The past 6 months have been pretty exciting and eventful for Team Helicopters, so I figured it was time that we gave a little status update. We’ve not been particularly good at this blog thing, so consider this our New Year’s resolution to try and be a little more proactive in this regard.
We had intended to release ‘Slow Leak at the Seam’ on January 11th, but other ‘bigger’ life events (wedding, new baby boy, fatherhood, and family) have been dividing our time into smaller and smaller increments. This is not a complaint in any way, just an explanation as to why (in part) we have delayed this release.
After setting this release date, we also realized that this left no time for us to actually promote the release, which would be a real shame, considering all of the work we put into it, and (we think) the strength of the material. As I’m sure you, good reader, are aware, having a release without promotion is akin to breaking a world record alone in your basement; if no one ever sees/hears it, then it didn’t really happen.
So we’re working on that now. The album is at about 95%, we have a really fantastic video director, Josh Pabst, who’s been working on a video for the first single from the album, and we’ve been meeting/talking with different promotional channels to determine what our ‘plan’ is for the record.
In the meantime, we went through our archives, and released ‘Not Diamonds But Diamonds’ on Tuesday. This is our ’Dead Letter Office’ (REM album). It’s all of the stuff that we were fond enough of to want to share, but for whatever reason, it didn’t fit with the current release, wasn’t completely realized, or was really good but wasn’t ‘helicopters’. The songs span helicopters’ entire existence from 2005 to the present, with outtakes and b-sides from each album, including the upcoming release.
You can download all 18 NDBD tracks here for free: http://helicopters.bandcamp.com
So that’s where we’re at. We will spend the next few months completing ‘SLATS’, figuring out how to make a compelling live perfomance out of a quite complicated record, and enjoying all of the other wonderful things that life brings.
Thanks for your support, your patience, and your interest. We will still be making songs even if no one ever hears them, but it’s more fun when they do.
All the best for 2011,
bri
Every year we participate in WXRT’s (93.1FM Chicago) Local Anesthetic Holiday Spectacular by writing (somewhat hastily) a holiday jingle as a thank you for all the support WXRT has given us throughout the years. In the past these minute-long jingles have turned themselves into full songs (“Rotofugi” being the first to start this trend). This year’s submission might prove a bit more challenging. Take a listen.
I think records were just a little bubble through time and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of time. I always knew it would run out sooner or later. It couldn’t last, and now it’s running out. I don’t particularly care that it is and like the way things are going. The record age was just a blip. It was a bit like if you had a source of whale blubber in the 1840s and it could be used as fuel. Before gas came along, if you traded in whale blubber, you were the richest man on Earth. Then gas came along and you’d be stuck with your whale blubber. Sorry mate – history’s moving along. Recorded music equals whale blubber. Eventually, something else will replace it.
The new album officially releases in September, but you can go here and stream/purchase one new single every Tuesday until then.
-Helicopters