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Oh look what you've made me do now ... I've spent years overcoming my addiction to The Repository. And now you've lured me back in.

I mean, I've had the Frost*Bites Intro for years, but am now discovering many other things that I don't.

You're evil, I tell you; evil 

Was initially a little confused by the various shop options.

For UK & Rest-of-the-World purchases, the links on the frost.life page point to tigermothshop.co.uk, Magenta's merch shop, but for Europe, it goes to Magenta's Bandcamp page. The involvement of Magenta stems from Rob Reed and friends recording the Bath gig that features on the BluRay, AFAIK.

But as a note on the ROTW page on tigermothshop explains:

"Message to any customers from EU countries

Please be advised that you may be charged additional fees by your local post office on any purchases made from this website. A better alternative would be to order from the Magenta and/or Robert Reed Bandcamp pages as there are procedures unique to Bandcamp that facilitate the smooth passing from EU customs processes."

Brexit, eh? All-round winner.

<edit>

Now I'm confused. On the Bandcamp page, it says that the BluRay + 2CD + Bonus Postcard CD package is £30 (or more, if you wish). It calculates that as €34.25, then adds €8.98 for shipping and tax to The Netherlands, so €43.23 total.

But when you check-out using PayPal, the price is hoicked to £37.35 and then £5 is added for shipping, for a total of £42.35, which it quotes as being approximately €48.74.

What's going on here? I'm not so much worried about the €5 difference in price, but why PayPal is saying the package costs £37.35, when the website says it's £30.

Any ideas, folks?

<end edit>

 

Now have to figure out how long it'd take to drive / train to and from Maastricht for the Midsummer Prog Festival gig next month.

Well, blimey. I was there and am pretty sure I do have some video actually, perhaps even a few minutes worth – will have to check when I get home this evening. And if I do, I'm of course only too happy to share it. It was a great gig and it'd be wonderful to see it finally available.

Where did Jem post this message originally, Rog?

Well, well – that's a find.

At the risk of treading insensitively, the lyrics sound very personal and perhaps a reflection of Jem's recent marital travails. To my ear at least, there are several songs on "Day And Age" that seem to draw on the same source of inspiration.

heh 

Evening, all. Hope you're all enjoying yourselves, (you ...) 

You may know about Space Rocks, a partnership between the European Space Agency and Twin V in the UK, where we bring scientists, engineers, and astronauts together with musicians, artists, writers, actors, film makers, and more:

http://www.spacerocksofficial.com

While our live, in person events have obviously been on hold since the start of 2020, we have been running a roughly weekly livestream called Uplink with various guests, spanning Vangelis to Fred Haise of Apollo 13 and Katee Sackhoff of Battlestar Galactica and many more in the 52 episodes we've done so far, all available to rewatch:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnGPFIotcy6_GxiPravuk7w/videos

Why am I telling you all this? Because Jem and John will be on this week to talk about Day And Age and much besides. We've worked with Jem at ESA before and John's Lonely Robot were the headline act at our first Space Rocks live event in 2018, so the links are there already, beyond me being a total Frost*ie 

So, please join us at the YouTube link: the episode will be live at 21:00CEST / 20:00BST on Thursday, but available for replay soon after.

https://twitter.com/spacerockslive/status/1414623926764900355

Morse code at the end of Island Life - where's Pedro we need him?

Mitchell told me he reckons it says "Enjoy yourselves", but I don't think he's checked & neither have I 

Awesome easter egg for long time fans on "The Boy Who Stood Still"...

I grinned from ear to ear the first time I heard that ... brilliant one for the Frost•ies, I thought 

Needless to say, am very much looking forward to this. Not least because I may (cough) have played the tiniest of roles in helping connect John and Jem with a certain Death Eater friend of mine who is reputed to appear on the album 

As for "Terrestrial", Frost*tastic indeed, with some of the guitars and keyboard textures a throwback to EIMA in the best possible way. Marvellous.

That said, is it just me, but does the YouTube version sound a lot more centred, compressed, and "denser" than the Spotify one? I'm not very good at A-B listening, but the Spotify version sounds a lot airier and open to me. Both are in stereo and both compressed by definition, but the Spotify version is my choice for now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wda09d-QdUk
https://open.spotify.com/album/5fe8okWl0OMdUWYq2xp8Nz?si=iGBnCtVsRaKB2CJ_4n3EKw

Can't wait to hear the CD version. I wonder if there's any chance of Day And Age being released in hi-res audio too though :-)

Just as a heads up, I received my replacement disk last week. I was initially a bit worried about someone(Jem, me?)  having to pay huge customs fees as it made its way from the UK to NL, but nope. Still feel rather guilty about this whole thing, but perhaps I'll just have to buy ten copies of Day And Age as partial recompense 

A bit of crowd funding to help fund the replacements?

Was indeed the kind of direction I was thinking of.

Evening all. Seems as though I came back in September & then left again. I'm am such an unreliable friend. Then again, I'm not surprised given the state of things. Apologies 

Anyway, despite not having been here for a while, I was made aware of the various "13 Winters" printing & mastering problems by Mr Mitchell last week, and indeed they seem unfortunate, but genuine mistakes.

I'll send in my "claim" for the revised CD, but am also aware that this might be being covered out of the pocket of, err, someone (ahem), & am thus also wondering how I can help defray some of that unforeseen expense. I mean, I can't presume to speak for all Frost*ies, but I've had so much joy and pleasure out of being a Frost* fan all these years, I hate to think of folk losing money over a genuine error made while making something we're all enjoying. Repressing of 3000 discs & postage costs for those claimed will be considerabl, I imagine.

So, with that in mind, is anyone else interested in thinking of possible ways of helping out?

     

Well, hello, everyone – it has been a while. For those who I don't chat to occasionally in The Other Place, I hope you're all well and safe at this mad time.

13 Winters duly ordered & very much looking forward to the new material next year. Regular chats with Mr Mitchell lead me to conclude that it'll be a corker.

You missed your birthday? Like, you're the queen or something and have loads of them?

As one does, dear boy; as one does. Every day is a birthday when you're a sovereign.

And another one!
https://themattermen.bandcamp.com/album/monday-night-special

featuring the newest Matter Man, John LaRouche on chromatic harmonica!  This guy is world class, and there's more to come!

(as an aside, most people don't listen all the way through, which is a real shame because most of our tunes don't end as they start; there's a lot of music in between!  Give it a try!) 

Streaming now – always good to hear another of your works, Rog