Web of Mimicry

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UR: Telstar Digital download here


"Sail on O Ship of Fools... Give us the tools and we'll finish the job"

Though it’s not easy being part of a decaying music world that's bending itself into pretzel-shaped contortions to accommodate the moloch of globalism into its supposed higher angels of creativity, it's also not a new problem. We're definitely not the ones to put on the fake smiley-face and do a cheerleader dance of tech-sector goodwill and “cool buddy”-speak to secure our place among the electro-futurist migrants to a perpetually “coming soon” transhuman offworld of free stuff, or guilt-trip our listeners by an earthy campaign of monetary grievance, day after day, on ten social media accounts. But then, we've always been, and will remain, on the outside — of all of it. There are no illusions here, we owe the privilege of making music at this level to our listeners who support us, and to absolutely nothing else.

SC3 has refrained from taking your cash to compose romantic paeans to DIY nobility because you rightly expect better things from us. But since it can be missed that behind the wizard's curtain the "Band of Bands" is an utterly DIY operation from start to finish, and has been so since 1995, we might as well not contribute to hiding some basic operational facts.

Truth told, WoM and SC3 is actually a really extreme case of DIY:

From musical idea (composing, arranging) to musical execution (part writing, pedagogy, performance), from studio production (at professional studios for drum and studio-musician tracking and final mixing, and the private studio "Forking Paths" for all overdubbing and intensive production, with a mobile tracking unit), to manufacturing (we manufacture all our CDs and vinyls with various plants in the USA and Europe), to bringing our physical recordings to merch booths in your towns, all over the world, we get no support in any of that, from anyone, ever, besides you. Selling music (oh yeah, we didn't even mention the family-running of a 20-year-old mailorder business) is the only way SC3 has financed releases and maintained the massive productions involved in creating its music, and keeping everything at the right pedigree.

People are probably already pretty clear on the fact that SC3 is a little different than a few bros jumping in a van. And we'll save extrapolating the extent to which it is a different kind of beast for another time. But listeners will already know that full-length productions involving over 20 top notch musicians are a commonplace in SC3-land. If we do the math on the serious studio work that goes into each record, or take a moment to imagine the demand on resources such undertakings require, I don't think it will dispel the magic. Quite the contrary. It ought to trigger further wonderment… one might ask — how on earth…? — … well, take a look in the mirror, pilgrim. You made it possible when you bought our record.

It's not even close to being an exaggeration. No one can deny that for over 20 years SC3 has been living the visceral facts of this matter — if you're ever wondering who summoned the auditory changeling of SC3 into being, just take another look in the mirror.

Call us old-school, but among all the more annoying emergent forms of capital raising a band can resort to, we'd rather continue to depend upon proceeds from the music our listeners buy from us just because they LIKE it. That seems like a pretty simple deal. But let's not sugarcoat too much: there's NO WAY we can finance some big upcoming releases without your support.

In disclosure, proceeds from this and the next single will go directly towards financing the completion of Book of Souls: Folio B and a full length Holy Vehm album, both on deck for 2017!