Greetings,
It's seems like a fitting time on this evening, the night of our latest release, to post a 'blog' (hate that word) on what's been happening recently. We're all rather excited at Ash HQ that the first song of our new musical era is now officially out there, and it was a buzz to hear it tonight streaming on Steve Lamacq's Radio 1 show. It's also cool to be giving it away for FREE, it seems like forever since I first blogged about ROWR last fall. We've also been hosting some listening sessions at the studio, now officially called ATOMIC HEART STUDIOS, to gauge what people think. That's been fun (some of the reactions have been very favorable!) but now the rabbit's loose for all to either love or wish death upon! Some have been saying that it's a big departure or not what they'd expect to hear coming from us, and as that's precisely what we set out to do, mission accomplished. Over the next few months there'll be loads of ROWR action happening, with video, remixes, merch and comps being staggered rather than all at once. We've been getting really positive feed back from the Club DJ's who've been serviced the promos so fingers crossed it'll be filling dance-floors of indie clubs all through the summer. Don't forget to enter the 1st promo comp here.
Last night I came up with an idea for a viral campaign called Operation Myxomtosis. We basically need the help of all Ash fans to spread the word about ROWR virally through whichever social networks or blogs you frequent.
Step one: embed the code for the ROWR Widget (it's on the widget itself) into any blog, website, forum or social network profile you can.
Step two: tweet / twitter #ash or update you facebook status with links back to www.ash-official.com - mention ROWR is free and of course that it's awesome! Do this as often as you feel comfortable with, and then a few times more. 
Step three: Over the next few days we'll be adding the track to online players on our; Myspace, Bebo, Facebook, iLike, Last FM, imeem. Once we have we'll let you know and then it's up to you to add it wherever you can / feel like.
We have lots of idea's running around to spread this campaign out over the coming months. It's gonna be fun.
Like our old label, Return Of White Rabbit is infectious, and you can help us by being both an agent and a host. Go spread it virally like a crazy rabbit disease until people can't escape it and are singing it in their sleep.
It's also cool to finally be able to talk about the A - Z singles collection / series. Looks like we'll be starting in September and releasing a new single every 2 weeks for a year. 26 singles in total. Certain key songs will be picked out and focused on with videos and taken to radio for promotion. All will be released on limited edition vinyl. All will represent a letter of the alphabet. The vinyl will be available to order from our web-shop. The complete set will look fantastic as a combined piece of art. ROWR is not one of the 'A - Z' , it's a taster, a prequel of sorts, but it will fit with the other vinyls and compete the set, we're working on a fancy package to hold them all. Digitally, you will be able to subscribe to a high quality audio-file download service for the entire 'A - Z' series through www.ash-official.com and other digital distributers. This will be attractively priced and we will release more information on this closer to the start date. We've been recording so much music, in so many different directions, that this concept is perfect and there will hopefully be more than enough to please all our fans. This is going to be so much cooler and way more fun than a generic album campaign. We will also have bucket loads of b-sides. How we're going to distribute these? We don't yet know but they'll not be going to waste and you can be sure that you're going to see more Ash material released over a single year than ever before. There's more to tell but we're not gonna spoil all the surprises just yet!
We've been working in the studio on more new tracks and Rick has been laying down drums this past week. The sounds and vibes are awesome and it's very exciting seeing these come together. Some working titles include; Arcadia, Spheres, Binary, and Replicants. We can't wait to get playing some of them live and it's only a few weeks away until the London shows and the south coast warm ups. The Saturday night in London and Portsmouth are now SOLD OUT but there are still some tickets available for the Concorde 2 in Brighton (03/06/09) and the Sunday at the Bloomsbury Ballroom (07/06/09). I believe the last time we played at Brighton was when Girl From Mars was released in '95! It's been a long time coming for our return...
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It's good to have Rick back in town. He's so vibed on ROWR that he's thinking of getting the upside down R (artwork) tattooed on his arm. He wants me to do it too but I'm not feeling it for some reason! The only thing I actually want to get tattooed on me anywhere is 'donate to science', so that my lifeless rotting corpse can serve a purpose after the consciousness checks out. My Granny donated her body for scientific research, I thought it was weird at the time but now I think it was a very cool thing to do.
I've been to a couple of weddings this past month which were fun but I was shocked to find myself stressing that one day I'll have to walk Scarlett down the aisle and give her away to someone else. That was too hard to imagine... I've already been checking out shotguns at Walmart. Scarlett was also out and about town with the Ash gang on a photoshoot this week. She was most impressed by all the balloons we had for props (don't ask... a lot of effort was put into them balloons) but not by the crack heads in the park or her old man's haircut, which was done about 20 mins before the pics were taken...
Good times in Tompkins Square Park
Recently I watched Anvil: The story of Anvil. To anyone that's ever been in a band, this is absolutely vital viewing. It's was so good I had to get the T-shirt... What a band! Another movie I finally watched was Yes Man. I'm a big Carey fan and afterwards tried doing the 'yes' thing when bizarre opportunities presented themselves. Within days I had been taken on a trip to a nuclear bunker, and gave a speech at a political economic conference back home. How bizarre!
Scarlett directs the photoshoot
And to conclude this 'blog', I'd like to congratulate my partner in crime, Andrea, for completing her Masters degree, whilst being pregnant, giving birth and still working. Scarlett and I are very proud of you. x
Laterz gators...