The announcements regarding the release of our second album
'Codetalkers' were made in 2005, and I'm sure a number of you can
remember them for yourselves. The more astute of you out there can also
have hardly failed to notice that no such album was ever released.
If you want reasons why then you are probably asking the wrong person.
We worked hard at it for the months following the release of
'Soundtracks for Imaginary Movies' and came up with a wealth of new
material, some of which was progressed and some of which was not. That
which was was immediately set aside for release on 'Codetalkers' with a
view to it being polished and sequenced for a swift follow-up. The
remainder was reserved for development and inclusion on our planned
third album. Within a very short space of time indeed we had fifteen
tracks reserved as candidates for 'Codetalkers', most of which were
finished, we agreed.
The album never happened. Steven got busy at his job and never seemed to
be available and Greg unfortunately got extremely ill and was completely
out of action for a long period. The album stalled and never got going
again. Much was spoken of, but nothing was produced and the impetus
completely fell out of the entire project. By the start of this year it
seemed to me quite clear that the band had effectively dissolved and
that the tracks we had spent so much time on would sit on the shelf
indefinitely. I know that Steven was keen to press up CDs and make a
real release of them. Whilst I can commend his vision, I always felt
that it was financially dubious. The pressings for 'Soundtracks' cost us
a small fortune and Steven in particular lost money on that side of
things. My view was simpler; this is a hobby and we are never going to
be able to buy a yacht on the back of the proceeds from Systems Theory,
so why not get some web space, put up the tracks and let people have
them for nothing?
I put this to both Steven and Greg and got a fairly muted response from
them both. One retort was that 'real' reviewers would never touch that
kind of release and would only deal with real CDs. My opposing view was
that free tracks would get us a huge amount of publicity and could
easily be reviewed by people posting their ideas on the Internet. After
all, the number of paper published reviews we got were negligible
compared to the on-line reviews.
I kept up this point of view but seemed to be talking to myself. By mid
2007 it seemed plain that Greg was perhaps too ill and Steven too busy
to focus on the project any longer, so I put it to both that the tracks
for 'Codetalkers' and its follow-up 'Overful Noise Cascade' should be
put on the web for the free access of anyone who wanted them. This is
what has now happened.
--
Mike Dickson - M400 #996
The Official Cynic of Streetly Electronics
Streetly Sample Library
http://www.mikedickson.org.uk/tron