Amazon US have voted us the #1 New Age album of the year. Unfortunately, due to our distributor worries, you probably can't buy it, at least in it's physical incarnation. It is available digitally on iTunes and the label are doing their absolute utmost to make it available to buy on CD as soon as they possibly can.

Anybody London based that makes it down to our Union Chapel gig will also find it for sale there.

Meanwhile, massive thanks to John Diliberto at Echoes for giving us so much support this year and putting us forward for the above. We're gutted about this whole Pinnacle deal - it has affected many of our friends and colleagues in the scene and is a very likely death knell for the industry as was in this country at least. We shall see what 2009 brings...

Confirming some long time rumours, it is very likely that this Saturday's concert at the Union Chapel will be the last Digitonal Band gig, barring some kind of booking fairy, for the foreseeable future as we all wander off to concentrate on other projects and I get back into the writing spirit again, generate some new material and get my teeth stuck into some other projects.

Kat will no doubt be rocking it with Sunday Driver (whose new album incidentally is very, very good), the Shadow Orchestra and the Cool Kats.
Samy is touring with Tom Jones, Seckou Keita, Natascha Atlas and Zoe Rahman and generally being mr busy.
Josh is starting up the fabulous Balkan Vinyl label, ramping up the Posthuman project and, alongside me, being silly behind the laptops as the AGT Rave Cru.

I'm going to continue writing and recording and occaisionally playing out as Digitonal but it's not been financially viable as a band for some time and I would like to try something different with the project. When promoters are barely able to pay you enough for your transport, let alone cover the costs of rehearsal rooms (normally around £80 a time in London) and allow me to pay the fabulous musicians that I work with even a fraction of what they're worth, then it becomes gradually impossible to function.

This is certainly not the end, and both myself as a solo artist and the various combinations of The Digitonal Band are still available for booking in 2009, but we would rather draw a line under the project for now and concentrate our efforts elsewhere in the new year.

It's been an honour working with this group of musicians and I hope that we get to do it again in the future. For now though, this'll be it.

ta, andy.:

Last week saw Pinnacle distribution go into administration. This is bad news in all kinds of ways, not least since they are responsible for the distribution of Just Music's physical output.

It is, therefore, unlikely that anyone trying to order Save Your Light for Darker Days through outlets supplied by Pinnacle (i.e. most record retailers) will be able to get it through those sources. I believe that it is still in stock at Amazon and Play, but this may not be the case for long and we're not sure how long, and even if, the label will be able to get the defunct distributor to release the stock they're holding.

My suggestion is to order it directly from the label - they definitely have stock and it's even a little cheaper than most shops.

http://www.justmusic.co.uk/store/TAO024/

On a personal side-note, Pinnacle going down is disasterous for many of our friends and other labels that we have worked with in the past. This, coupled with the failure of Neuton and E-UK is adding up to some pretty grim times for independent music in this country, despite what the major-wannabee wankers at AIM say. We are well aware of how easy it is to find music for free on the internet, our album included. We urge you to support the labels and artists that bring you an alternative voice in music. The loss of shops like Smallfish and the communities they engendered has already had a catastrophic effect on Electronica. Microlabels like Uncharted Audio, Sending Orbs, Cactus Island, Seed Records and countless others need and deserve your support to keep producing physical music!

You really don't know what you've got till it's gone...

This just in from our friends at Uncharted Audio

Quick heads up to let you all know that we've bowed to the sheer
number of requests to make some of these tracks available in a
digital format. We've licensed the LJ Kruzer/Plaid track to Fabric
for John Tejada's Fabric44 mix cd, out in the new year, so it made
sense to do so. Please note that this new digital edition contains
only 5 of the 13 tracks from the vinyl set, of which we still have a
few available. Here's the lowdown:

Various Artists - "Signals (Digital Selection)"
Released 8th December 2008 in high quality MP3 and WAV formats.

1/ On/off - One Day, Machines (Digitonal Remix)
2/ Cursor Miner - William Tell Routine
3/ Cyan341 - Heptagrammic
4/ Line - How I Saved the World Single-handed
5/ LJ Kruzer - Huba (Plaid's 15 Years Lost remix)

http://www.unchartedaudio.com/releases/signals for details of the full Signals 7" series.

Apologies for the slow news lately. I just got married, Samy has been playing with Tom Jones (1.54!) and Josh is lost in acid. We already posted this in the Live section but since it's our last proper band gig for the year, I thought I'd mention it again.

Our last gig at the Union Chapel was very special indeed and we're very much looking forward to returning there. The concert starts at midday with a performance by the splendid Glissando, and we'll be on around 1pm for an hour. It's totally free and we'll be seconding to a nearby pub afterwards for a little celebration so do stick around.

More before the close of the year about our 2009 plans but it will involve some new material and, hopefully, a brand new rescore project. Speaking of which, our old Shining Project is now up on youtube in case you missed it. It's mostly been slated by the internet Kubrick purists and perhaps it needs a live event to really transmit the vibe (and we damn well KNOW it worked well), but it's up there anyway for the curious...