Phideauz - 7½ is cancelled!

Oh, the fickle world of plans.  Someone said to make a plan if you want to see God laugh.  Nothing every turns out the way you think it will!

So, we've been working on a few different things, but the main thing was an album we called 7½.  It was called this because it would follow our album Number Seven.  It was called this because it was NOT the follow up to Doomsday Afternoon/Great Leap.  It was called this to underscore that it was not a concept album and that it was a collection of pieces we'd been working on that had no other homes.

We had recorded "Tempest Of Mutiny" for a various artist album/graphic novel tie-in about Pirates (not yet released to the best of my knowledge)...

We had recorded "Strange Cloud" for a Musea various artists concept album called Purgatorio...

We had written and rewritten and been playing "Out Of The Angry Planet" live and it was a complex and awesome song...

We had recorded "Have No Fear" as a "final" song for Number Seven, but had withheld it because the Dormouse tracks had emerged in the 11th hour and it seemed superfluous...

We had recorded a semi long song called "Star Of Light" which seemed to be a great epic for the 7½ album.

THEN, something happened, and it happened again.  "Star Of Light" grew some new parts.  I started to develop the song and new angles appeared.  Bits of the song that were mere footnotes started to take on a life of their own and it kept suggesting opportunities for new directions.  As the band would reconvene for rehearsals/recordings/gigs I would suddenly come up with a new section that we needed to rehearse and record.  The requisite groans could be heard.  MORE of "Star Of Light"????

So, now that we have a version of Star Of Light that has become a song cycle of its own, we have started to put it side by side with various other pieces to see what the ideal order for the album would be.  Every reference disc that I audition seems shocking to me.  It seems no other song wants to live on the same disc with the new track...   So, now we have discovered that 7½ is no more.  It is now an album entirely devoted to the single song "Snowtorch" (which contains Star Of Light and its various variations and additional movements).

I am very excited and I hope you will be when we are able to release this next album of Phideaux music  entitled "Snowtorch".

post script:  All the songs which didn't make it onto the new album will be collected as part of our Brief History Of Stuff And Nonsense project which is a compilation of remixes, edited versions of songs and unreleased tracks.  This we hope will emerge toward the end of 2010.  Meanwhile, fingers crossed for "Snowtorch" by the end of Summer (that is, Summer's End).

Source: MySpace

The topic title scared me too but in the end - I think this is good news, and am excited to hear the new album. Any new Phideaux music is good, in my mind :)

I didn't mean to worry you but the subject line is identical to the MySpace subject line and I didn't want to interfere with that, seeing as it was such important news to so many of us.

I wholeheartedly agree with this notion, the clips from the DVD were pretty great. It was pretty good the way they spliced Phideaux playing a little melody on the piano with the full live performance and then back, too.