Phonocratic Records

My house-making alter ego. Lives in his studio (”Grandmother’s House”) with his mate Jansson Da Cat, and the Grandmother On The Stoned Mountain. Likes cheese a lot. Any similarity with a Swedish comic might be intended… I have recorded one song with Anders Bengtsson under this name, and made several remix contributions. Sometime I might put out a housy album under this name.

A new Lost Shadow single, called The Problem With Democracy has been released today. This breathtaking take on politics marks the first song taken form the forthcoming Lost Shadow album, due for release in Autumn this year. I am very happy with this song, and I think that it is a good first taste of what will come on the next album. Also included on the single is the b-side Toltorpsdalen, as well as remixes by House Mouse and the Trance Line Project.

The single is available for download from Bandcamp. As usual, the radio version of the song is, of course, free. As you might have noticed earlier, it will not be possible to order this single in physical format (due to low demand for previous physical single releases). However, if you would like to have it on CD, buy the digital release on Bandcamp (it’s only €1), download it in a high-quality format, burn it to CD and print the PDF-cover that comes with the full version of the single release.

And in case you wonder why it took so long time, as the single was scheduled to be released earlier this month, we chose to reject the first two versions of the mastering, to get a superb experience of this new Lost Shadow material. Enjoy!

As observant visitors might have noticed, it is no longer possible to download all Lost Shadow songs for free at Last.fm. This is an intentional move from Phonocratic Records, where we instead hope to redirect our listeners to either Last.fm’s streaming services, or our new Lost Shadow music and store site at Bandcamp. Through our Bandcamp Store (and Last.fm) streaming of all Lost Shadow songs will still be available for free. Additionally, all Lost Shadow albums since 2006 will be available for free or cheap download from Bandcamp, where physical CDs also can be bought.

Why not free downloads?
Why are we making these changes? Well, it turns out that our experiment with free downloads and donations did not yield the effect we had hoped. Last year Phonocratic Records was run at personal economical loss, and we have no reason to expect that this will change in the near future without taking any action. Still, we believe that there is value in the music we make available, so we will try another marketing model, using downloads and micropayments. Last.fm does not serve this purpose very well, while Bandcamp turns out to be a great place to securely sell music downloads (and physical albums). It will still be possible to donate to Lost Shadow through the Store, but we suggest that our listeners instead download the high-quality music files from Bandcamp, and make the small micropayments there. Hey, 3 euros for a 12 song album is about as cheap as a cup of coffee! And it’s even cheaper than a beer!

Remaining free
A number of tracks will remain free. These are:

• Songs from albums released before 2006. These albums will not be made available through Bandcamp, and will therefore remain downloadable from Last.fm for free (still at only 128kps, though).
• All Lost Shadow singles, previous ones, and coming ones. However, only the lead tracks might be made available for free download in some instances. The singles will be downloadable as 128kps mp3 from Last.fm, or in a variety of  high-quality formats from Bandcamp. Regardless of format, the files will be free.
• Selected albums and songs, such as the “Age and Time” album released last year.

Also, free steaming of all songs is available from both Last.fm and Bandcamp.

No more physical singles
As mentioned at the release of the A Nuance of Future single, we will not continue to release singles in physical format. This is also part of the new strategy for Phonocratic Records. We feel both sad and excited about this decision. The good thing is that we can now focus on bringing you the best possible digital experience for the singles. Also, it should be noted that our albums will still be available in physical CD format, as well as in digital download form, and we do not plan to change that.

We hope that our listeners will be positive about these changes and that we’re putting the value back behind the music.

Today, Phonocratic Mobile is closed, after more than two and a half year serving Phonocratic Records mobile needs. Also, the old studio PowerMac G4 is thrown out, after acting strange for the last year. Instead, I have installed new studio hardware, allowing better recording quality, both in the actual studio and for mobile purposes. And parts of this new studio is also very much portable. From this date, all recordings done using this equipment will be referred to as recorded at Phonocratic Records, which once again becomes the only recording studio for the label. Phonocratic Mastering remains intact, as of now.

The first recordings with the new studio equipment was made this morning, and it sounds great! Soon instrumentals for the entire Lost Shadow collection due for release in November will be completed. Stay tuned for even greater sounds!

Welcome to the new Phonocratic Records site. As you might have noticed, the old site at phonocratic.tk haven’t had any updates this year. That’s because I have silently been moving here to phonocratic.com. At the same time I have shifted the whole site into a wordpress-based publishing system, which means that in the future I can focus on delivering content, not on writing HTML. I think this will turn out to be handy.

I also announce that the Lost Shadow forum will be taken down later this year. It has not been much of a success, and is mostly unused nowadays. As it will be possible to comment on every articles here, the forum’s role seems to have disappeared. I encourage you to discuss the news items posted on phonocratic.com. This site will also have an RSS-feed, so you can keep yourself up to date with Lost Shadow using your favorite RSS-reader.

This new site will focus on Lost Shadow, but also contain material from Avoid, House Mouse, Johan Bengtsson and The Alvedons. Most of the information that was found on the old site has been transferred here, feel free to contact me if there is something you’re missing!

I have also decided to make most of my music available from last.fm. Unfortunately, I cannot upload covers of other artists’ songs, but still there is more than ten albums available that you can download for free. If you like them, please consider a donation or to join the friends of Lost Shadow (can be done in the store).

In a few days a new single will be out, called Pirate Bay, to celebrate this new site. I will soon submit it to last.fm, and will tell you here when it is released. Until then, keep it up, and enjoy the new site!