Morsels of Forthcoming Elegance

Good morning, My Primest of Ovulates. Or indeed a good whatever segment of the day it might be in your geolocation. I was thinking of you all this morning. I'm feeling an extra special burst of corpusculent gratitude on a fine, sunny autumnal Miami day, that this is what I'm able to do with my life. So, you were on my mind, and I felt compelled to write to you with a delicate update, plus some amuse bouches of sorts.

Admittedly things have been a little quiet on the Emu online-publishing front recently. To be honest I'm a little tired of churning out vertical videos. I started to feel like I was becoming a bit paint-by-numbers with how I was doing them - a bit cynical - and that's the anathema True Art! That may change in the future but for now it feels correct to pause on them briefly. Luckily, some exciting other creative potentials and cosmic energies have slid my way over the last few months. The real reason for my quietude is that I have been squirrelling away at some absolutely new and exquisitely fresh new high quality content.

Namely,

1. A piping hot new album of twelve songs, which I am on track to release by the close of the year (I keep my word). This will include three singles I've put out this year, plus nine unreleased new tracks. A couple of these are in a pretty radically different vibe to what I've put out before. As with all these albums I just follow my gut creatively, with whatever I'm feeling pushed towards in the moment. It's going to be a veritable generic smorgasbord, in a way that is completely unmarketable via mainstream music promotion pathways! Excellent news. But is it not the blessed gift, nay prerogative, of this creative route I have chosen, that I am able to do that? To put out stream of consciousness songs via streaming services and bandcamp, and sustain myself through your generosity. I'm a lucky flightless bird. 

2. Musical collaborations with two different international artists. One of these coming out in time for the Yuletide festivities. One of these in particular is a collaboration that many people have been requesting for some time and I think it's going to go, as they say, off.

3. A 4x15 minutes narrative show for BBC Radio 4, co-written with Adrian Gray. In it I'll be expanding upon my life, my loves, my family history, my relationship with Bonson, my psychologically healthy relationship with my father. And I shall probably propagate some of my infamous musings on technology and religion etc. We've submitted the script drafts, and the good news is they've gone down well with the honchos, so our release date has been moved forwards! Recording next week, so watch this space for release in early 2024...

4. Filming a new music video with Hunter. It's for one of the lead songs off the new album. I won't give away the song yet, because I always enjoy you all trying to decipher what the story of the song is from a handful of odd stills I'm attaching to this. This was our most ambitious shoot yet in terms of time spent, locations and budget. We have also learnt a lot about our process, particularly where to spend budget to level up production values, and where you can't beat the plain, good old-fashioned Emu Video model of me running around and posing in various public locations, to the dismay of commuting professionals.

As is my wont, I've extended a couple of my better songs that I've released across the year into fuller songs to slot neatly in the album. My personal favourite is the one that appeared in the narrative video Dads Be Like. I wrote it as a little jingle for the beginning of that video, originally, as a way of easing into the scene. But I thought it had legs, so I extended it. What became the chorus was written in the vocal booth at the very end of a long day of recording all the album vocals. I ended up having to stay another two hours to get these harmonies down, and record an aggressive tenor sax solo. You never know when inspiration can strike and you must be primed to pounce on it like a coiled viper!

Hope you're all healthy and fresh. I've taken a few days off this week in preparation to dive into our biggest Pleasure Garden ever this week. Hunter will be filming some beautiful clips, and we actually have the capacity to record decent sound in this venue for once, so look out for some clips from it over the next couple of months.

Never forget,
JE loves U xxx