blog

Another KOMW-remix

Fri, 17 May 2013 06:10:00 GMT

Elisha Hunter from Melbourne, Australia sent us another remix via Soundcloud.
Listen to his turn on our hit-single "King Of My World" right here!

He's got more music on his soundcloud channel: soundcloud.com/nyxx666

Thanks for the remix, mate!

Answers

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 23:20:00 GMT

(picture by Alexandra Zita Zygar)

Nico from Bristol asked: "New music? When?!" and we thought you all deserve an answer to this question: As we said before, we were experiencing some problems finding the right approach of covering one of our all time favourite songs (which nearly broke our neck), but we solved it and the song is close to be finished. (Fun fact: The song was meant to be our 3rd single and our christmas gift for you guys in 2011)

And as if that wasn't enough, we then underwent major private issues which are not to discuss here.
Bottom line: We know it's more than unhealthy not to release new music in 2 years. Bands come and go and even whole genres arise and disappear in 24 months. But it is what it is and we have to make the best of it.

We're back, we're motivated, we finally feel like there's a tiny little light at the end of the tunnel. And we're not even thinking about quitting. Promise!
DD

The Park At Night

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 02:55:00 GMT

I was in the park the other day. Normally not so exciting news to share with you guys, but this was actually a pretty exciting nocturnal stroll.

It began with a pair of glowing green eyes staring at me out of the dark and psychedelic colours which were moving on the ground. Sounds like the late 60s I know, and there was a lot of red wine involved, so I tried to photograph everything in order to have a proof that these things really existed.

I went on, deeper in the park, when suddenly a giant cubical installation which changed its colours was levitating in front of me. No shit. A couple of meters further down was a giant dome with a single drum in the centre….

And then there was a real life TETRIS.

Not sure what to make of this, but it left a strong impression. Here's some clips I made.
Enjoy,
DD

Being in a movie

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 06:05:00 GMT

Hello from the road.
You might have heard the rumors and I've been asked about this a lot, but wasn't allowed to answer. By now, I think enough time has passed to give some information: In September 2012 I shot 3 small scenes for the latest flick of a danish film maker called Lars von Trier. It was an amazing experience and I've met people like Shia Labo... Whatever his name is spelled.. and Udo Kier, who appeared to be a true gentleman and down to earth person.
Wether the scenes will survive the cutting room and stay in the movie or not, I don't know. I hope so.

Of course I'm not thinking about an acting career, music is where my heart is.
Gotta concentrate in driving now. Comment this blog, if you got questions or something to say. I'll be in touch.
DD

sent by my shitphone

Our shop & other stuff

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 22:45:00 GMT

Hey folks,
here it is, our first ever merch: the "Remaining Men Together" tank top designed by yours truly. You may have noticed the "shop" option in the navigation bar.
We're pretty excited about this, as it is an experiment for us. And we're also a bit anxious: Will the shirts sell well, will people like them? Do they even remember us?
Anyway, if it turns out to be quite succesful, we'll produce plenty of other merch.

As for the "giving it all away for free mentality": Hope you understand this is not possible this time. Our music is and will be free at all times, but unfortunately giving away the merch would ruin us completely. What we try to do is: keep the prices low and fair and not become some sort of thieves stealing money from your pockets.
Speaking of music: I will open a second soundcloud account at some point on this weekend, where I'll post unmixed demos and rough song ideas. Some instrumental, some with vocals, some just drafts. You guys are without music far too long and deserve to hear what we have in the pipeline.

Well, nuff said. Now go and check out our shop. It's right here...

DD

I'M EXCITED!

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 01:35:00 GMT

You may ask yourself: How did I get here? Well, finally I found something worthy to share it with you guys. After a year-long journey of searching the right approach to cover a very special song from the early eighties, I think I had a major breakthrough this morning.

We failed several times and now it feels totally right for the first time. Seriously, this song totally fucked up our workflow and we even thought about quitting and just move on to the next song. But that’s not the way we are. And we also don’t release stuff we’re not 100 % satisfied with. We could have put out 2 shitty albums with standard rocksongs, but we have our own quality standards and you guys benefit from them, too, don’t ya?

So while writing this, the demo is on heavy repetition and it brings back the good old confidence I used to have while writing songs like King Of My World or Waves.
Anyway, I won’t write stuff like „be prepared“ now, that’s something only dumbfucks do (I know, I wrote that in the past. Go figure...). And I’m sure you’re prepared since May 2 2011, when we released our last song.

So long for now.
DD

A kind of apology

Wed, 30 May 2012 12:05:00 GMT

Well,
it's been a while since our last blog and even longer since our last release.. What can I say, there's no excuse for it. I feel like I let you guys down, which pushes my self-hatred to new heights and I'm totally beating myself up for it. I know, some of you are desperately waiting for new music, while others already pronouced us dead.

I have great faith that after the relocation of our zen garden is accomplished, we'll come back stronger than ever. Most of the instruments are wired now, all that's left is the mixing console. We have a couple of songs nearly finished, some promising sketches and tons of vague ideas, some promising, some made for the dustbin of music history. We're talking about 20 songs in various stadiums here. So no need to worry about us quitting or anything: If we hadn't pronounced the album dead, we could easily make one.

Moreover, I'm playing with some shirt designs, nothing concrete, for I'm a horrible designer and I suck at photoshop. So, if you're a pro or at least better than me and want to help you friendly neighbourhood rockband out, drop us a line: ftanng@weareftanng.com.

So, that's it for now. I've said, what I wanted to say. In an ideal world, I'll find the time to blog more often and keep you updated about what's going on.
Oh, and for the ones who pronounced us dead: STFU and GTFO.

We are FTANNG!
DD/FT!

A New Year's Message from Dorian Deveraux

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 05:05:00 GMT

2011 - what a ride. As you have witnessed, a lot of changes occurred in the past 12 months. Most of them were positive, that's more one can ask for. I jumped "into the blue again, after the money's gone", to say it in the words of Talking Heads' David Byrne. Starting FTANNG! with Pee Wee (my personal Mickey Goldmill) was and still is the best thing that could happen bandwise and we're thrilled to see what 2012 has in store for us. As we promised on Twitter before: less words, more music! Smack talk is for other people.

Moreover it's time to thank you all for the insane amount of loyalty, although we seemed kinda lazy in the past few months. We'll do the best we can to pay you back with - you guess it - music.

Nuff said, let's get it on!
Happy new year!

DD / PWV
We are FTANNG!

Lest we forget: we have contributed our last year's favorite WAVES to a huge 30 track free X-Mas compilation courtesy of Burning Flies Radio. Grab your copy here (270 MB RAR-Archive), listen and enjoy. You might find some other artists on it that you might like.

KING OF MY WORLD remixed

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 11:15:00 GMT

FREE 7 Track E.P. / Digital download only (320 kB MP3)
featuring previously unreleased remix
Total playing time: 36.44 Minutes

Tracklist:
1. KING OF MY WORLD (Original Version)
2. KING OF MY WORLD (Adenoma RMX) by MC1R
3. KING OF MY WORLD (LAGNAF Mix) by Killing The DJ
4. KING OF MY WORLD (Our Banshee Remix) by Our Banshee
5. KING OF MY WORLD (Aesthetic Violence Remix) by Aesthetic Violence
6. KING OF MY WORLD (Graveyard Child Escape RMX) by Graveyard Child Escape
7. WAVES

Download: Right click HERE, "Save As...", save to your local hard drive.

All music on the E.P. is licensed under Creative Commons 3.0, so please share it with as many friends as you like.

A big THANK YOU goes to all the remixers who put time and effort into their work for your listening pleasure!

If you like what you hear, plase visit us on Facebook and hit the "Like" to keep in touch and don't miss the latest gossip!

ReverbNation

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 09:48:28 GMT

So yeah, we're on ReverbNation now. We weren't really in a hurry to get there, but once we've played around with it for a while, we decided: this is one sexy widget!

If you want this on your page too, you can very easily go here and grab the embed code. Give it a try and show some love for your favorite unknown band!

So you know:

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 11:47:06 GMT

We're working on a bunch of stuff. We started scoring a short film, but we're still in an early experimenting stage. We started a couple of new songs from scratch to distract ourselves from the unfinished ones we're currently stuck with. That's pretty much what's happening in the FTANNG-camp these days. We completely forgot to prepare the remix kit for WAVES that we've wanted to unleash a while ago already. But it will come. Just like the stickers. Promise!

Oh Astoria!

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 02:35:00 GMT

Back to business. As we mentioned, we've put our music on hold for a few weeks to work on something completely different: designing sounds and rehearsing for a stage production of Jura Soyfer's political farce "Astoria". What is it all about?

Kilian Hupka, homeless, broke and unemployed, is unsuccessfully trying to get arrested and spend the winter in a heated cell with three meals a day. Instead he meets Countess Buckelburg-Marasquino looking for a very special birthday gift for her demented husband, a former Minister of Foreign Affairs: she wants to buy a country to put her husband back into office. Since she can't find a suitable state in time and doesn't want to show up empty handed, Hupka talks her into hiring her as a first citizen to be given to the Count in advance.

When the stock market suddenly crashes, leaving the countess without the money needed to buy and run a country, Hupka - who can't afford to be put back on the cold streets again - comes up with a daring plan: together they invent the fictional State of Astoria. Accompanied by a series of misunderstandings as well as convincing marketing stunts, Astrorian oil drilling stocks start skyrocketing and non-existent Astoria soon becomes the Promised Land.

But with all the money and glamour come a lot of problems. Hupka finds himself being stalked by press members as well as a seductive Russian spy and has to make best use of his loose mouth to keep the big lie that is Astoria from being exposed. Moreover, tens of thousands of people demand Astorian citizenship, forcing Hupka to come up with increasingly absurd immigration policies. It doesn't take long until things start spinning out of control and Hupka comes close to losing his mind.

When we first came across "Astoria" and read through it, we couldn't believe it was written in the early 1920s already. The play bursts of sheer, biting wit and has characters just like straight from a Marx Brothers movie but at the same time addresses issues that you can hear about on the news each night in 2011. It took only a couple of tweaks to make it sound like it was written last week. So when offered to be a part of the production, we couldn't resist.

We have witnessed the play come to life since then, from early planning stages to table readings to first dress rehearsals. We've seen written pages turn to flesh, blood and soul and expericenced a lot of magic. And we've bowed down to the unique, exact vision of director Klemens Gindl who is the heart and mind behind all of this. But what exactly are we doing?

Since "Astoria" is a minimum budget enterprise that is mainly crowd-funded, there is hardly any (as in: no) money to build the stage sets that would be needed to make a convincing impression of the locales where scenes are taking place at. A possible solution is to create those sets acoustically which is what we were asked to do. The aim was to create acoustic backdrops simulating certain room atmospheres as well as sonic "events" for the actors to interact with. All of it has to be pulled off in a live situation. A great way for us to get out of the studio for once.

Now, Astoria needs you! Pulling off a stage production, no matter how down-to-earth minimalist you keep it, costs you money. To raise the funds needed to bring "Astoria" to life, all cast and crew members have been trying to sell Astorian Government Bonds to everyone they knew and their grandmothers. That way we raised some money to cover for stage props and a local advertisment campaign. But still, Astoria is broke. That's why we decided to reach out to all of you beautfiul people all over the world to make you a fantastic one-time limited offer. You will as of now be able to order Astorian Government Bonds as well as a very special Astoria Supporters Package and help the cast and crew of Astoria not to end up highly in-debt. Here's the deal:

For a donation of 6 Euro (incl. WORLDWIDE SHIPPING), you will receive your personal Astorian Government Bond signed by Dorian and Pee Wee. After donating, send an email to FTANNG (at) weareftanng (dot) com including your name and adress.
DONATE 6.00 EURO NOW

For a donation of 13 Euro (incl. WORLDWIDE SHIPPING), you will receive this:

ASTORIA SUPPORTERS PACKAGE
(limited to 20)

1 "Astoria" Corporate Identity Poster signed by the entire cast and crew including yours truly
4 trading cards featuring the main characters of "Astoria"
3 stickers
1 badge "Citizen Of Astoria"
1 Astorian Government Bond signed by Dorian and Pee Wee

DONATE 13.00 EURO NOW!

Since it would be too expensive to ship the posters rolled, we unfortunately have to fold them in the middle. We promise to do this very tenderly. After donating, send an email to FTANNG (at) weareftanng (dot) com including your name and adress.

If you live near Bochum and want to attend, please RSVP by dropping a line on the respective Facebook event for July 2nd or 3rd. Tickets are free but seats might run out soon so be quick.
So there. You know what you have to do, don't you? If you are left with any questions regarding this, just drop us a line! See you in Astoria!

Another version of the truth

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 02:25:00 GMT

If you have been following this blog in the past few months, you might have come across a statement from Dorian concerning his departure from his former band. It was released as a direct response to a public statement made by the only remaining founding member which distorted quite a couple of facts and made us realize that we had to break our silence and stand up to set some things straight that could not be left unaddressed. You might be aware that before that day we actually kept shut when asked why Dorian left the band, as there were a lot of personal issues involved that we felt didn’t belong to the public. So we did that and thought that would do to let the past rest in peace once and for all.

You can only start to imagine how disturbing it was for us to realize that a bunch of German music press outlets published almost identically sounding news features on their websites today which announced the release of a new album of Dorian’s former band later this year. We’re not getting into details here but we were slightly puzzled to read not only once, but three times in three different places that Dorian basically got kicked from his band for being a shitty singer. Now as much as everyone is entitled to their own opinion concerning Dorian’s singing abilities, this is just not the way things were happening back then, and once more, this is something we just can’t leave unaddressed.

We are very proud that we have managed to keep up to a certain degree of transparency in our affairs. There will always be the occasional surprise, but we are always concerned to let you know what’s happening behind our scenes and not bullshit you with PR rhetoric. But as much as we care to be honest with you, please do not expect us to get into anything even remotely resembling a mud fight and make ourselves look like monkeys throwing shit at each other. As much as we have a feeling someone’s trying to hitch a ride on our backs, we’re not going down there. Fuck you!

We could have pulled one of the options German press law provides us with to appropriately react to this and make everyone including ourselves look like a bunch of jerks. We’re not into that idea at all. What we did instead was get in touch with those people responsible for the publishing of said news feature and ask them to go to our blog and acknowledge our point of view on the subject matter of Dorian’s departure from his former band. They did and reacted by re-editing their texts or pulling them offline. We were offered to make a counter statement which we thankfully denied as we do not have anything else to say to this. We find it highly embarrassing to have to waste our spare time doing all of this at all and we do not wish to get deeper into it.

We’re not giving away any names here but please do not mistake this with us trying to silence someone or anything. What we are trying to do here is keep the noise as low as possible as this is the Internet and foul news tends to spread faster than you could look. This is basically because a frighteningly high amount of people involved in press outlets seem to have forgotten about the obviously lost art of back-checking facts and tend to copy-and-paste whatever comes in disguised as “news” from so-called press agencies. We have stopped being bothered by people misspelling our band name or song titles a relatively long time ago, as it is embarrassing them more than us. But this morning we couldn’t help but react. We are not going to tolerate anyone or their press agency talking shit about anyone of us for the sake of generating interest in whatever the fuck he or she is doing right now. At the same time, we are deeply concerned how easy it has become to spread what we would call an in-your-face-insult and have it actually published by press without any further editorial comment. This not only puts our credibility at stake but theirs as people actually tend to believe what they read on whatever they consider their trusted source of information.

Concerning his new, yet unreleased motion picture “Promises Written In Water”, filmmaker Vincent Gallo stated that he chose to disconnect from the “low frequency exchange required” when you’re dealing with “the press” or the media in general. Although both of us are/have been working in different press institutions, we can’t help but whole-heartedly agree. Even though all the people we had to get in touch with today were very friendly, they know that we know they didn’t do their homework. But the real plague here seems to be a certain press agency that allows itself to throw shit on someone else to gain attention. This is just utterly pathetic and you should be ashamed of yourselves. As an outside representative of the band you should consider their upcoming musical output strong enough to stand out for itself, which you obviously don’t as you have to drag us into this to make your client look good. We’re not blaming you since we know that working in public relations is the muddiest of work, but please just leave us the fuck out of it.

We were actually going to tell you today how you can support Astoria with the purchase of a great package, but this has got to wait until tomorrow as we basically wasted all our spare time today cleaning up this very mess. We are very sorry about this and hope you understand our point of view. This had to be dealt with, and we wanted to deal with it with our dignity left intact. We can only hope to have succeeded with this.

FTANNG!
Dorian Deveraux / Pee Wee Vignold

God Bless You And Astoria!

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 21:35:00 GMT

Where have we been? Well, one day back in April this incredibly talented friend of ours called us up to ask whether we could help him out with his theater production of Jura Soyfer's Astoria. Although we're not really theater folk (you rather find us at the movies), it was an intriguing offer that we just couldn't resist. The job sounded like a no-brainer at first but quickly became very challenging for a multitude of reasons.

What we were asked to do is create acoustic backdrops and sound effects for nine stage scenes. No music, just an audible setting to let people know where the action is taking place since this is a cround-funded production with hardly any money. Everyone involved in the production is working for free on their free time and everyone is really dedicated to make it the best we can.

Astoria will be premiered in Bochum, Germany on July 2nd with another show on July 3rd. There will be no entrance fee, but you can support the production by either investing in Astorian Government Bonds or posters which will be signed by the whole cast and us. We're currently figuring out what's the best way to ship those worldwide (in case anyone of you cares to help) and will be back soon with another blog. What we can tell you is that the Astorian Government Bonds are printed on thick high quality paper, look great if framed, will be signed by Dorian and Pee Wee and might become a highly sought after collectors item one day.

This was just to let you know what's going on. Please raise a hand in the comment box if you are interested in supporting Astoria with the purchase of an Astorian Government Bond so we can find out what the actual postage fee will amount to. More details soon!

GOD BLESS YOU AND ASTORIA!

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out now: WAVES

Wed, 25 May 2011 19:15:00 GMT

You can as of now go and grab your copy of our new single WAVES for free right here. We've added the 320 kbps MP3 and 16bit WAV, HD-Audio will follow soon. Enjoy!

PYOP

Sat, 21 May 2011 03:30:00 GMT

We couldn't help but notice that there seems to be a surprisingly high demand in our poster. We were actually a bit surprised that a picture of a poster of us hugging results in more Facebook likes and comments than the announcement of a new song, but we guess this is just how things work. What can we say, we'd love to send those posters to the homes of every single one of you, but...

The thing is: currently there is only one of these beauties. It was actually never meant to go public in the first place. What eventually became this poster started off as one of those immature "haha dude, watch this"-things we sometimes do to make each other laugh and has its roots in Pee Wee having sort of an unhealthy obsession with a certain movie called "The Brown Bunny" by the incredible Vincent Gallo which he watched as many times as you need to write an in-depth analysis along with a complete 24 pg. shot list.

Long story short: we hereby pronounce today PRINT YOUR OWN POSTER DAY! All you have to do is...

1. Download the poster as a film poster size PDF (300 dpi) 101 MB
2. Save it to a thumb drive
3. Hit up the Yellow Pages and find a local print shop
4. Visit that print shop and have your poster printed. Could take a day or two.
5. Don't pay more than 15 Euro for a film poster size color print! (We paid 11,29 Euro at a local Campus print shop)
6. Get your FTANNG! on and don't forget to take a picture!

That's pretty much the best we can do for you guys. Neither do we have the money to print a batch of those and have them transported all across the globe, nor do we own any rights to the artwork and can only hope that Mr. Gallo - if he ever happens to stumble across this, which might happen as the Internet is pretty small - understands that this poster happend out of love and admiration for his movie, but we never meant to rip him off in any way.

That said, have a great time everybody and let us know where you put those!

WWAFPD?

Mon, 16 May 2011 03:30:00 GMT
We mentioned before that we have been euphorically eyeing the concept of releasing music for free long before we could ever guess that we would one day end up producing and releasing music as FTANNG! together. Together with Tim we have spent countless hours, often until late at night, discussing various ideas how to make your music heard in a world full of noise where everything is available for free and everyone wants your attention. Back then, Tim was considering releasing the sophomore album of his band SCHULDT to The Pirate Bay instead of going for a local physical release with a record company, which unfortunately never happened as they disbanded.
Things started to get interesting in late 2007 and throughout 2008, obviously mostly due to Trent Reznor departing from Interscope Records and pulling a series of rather interesting, often risky stunts to figure out what else you can do but put a plastic disc in the stores. Even though you’re probably right to believe that he couldn’t have succeeded with any of those without the loyal fan base he gathered over almost two decades using quite some effort of the music industry he has now turned his back on, he still remains a landmark in an otherwise mostly undiscovered territory which has yet to be mapped out. Above stating an example of how to make efficient use of the Internet, he has provided the public with priceless insight, ranging from figures proving that he is on to something to detailed advice created from his recent experiences as an indie artist.

Still, if you’re running what is basically a no budget enterprise like yours truely, you don’t always have the money at hand to set up an elaborate Alternative Reality Game to seamlessly tie in with your latest album. As inspiring as it was and as much as you could learn from the models and ideas that Reznor publicly experimented with to make his music heard (and bought), most of it is just not something you can easily reproduce as the local no name band. For example, three years ago Topspin wouldn’t even deal with you if you hadn’t been in a studio with Dave Grohl. But the message was clear: under certain circumstances people would still buy your music after you made it available for free.

Since then, a lot of interesting things have been said and done, from Billy Corgan pronouncing the album dead (and sounding like he meant it) to, quite contrary, Josh Freese coming up with insanely funny album package deals to Bob Lefsetz speaking uncomfortable truths about the music business on an almost daily basis. None of us really remembers when exactly she actually appeared on our screens, but one name we kept and kept coming back to happened to be Amanda Palmer. We didn’t know much about her except she played in that weird band that took us a while to finally understand and inhibited a somewhat awkwardly outstanding slot on the Roadrunner Records artist roster amongst the likes of Slipknot or Devil Driver before she publicly demanded to be let go. She eventually was and then blossomed to what we can only describe as the most in-touch artist of the present age and the patron saint of DIY artists.

Even though we wouldn’t consider ourselves outright fans of her music (acknowledging that the whole Evelyn Evelyn act was simply brilliant and that Pee Wee once broke into tears listening to “Leeds United” on his iPod in a packed subway wagon early in the morning), we look up to Amanda as the textbook example of how to govern yourself as a recording artist and stay out of the dependencies that come with sticking to traditional structures, and even though we’re light years away from becoming a musical entity that would be remotely comparable to what she achieved, you can say, without a doubt, that she has been the prime source of inspiration for us and deserves some serious praise.

More than once Amanda has demonstrated that an artist or a band is only as relevant as their fans think they are. She didn’t need a record company to buy her expensive fancy magazine cover stories to make it seem like she’s happening, she just was. You didn’t see her face on the billboards, yet she was everywhere on the Internet. It was her home and she invited everyone to join the party. They all came.

When other artists considered themselves top notch for having their management feed updates to their MySpace once a week, @amandapalmer already was the Queen of Twitter. She owned it back then and still does. If you have been following her, you know what we’re talking about. From ticket giveaways to getting drunk and creating #LOFNOTC (along with the legendary tag line “There is nothing for you out there”) to her various Ninja activities, she has been pushing the envelope 140 characters at a time for the last couple of years. Whatever you can do on Twitter, she probably did it first (which basically makes her the ultimate boss: Your Dad), and it doesn’t even end here.

Since Roadrunner kindly dropped her, she has been successfully employing Bandcamp to release her music (something we haven’t gotten around to do yet but are looking forward to) and proven that record companies have basically become useless once you’re willing to put some effort in the release. With them, it used to end when you were ready to hand over your master tapes to the company. Without them, this is just where it starts. If you’re coming straight from the comfort zone of a supposedly working band-label-relationship, this might sound ultimately terrifying to you. If you jump right in, you’ll soon discover it’s a whole new world of fun. This is something we experienced over the last six months, and it might be something we wouldn’t be experiencing at all without Amanda Palmer being such an encouraging and inspirational person to us.

You could argue that this very site probably wouldn’t have a blog as a core element without Amanda showing us what you can use it for. Her blogs provide you with deep insight of what it’s like to be her, and even though we’re still not reading every single post, it’s the simple idea of becoming a bit more transparent and accessible to your audience, to literally drop your pants and reach out to people, that we wanted to adapt. This is why we like to spend our Sundays writing elaborate essays on what it’s like to be us.

Still, we are very much oversimplifying the facts when we boil down Amanda Palmer’s influence on us to her expert use of the Internet. More accurately it’s her attitude mixed with her ability to connect with her audience by any means accessible to her. Limits don’t seem to exist for what she’s doing unless it’s her who sets them. She is fearless and doesn’t put up with any kind of shit. She taught us that we are the media. All that adding up to the fact that she’s an outstanding artist, she has consequently gained what you could consider one of the most loyal fellowships ever.

Summing this up, it’s really not a surprise that, whatever we do and whichever plans we lay out for ourselves, we keep coming back to one question: What would Amanda Palmer do? After that question, an answer always follows rather quickly. It might not always be the best of possible answers as the great AFP is nothing short of a full blown, highly tuned artist with years and years of experience in her working field and an excellent crew to make things happen while we are a bunch of dudes in a sand box, doing whatever we do. But so far each answer we came up with was good enough to put a smile on a few faces, including ours. Seriously, what more can you ask for?

So this is us bowing down to the amazing Amanda Palmer. There wouldn’t be any FTANNG! as you know it without what she has done before us. We can only dream to become anything like her once we’re grown-ups.

Thank you, Amanda Palmer, for being you as well as for being a constant source of inspiration to us. We love you and we would have totally broken you out of prison.

Amanda F. Palmer 2008, picture courtesy of Wikipedia.

Sneaking into forbidden places

Sun, 24 Apr 2011 02:10:00 GMT
We mentioned it before, but a huge chunk of the fun we have with FTANNG! results from the neverending challenge of finding out how the Internet works. How to reach people with what is given on the net, how to get your music on iTunes without a record company, how to survive outside of established structures, those were problems that were bothering us and finding solutions for those turned out to be just as much fun as writing the actual music. Now, after we got comfy on a bunch of different places all across the web, we thought it was time to take it to the next level. In another vain attempt to pretend we're "happening" we dicided to try and sneak into a club that is known to be well guarded: Wikipedia.

The set-up for this step had already been taken a while ago when we - bored, late at night and more jokingly than anything else - decided to add just a short paragraph about Dorian's departure from JoE, the existance of FTANNG! and the release of KING OF MY WORLD to the Jesus On Extasy Wikipedia page. This did not only give us first insight in rules and guidelines of Wikipedia article editing as well as in what's necessary to code such a page, it also turned out to lead people to our website that probably haven't heard of us before. More and more it became obvious to us that we had to expand.

If you have the slightest understanding of software coding, you will most likely be able to work yourself into editing minor changes in a Wikipedia article in far less than ten minutes. You hit the edit tab, take a look at the code and will pretty soon find out how formatting, linking to other pages or adding footnotes/references works. It's really not that difficult. Starting a page from scratch is another thing, though. You are expected to stick to extremely strict guidelines that are especially tough when it comes to the matter of "relevance" of a musical act.

Wikipedia has a checklist for bands to find out if they are relevant enough to be featured on the World's biggest online encyclopedia. This checklist mostly revolves around international chart entries, certified gold records, industry awards and all that stuff we really don't have to offer at the moment and probably never will. Still, we found the condition "Has been featured in multiple non-trivial published works in reliable and reputable media" to be a hole in the fence big enough for us to possibly slip through since we were lucky enough to be featured in multiple non-trivial published works in reliable and reputable media from Belgium, Germany and the UK when KOWM came out.

After a day of writing, coding, editing, formatting, checking, rearranging we uploaded our page entry and were about fifteen minutes later flagged for "speedy deletion" with a very friendly "don't say we didn't warn you" attached. So there, the gatekeepers had us within their sights and found that we were too obscure for them. What could be seen as a compliment in terms of "avoiding the mainstream" somehow bothered us as no one likes to be told to be irrelevant. We were left with two options: sitting and watching as our beautiful, neatly constructed page eventually disappeared without a trace or doing what they call "contest deletion". So we got in, said "Hello" and "thanks" and briefly pointed out that we were sort of associated with that other band (name withheld) that has a Wikipedia entry and have been internationally recognized by multiple fairly reputable media. Waiting. F5. Good night.

This morning we woke up to discover that the speedy delete request has been declined due to an existing "claim of importance". Heh! Our page is up and here to stay, and all we can say is: look Mom, we're on Wikipedia! Now all there is left to hope is that this supposed publicity stunt doesn't entirely kill off our hard-earned status as the obscure underground act from the web that only a handful of people have heard of yet, as we actually enjoy being that obscure band a lot. By the way, we added a picture of ourselves so you guys get a glimpse at what we look like these days.

As usual, we'd like to hear your thoughts.

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About FTANNG! (But Were Afraid to Ask)

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 05:15:00 GMT
We just gave in to another overrated social media craze and signed up with tumblr. A few weeks ago we polled if some of you were interested in doing a Q&A with us and since a couple of you were, we decided to give it a go. So here we go, the first FTANNG! FAN Q&A is open for submissions!

Head over to our tumblr and use the form to submit a question. You don't have to sign up with tumblr to submit a question, you can do so anonymously. Whether you post anonymously or not, we ask you to somehow identify yourself (e.g. by including a Facebook/Twitter link or else) or at least include a name to refer to you by. We're looking to make this a quality experience for everyone including ourselves and it's always nice to know who you are talking to. We're honestly looking forward to your questions!

So there: Ask FTANNG!

WAVES!

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 06:20:00 GMT
We said we didn't want to let you wait any longer. We meant it. Though the mix is still unfinished and the overall characteristics of the sound still might change, here is a full-length preview of WAVES for your listening pleasure.

WAVES (full-length preview) by FTANNG

We decided to disable the download button for the preview as we wanted you to be able to listen to it, share it, tweet it, blog it and so forth if you feel like it, but we wouldn't want an unfinished track to float around in your music libraries. So we're asking you to wait for the finalized, mastered version of the track that will 1.) sound much better 2.) be available for free in different resolutions, just as you would expect it for us. We know you could easily grab the audio off SoundCloud and put it anywhere you want, but we're asking you just to wait a few more days. If you can't wait to put it on your mobile device, you might want to check if there is a SoundCloud App for your phone.

We'd love to hear your comments. How do you like WAVES? How do you like the direction it is taking? Which is your favorite part? Is it what you expected after KING OF MY WORLD? Was it worth the wait?