Artist Blog: hopeful monster

I have a new Hopeful Monster website to introduce. Actually it's a blog and I will be using it as my main publishing platform for band news, videos, photos, artwork, lyrics, reviews, new music — the kind of stuff you usually find on band websites. But unlike myspace etc, this site lets me to post music and videos in quicktime format, which permits 16 bit audio, equivalent to the sound quality you get on a CD. So far, I've compiled fairly comprehensive content for the site, including all four Hopeful Monster music videos, an mp3 player, lyrics for all songs released to date, press reviews, album and poster art, multiple downloadable hi res images and a growing photo archive with pics going back to the band's origins in Seabright, Nova Scotia. I even dug up some poems I wrote about a decade ago and posted a few. Now that the basic content is there, I'll be making semi-regular posts, each focusing on a new release, upcoming or recent show, collaboration, memoir, art project, social movement or the like. The idea is to present various media related by subject, in an episodic way, rather than as batches of files of the same kind, like traditional music albums. In each post you will get the full story, whatever it happens to be about, with music, video, photos, words and links to sources and related web pages. The first couple of posts will be live videos from my recent UK tour — not only footage of me but also of some amazing acts I played with. They should be up in a day or two — in the meantime, please have a look around the site and leave me a comment if you like. Here is the URL: http://hopefulmonstermusic.blogspot.com Enjoy! JBall

A special, hand-made limited edition of the new hopeful monster album, METATASKING, will be for sale at the horseshoe tavern on June 19. Hopeful Monster will close out an exciting night of live performances, starring David Celia (just back from Europe!), Madviolet and Brothers Cosmoline. The CD is only available at live shows, this being the first. That makes it kind of an unofficial CD release, I suppose... hope to see you!