kinda not really but sorta kinda. It certainly wasn't album-worthy but it's a fairly innocuous, mellow tune with some nice moments so what the hey, I've snuck it in there. Of course the album is still available to buy as a digital download via Bandcamp, and you can preview the whole ordeal below:

The perfect gift for the hipster in your life who insist they only listen to the most obscure and indie music; this'll learn that smug bugger good!

That other thing I do

It's rare that I get a personal project done and dusted on the exact date I'll have proclaimed I will but, sure enough, today being Sol Invictus/Scarlet Gospels day I've followed through and released my new album The Birdcage. So how 'bout that?
It's been a fair few years since my last full LP, my rate of music production significantly slowed since the days of this particular hobby's function as homework distraction, but I think the extra marinating time makes it a much easier listen. As hinted at earlier, save for the opening track and the odd loud moment here and there it came out very low-key, almost folksy in parts, especially considering how synth-pop-weird the earlier albums had been.
For now you can stream the whole album for free and, should you be so inclined, buy high quality songs for keeps at 50¢ each (you can save a few pennies if you buy the whole LP for a $5). There's no CD version yet but knock wood there'll be time over the summer to put together a nice package for those nostalgic types who still own something that will play a CD. In the meantime here's a track-by-track rundown:

Hope there's something amongst that lot for you to enjoy. While you're sifting through that I'll be drinking in the new Faith No More album and the new Clive Barker book simultaneously. If Alex Kingston can drop by and re-enact Moll Flanders in the corner then my trifecta of mid-nineties nostalgia will be complete.

You had me at "I'd like to peel your skin off"

Today's reason to be rock-back-and-forth-giggling-and-crying happy comes in the form of Faith No More's latest album Sol Invictus being available to stream a week ahead of its physical release. I've been fighting the urge to listen to badly-compressed leaked versions of the album and as such it feels like I'm literally the only FNM fan in the world who hadn't heard it until today. But by Christ it was worth the wait. Every molecule of doubt that it wouldn't be up to their previous standard was jettisoned the moment I heard the first chorus of the opening title track. It'll need a few hundred listens for me to get a proper sense of it as right now listening to it is more of an emotional experience (I have emotions! Who knew?) than anything else, but in the meantime why not join me and treat yourselves?
It feels a bit limp and embarrassing to bring up my own music on the heels of such excellence, but in anticipation of the digital release of my latest Struwwelpeter album The Birdcage I've put up another new song, one that's fairly representative of the strangely upbeat, folksy/poppy feel of the LP as a whole. I imagine if I played this to myself as a teenager he'd screw his fat face up in confusion.

Also want to say thanks again to James of CineMe for having me on his show Short Cuts, talking animation, UWE, Bristol, Skwigly and my now-very-old short The Naughty List. The episode aired at the exact time last week's exit polls were causing the nation to collectively scream into a pillow so if you missed the broadcast you can watch it online here.

Upcomings & Outgoings

I've made the somewhat douchey decision to self-set the release date of The Birdcage, my first LP in a good while, as the week of May 18th. I say 'douchey' because this is also the week both Faith No More's new album Sol Invictus and Clive Barker's Hellraiser swansong The Scarlet Gospels - two projects I've been hotly anticipating to say the least - both come out. There's no real connection, it just generally helps to have a deadline to work to when I'm in the last stretch of anything, plus I reckon my album's pretty much cooked at this point. I have to say I like how it's turned out - it's the quiet, folksy death rattle of a would-be-rocker-turned-production-music-scribe giving in to a secret, guilty urge to be melodic and quaint rather than edgy or avant garde. I expect I'll release it digitally on Bandcamp to begin with and then see what new options there now are for a physical release in the 4.5 years since my last LP.

This will pave the way for another upcoming release, the final installment of my lingering graphic novel series Throat. I'm still finalising the bonus content but the proposed release date is August 3rd. As with Book 1 and Book 2 it should be available to buy in US retailers and on Amazon for the UK and elsewhere.

On the Skwigly pile this week, the Lightbox series I've been producing has resumed with a video interview from mine and Laura-Beth's encounter with the talented and dapper Luc Chamberland, whose OIAF-winning NFB documentary Seth's Dominion (an exploration of the life and work of Canadian comic artist Seth) is playing at Toronto's Hot Docs at the moment.

Also on the site I chat once again to auld acquaintances Seb and Joe from Rumpus, whose game The Adventures of Bertram Fiddle is now available on PC via Steam as well as it's original App Store release for iOS. This interview is the first in a series of Skwigly profiles on South West-based studios/artists in association with the South West Animation Network, an organisation put together by Becalelis Brodskis and Susannah Shaw. Keep an eye out for more Skwigly/SWANraderie and if you're a South Westerner yourself check them out at swanimationnetwork.co.uk

Bringing it back to my own ephemeral output, as is my egomaniacal wont, I'll be appearing on the TV show Short Cuts hosted by James Ewen of CineMe, who's been a much-appreciated supporter of my work in the past. I'm not sure what'll get included in the final edit but I expect the focus will be on my old seasonal short The Naughty List. It'll be broadcast on Made In Bristol (Freeview 8/Sky 117/Virgin Media 159) May 5th at 8:30pm, so tune in if your receivers are suitably receptive.

Cabinet Reshuffle

As I expect nobody has noticed, the digital version of The Book of Women is no longer listed on Amazon (you can still buy the physical CD for the foreseeable future). If you're just joining us, that's my last album which came out over four years ago. LOOK AT IT:

All in all it's had a good enough run thus far to keep it available in some digital form, so I've put it up on Bandcamp. This is the latest in a long line of music hosting sites I've haunted like the ghoul I am, starting with the original mp3.com way back in '99, through to Cafepress, MySpace, Createspace and SoundCloud. The latter is still the main place to go for free tracks/exclusives/remixes et al but Bandcamp has the advantage of letting you purchase individual tracks and streaming the album in full. One of many protracted projects of mine has been the gradual remixing/remastering of my back catalogue which was halted when I heard about the new VAT laws for digital distribution in effect this year. Bandcamp seems to have the most streamlined approach to dealing with this so it's very likely I'll reissue all the older stuff digitally through them in the near future as well.
As touched upon last month, a new album called The Birdcage is also in the works and will hopefully be ready by the Spring. To prove I'm not a lying liar here's a sampler of in-progress tracks I put up on my Facebook page a little while back:

Post by Ben Mitchell - Creative Offal.