truth is a beautiful child

but not an easy one.  she’s late.  she’s heavy.  she comes out kicking and screaming, sideways with a big head, ripping and tearing all the way.  but her eyes are bright.  brighter than the closest star in the sky.  she’s impatient.  when she doesn’t get her way, she stomps around the room, arms folded, steam rising from her ears, till she gets spoken.  but her love is huge.  bigger than the most genuine unexpected smile that pours out of an unbridled heart.  stronger than the mama-of-everything’s goliath arms of compassion that could ever wrap themselves around the world and hug us with mercy and tenderness till tears of joy and relief stream and flow from all our eyes creating seven new oceans.

what a ride.  she’s coming.  she’s nearly here.  and on her way here, every emotion imaginable has cropped up and shown its crazy amazing ugly stunning face and stood there until it’s been acknowledged, then it makes way for the next.  every song and every album has its own birth and i’ve never experienced one quite like this before.  it’s been challenging, demanding, expanding and enlightening.  it’s put us all to the test and i am pretty sure we’ve come out on top SHINING.

and we are so excited.

i’ll leave it to you.  listen and have your own experience.  how does Truth speak to you?  i’m really looking forward to hearing yours.  fully and freely.  i like the echoes.

just a few more days now!  we’ve adjusted our course for last minute changes of wind and tide, but we’ll be coming into port very, very shortly. 

we’ve got GOODIES for you!  a new Artemis website coming.  a bubbly beautiful song called Truth by Artemis : Divasonic.  loads of great remixes.  and some creative packages – USB trick or treats for boys and girls, magazines and shirts, twinkles and charms and sparkly bits.  we’ve painstakingly (and i really mean it!), and with tons of joy and love, put all these offerings together just for you and we really hope you’ll enjoy them and pretty please speak up and let us know what you enjoy most!

i won’t let the entire cat out of the makeup bag just yet, but she’s hungry and happy and ready to play, and pretty soon she will leap into your lap and start purring.  starting sometime in the next few days, you’ll be able to hear songs from the Truth single & remixes EP on Groovera chilled web radio - this will be the exclusive place to hear the tracks until they burst on the scene November 12 (just for you my pretties, who stand so near and listen so closely) ONLY on Bandcamp.  on December 1, she'll hit the streets on iTunes, Amazon, Magnatune, CDBaby, and everywhere else.  then we’ll give her the keys to the car, let her drive around, go on dates and interviews and radio shows with whomever she pleases, and trust her to take care of herself.

we know she will.  she knows her truth.

xx

happy birthday

i love birthdays! this one is super sweet, as it seems like the ethers are lately overflowing with sparkly synchronicities, new connections, old connections renewed, delightful surprises and unexpected artsy geniuses meandering through the door to say hello let's play...

one such delightful surprise is Sara Abtahi, an Iranian artist in Germany who is working on a video for our song 'Easy' - her previous videos are stunning and i am certain that whatever she is cooking up will be a delicacy...thanks to our friend Mijo for making that connection - Sara studies in Frankfurt at the school where he works...Easy is a song that i wrote with Mijo - it's on the Auralei EP and will also be featured on the upcoming full-length release 'Body of Glass' which is well on its way to completion...

we've also just seen the final version of Jake Durrett's video for the 'Truth' single that will be coming out in just a few short weeks - it's looking pretty fabulous!  'Truth' is an Artemis - Divasonic collaboration (Artemis vocals & Divasonic music/production)...get ready for some grrrl power! we'll be releasing the single with several stellar remixes from the likes of Mijo, Colfax, David Earl, Celeste Lear (woah, strange how close those last names are), Tyler Stone, Daniel Durrett, Chris James, Vir Unis & Matt McDonough of Atmoworks...but wait, there's more!  the mixes are rolling in, they're sounding sweet, and we're whipping up some fun artsy packages and goodies with which to offer up these sonic treats...

of course there's also the stunning 'Ella' video by our pixie-dust-sprinkling animatrix and (and vocalist/harpist/producer) extraordinaire, Nicky Cairney - i hate to even tease you by mentioning it, because we won't be releasing it until a few months from now, so that it can be submitted to some film festivals first...but we think this mostly hand-drawn animated video will be worth the wait...in the meantime, feast your eyes on some of her other treasures...


well i do have much more fun news to share, but my dearly beloved partner in crime Keith Crusher just showed up, and it would be utterly silly of me to spend my entire birthday sitting behind a computer, doodling in cyberspace...so the rest will have to wait just a moment...time for sushi!!

it's not...

that i haven’t been thinking of you.  i think of you nearly every day, in fact.  it’s just that i’m slightly organizationally challenged of late.  okay, maybe in general.  or at least sporadically.  i’d blame it on the stars, but i like stars.  it’s not that i don’t have anything to say to you either…it’s more a matter of getting the correct synapses to fire to get the muscles in my hand to type the words out.   if i could just download an app to transfer my random thoughts directly to this blog, i’d be entertaining on a much more regular basis….but it would need a good intuitive editing function, or i’d probably also be slightly scary on a much more regular basis too.  hmm.

it’s funny how much i think of you, actually.  i’m not even sure precisely who you are.  i have a vague, amorphous, and sometimes fleetingly specific idea who various aspects of you are – at least when you write me or comment on these random thoughts, which i do find titillating – but otherwise i tend to think of you as a friend and confidant.  this may be naïve of me, but that’s okay…i think maintaining a healthy sense of innocence and wonder, whether they’re founded or not, is a good thing.  it keeps me going, and gives me something to write about.  when i give in to cynicism, i become more of a critic than a poet, and being a poet is much more fun.  besides, how many critics do you remember from a hundred or a thousand years ago?  i can’t think of one.  but i can sure think of some poets – Emerson, Sappho, Kabir, Whitman, Rumi, Rilke, Tagore, Wordsworth, Thoreau, to name a few - and i’m glad they did what they did.  they keep me going, too.  oh, please do tickle me and click those links…i’ve just whiled away an hour picking out poems for you…

i once told a family member that i made music because music was what helped me most through the hardest times in my life, and that if i could be of service to anyone, perhaps i could write songs that might help someone through a hard time, or just bring a little beauty or inspiration or insight or ease to their journey.  they told me that music doesn’t have any redeeming social value and doesn’t help anyone – if i wanted to help someone, i should become a doctor.  they said i made music because i couldn’t help it.  well, that is true.  guilty as charged.  i can’t stop.  i have Restless Songwriting Syndrome, and i hope there is no cure.  i might still become a doctor one day (well, a naturopath more likely)…but i still think music helps people.  i personally couldn’t live without it.  well, i might inhabit a physical body, but my poor mind would certainly become utterly insane without those invisible loving vibrations keeping my molecules in their proper orbit…

more on the fascinating story of my sporadic nature…in a bit, ha ha…

and also more on what i’ve actually been DOING for the past six months (oh my) in a bit…you may have received little bits and blorps from my facebook page and twitter posts…but you do deserve more, and i will try not to keep you waiting.  i just returned from an amazing trip to the Ruby Mountains in Nevada – with a whole new song and a few other song bits in hand, hooray – and in other news, Auralei was featured this week on the Indie 3 Project, a cool site that introduces three new indie albums each month. 

but wait, there’s so much more…

new video from WomensRadio featuring artemis remix from Orbits

new video describing the great community building and services for women provided by WomensRadio.com - music is from the Artemis Orbits album: Charming Gun - The Charmed Mix by Eric Hawk and Bo Blount :)

Rehearsal #1

hip hip hooray, we're officially making noise...getting ready for the CD release party at Harlot on March 25 with RTFM Records, Groovera and WomensRadio - as well as our show at Swig on April 1 with Below Zero Beats...happy hours are so nice, we prefer to throw them twice...

so...tonite we had our first real rehearsal of 2010 - woo hoo!  in the past, we've used Logic during our live shows...we're in the process of moving over to Ableton Live which gives us soooooo much more flexibility with each song - we can loop & effect sections, stretch out and generally amuse ourselves much more thoroughly within this new paradigm...

also terribly exciting is the fact that we have a new band member, Daniel Durrett, on Live & KP3 looping + fx.  Daniel is also a solo artist and i'm sure you've heard the RTFM gang tooting our horns about his gorgeous new release 'Hello, Inner Sunset'.  and of course, it wouldn't be a proper party without our trusty wunderkind Daniel Berkman...he's still hovering a few inches above the ground with his plethora of toys - well, actually, he's currently experimenting with pretending he is just a guitarist.  we're quite happy to have him play whatever he pleases, frankly.  anyhoo, D squared & myself had a fabulous time dipping our toes in the pond together for the first time tonite.  lovely chemistry and lots of snickering & giggles, and of course endless hugs from the wonderful fuzzmeistress Nala.

here are a couple video samples, straight from the living room on Cole and Haight...

just getting warmed up with a little improv:



(Daniel D was clever enough to record a live stereo mix...here's an mp3 just for you)

and a sneak peak at the curly tail-end of Auralei:



onward and upward, my friends...

birthdays n bliss

happy belated valentines day!  and happy belated birthday to the Auralei EP!  as you may have noticed, it's been a bit of a prolonged birth process...she's been up on the bandcamp site for a couple weeks now (though you'll notice we've now switched the artwork to the lovely version created by AM Radio, which we've used for the first run of physical CDs)... she went live on iTunes and Amazon on the 14th as scheduled... but she's not yet available at CD Baby because there's been a series of small delays with getting the CDs pressed and shipped.  but joy of joys, i've just learned they'll be arriving tomorrow!  so very soon, this little journey through the birth canal will be complete.  we'll be sure to let you know when the tangible little cuties will be available - we'll also be offering them through the Bandcamp site...we're whipping up a variety of packages to offer, so please chime in by commenting below if there are goodies you'd like to see.  our brilliant creative minds have so far come up with...um...t-shirts :) - maybe some with the AM Radio design, and some with Keith Crusher's design...i have a couple other nifty ideas i'll spring on you in a bit.  for now, we may be limited to things that can be created on-demand due to our teeny-weeny-microscopic budget...but we're voting this will change very soon...

speaking of spare change, we're also getting creative about how to fund the fund-hungry aspects of finishing the full-length album Body of Glass, and have been recently turned on to the magic of Kickstarter for helping indie artists of all stripes gather the resources to realize their visions...it's a really neat concept and platform.  the trick is, right now the ability to start projects is by invite only...so, if anyone has an invite lying around gathering dust, we'd be most grateful to put it to good use!

fun happenings lately...airplay in Austria and Bremen, Germany this week, and featured as the breakthrough artist of the week on Below Zero Beats...also a nice feature in Kimberly Wilson's podcast, Tranquility du Jour.  that was a lovely surprise - her blog is one of my faves...of course, there's also the launch of the brand spanky new Groovera site...which is gorgeous if i do say so myself...congrats Groovera!!

also caught an awesome performance by Return to Mono and special guest Divasonic at a super-secret-warehouse party in San Francisco over the weekend...RTM played mostly stuff from their new album, and boy is it tasty!! 

another treat is the new single Divasonic and i have been tinkering away on together...grrrl power!!  having so much fun...can't wait to give you a peek, but she'll have to simmer just a bit longer...

oh yes...i meant to share some bliss.  for valentines day, i made what has been lovingly dubbed Paradise Pie.  it's based on a recipe i used to make years ago, with a couple new twists... i thought i'd share the recipe with you, it's a wonderful tofu-based "cheesecake" - believe me, if Keith likes it and it's made from tofu, you can be pretty sure it's well-disguised tofu!!

but first, the tempting visual representation:

Paradise Pie:

Candied rose petals (this part takes the longest! maybe took me 1.5 hours...but would probably be quicker if you used normal sized roses rather than the mini ones that grow in my garden):

2 large egg whites
1/2 c sugar
petals from 2 organic roses

whisk egg whites in a small bowl till foamy. with a pastry brush, paint both sides of each petal with egg whites, sprinkle both sides with sugar.  dry on nonstick rack (i used wax paper) at least 6 hrs or overnight.

The crust:

1.5 c graham cracker crumbs
1/4 c hazelnut oil (or almond or some other yummy nut)
1 tbsp sugar (optional)

it's your basic graham cracker crust - mix all ingredients well, press into a 9" 2pie plate.

The pie:

3 c tofu (i used silken)
juice of 1/2 lemon (about 2 tbsp)
1 tbsp rose water
2 tbsp pomegranate molasses (can be bought at an international or Indian/Middle Eastern grocery)*
1/4 c unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 c hazelnut oil (or almond etc)
3/4 c sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp whole cardamom seeds (removed from about 5 green cardamom pods)
pinch of salt
a few pistachios

*if you can't find pomegranate molasses, you can use 4 tbsp of lemon juice instead of 2 tbsp, and a full cup of sugar instead of 3/4 c...

put everything (except the pistachios) in a blender and mix till creamy smooth - can add extra liquid at end if needed to make tofu smooth.  pour into pie crust and bake at 325 F until set in the middle.  cool to room temp and then refrigerate for at least 2 hrs.  top with rose petals and raw unsalted pistachios.

enjoy the bliss!!

p.s. we had our pie with a bottle of Francis Coppola Diamond Claret...it was yummy.  i'm no wine expert so perhaps some will snicker at my wine choice, but hey, i just trust my taste buds :)

p.p.s the little squares in the picture are the beads that Keith made for me, which will eventually become a bracelet...they're little picture frames with images from the film Blood of a Poet by Jean Cocteau...one of my all time faves...

p.p.p.s  more exciting news about CD release party and other live show dates in the next day or two...but first...off to dream i wander...

rabbit rabbit

this image is by Android Jones - i'm utterly awed and inspired by his stunning and shamanic digital art...

happy february!  lots of excitement this last couple weeks...we won first place / top score at the latest Test Press listening event at Pyramind for Colfax's remix of Here and Now, off the new Auralei EP (which is still available at a discounted price through Feburary 1st at the bandcamp site - that's today!)...we were surprised and thrilled, to say the least.  the panel judges, Kat 010, jaswho and Spesh, were fabulous and gave really thoughtful and constructive feedback on everyone's tracks - and there was tons of really fantastic, well-produced music - not a bad track in the house.  there's something great going on lately in the San Francisco music scene...feels like kind of a magical time to be romping around these parts...

we're busybees getting ready to throw a little listening party / CD release event for the Auralei EP plus the new releases from Colfax and Daniel Durrett - Tape and Hello, Inner Sunset are my two current favorite albums and seem to have become the regular Sunday morning ritual at the RTFM Records homefront...usually there are also copious pancakes, eggs, coffee and much bouncing round the room involved...like this morning, for example...

so i'm curious and would love your thoughts - what kind of celebration should we have?  would a simple listening party/happy hour type event inspire you to put on your fancy knickers and come bump elbows and iPhones with a room full of giddy musicians?  or is a live performance what you really crave?  it might take us a little longer to put a full show on, as we're all making the hodge-podgy transitions from writing and producing new albums to realizing them in the live performance setting...or perhaps there's a middle way - a mostly-listening event with a few (maybe 2-4) songs from each of us...so there's lots of time to say hello as well as do a little toe-tapping, pad-scratching and knob-twiddling...what do you think?  would love to hear your comments below...

the Auralei EP release date is 14 Feb...we're just now getting the physical CDs ordered - how many little glitches can pop up between getting finished artwork ready and actually being able to place an order?  apparently nearly two weeks worth...but never fear, those little puppies will be in our hands in a flash...

on to other exciting news...Divasonic and i have just a couple aerial tissu classes left before the end of the series.  it's totally addictive though, so i'm sure we'll be back for more mindbending lessons in how to tie oneself up in knots and swing from the ceiling.  we're also working on a track together (loving it!!) which will be featured on the upcoming full-length album Body of Glass.  also had a great music exploration / dive down the rabbit hole day with Daniel Durrett this weekend...started writing a new ditty inspired by an old radio he's modified to make some pretty awesome sounds...started layering those with lots of vocals, some acoustic guitar and beats...came up with a sweet little music bed - we'll see what blossoms out of that one!

marcelle_hi will be playing artemis music today at 2pm and 9pm eastern time on her tweetcast - what a creative way she's come up with to share new music via twitter...speaking of which, i just became a dj on blip.fm - you can hear what's floating thru my ears there or by following me on twitter...

also, was tickled this week to reconnect with our friend Tracey Moberly at the Foundry in London, which was one of our favorite venues on UK tour in 2005 - we were also guests on their Late Late Breakfast Show - (if you weren't tuned in five years ago, you can relive the memories, including the unforgettable Wormlady here).  Tracey is working hard to save the Foundry, which is scheduled to be torn down and replaced by a giant gold hotel - the travesty!! - and also has been doing much work to support the arts and community in Port-au-Prince Haiti over the last several years.  she returned from her most recent trip just prior to the tragic earthquake, and has set up a Foundry Haiti Fund to support relief efforts...she and Kirsty Hawkshaw are also putting together a compilation CD to raise funds for Haiti...more info on that soon!

oh, and i recently joined the gang at Women's Radio Music Review, which is the music review section of Women's Radio - this is a wonderful bunch of folks doing great things for women in music, art, and all walks of life...

ok, pillow calling...

p.s. - join my fanpage on facebook for late-breaking updates and random thoughts....