Hello Friends,

Life has been trying for me lately. My dad has been hospitalized rather mysteriously since April 16th and has gone through a rollercoaster set of symptoms and diagnoses. Currently he is largely incomprehensible, unable to walk and in desperate need of Gall Bladder removal. If you consider your thoughts able to influence what happens in larger reality in any way (via any type of prayer, wish, burnt offering, shout at the sky, etc.) please take a moment for James Todd's wellness. Thank you.

Even though this weight has burdened me and my family rather significantly, i have managed to stay productive. I recently accepted and finished a track for a compilation called Exception A.M. - music for hangovers. The compilation will include my track entitled 'To See or not See Bee' and will be available on June 20th as you may have deduced by the picture above. There is also a release party in Chicago (i will not be in attendance unfortunately) associated on the same night, click the image for more details.

And finally, i've navigated the 'smert 2.0' labyrinth that is Facebook well enough to get a proper music profile on it. My page contains 100% fresh copy, though if you follow my myspace updates at all none of the information should strike you as wild, just entertaining and incredibly witty in a wry Germanic way. Check it out and become a fan by clicking here. I'm hoping it will allow an easier dialogue to happen via the comments and such the it is organized over there. Also the page has a section for reviews too... nice.

Oh a final note: Anyone that has been waiting for my album 'From Unity To Segmentation' to release on mp3 should bookmark this amazon page. It will finally be available for purchase on iTunes, Amazon.com and other digital retailers on June 9th!

Much love and thanks to all those who have shown their support, it has strengthened me these past few months.

Sincerely,
c. todd
phylum_sinter

!~-NOW AVAILBLE IN FLAC FORMAT-~!
JUNE 9th FOR the MP3/iTunes CROWD

click here to go to the purchase page!

Hi Friends,

My album is out now in FLAC(the preferred/higher quality format) - go grab it and let me know what you think!

I encourage all of you -- especially those among you with a severe slant towards exceptional experimental electronic music -- to nab and have a nice long listen to this album. It's taken me nearly 3 years to manifest in its current form.

Cheers to everyone that has supported and encouraged me to get to this point.  And remember what i mentioned: there's incentives to leaving some thoughtful feedback, primarily in the form of mysterious gifts.

Much love,
c. todd
phylum_sinter

Hello Friends,

Just a note that i've uploaded the Inter[mediate] EP from 2006 to the myspace page player -- partially for those new to my discography (protip: check discogs.com for a near-complete listing), but also i was listening to the album the other day and decided it was still a good album.

So yeah, check it and either reminisce or hear it for the first time with me.

Still ramping up the promotions/visibility re: my enpeg release. If you haven't seen the blog post yet with full details you can do that here. The gist -- release date is May 12th for those on the mailing list, and June 9th for the general public.

Also recently: pounded out a gross little rant that ties into the album a few days ago that can be read here. It reads as perhaps little more caffeine-induced and wild in hindsight, but stands true.

In the current: Work on the first of two EP's for MMR is nearly complete, it will be a 5 tracker.

As the Enpeg album and this MMR EP line up for public consumption, this summer continues to reveal itself as my most travelling, touring summer yet.

Exciting! Do you live in a city where what i do might be a good idea to do live? Still wanting some help from you guys on ideas for where (cities or venues in particular) to stop on tour -- Portland Oregon, Chicago and NYC are definites so far. Denver looks possible too.

Let me know!

Much love,
c. todd
phylum_sinter

Hello Friends,

Again i'm stuck grasping the mirror for insight into myself when i know damn well that a better reflection is seen by remembering all life has shown me (outside this body). 

Like many people, i grew up feeling more alone than with others, strikingly scared of the possibility of what others might have had in mind for myself and ceased to ever reveal my incredible designs that would have been well in their company. 

I isolated myself, i still isolate myself every day from something it seems. 

Somehow i've grown comfortable in this, and though i'd admit my grasp of communication's verbal limits might be a little better than average nonetheless i'm stuck in a pattern of making plenty of perfect masks for me, ones that deliver a very specific message that (although genuine) is blind to the big picture -- that thing i really am trying to express.

At the very beginning and very end of every day the same questions appear: did i follow my heart? -- what is in my heart anyway?  ...And damn the loving piss out of every single one of you that can do this better than me.  Hi i'm some kind of alien whose most basic of expressions are connected not to the body in which i inhabit but the mind in which is patterning everything everywhere all the time.

The core of knowing yearns to be revealed, somewhere behind that stupid, nearly invisible veil that chooses to ripple only when the most intimate of encounters blows through me and rapturous and true "ness" of everything drops the whole diorama as if it never existed for just a brief moment. 

That is noticing a most primal togetherness, one outside of petty criticisms or internal segmentation of any kind.

Yes, those are the moments and connections that i seek.  Yes, that breaking of my own model that leads me to believe i am not alone, that this shell is just a temporary and often painful test to see whether i'm capable of noticing anything other than myself in the long run or not.

'From Unity To Segmentation' is an extended meditation on this, focusing on the struggle to get some kind of perspective that is hyper-aware and outside of its own measuring capacity.  It is the idea that i know where i came from but forgot -- but know that someone here knows it... in fact, the whole thing rests on the belief that everyone knows it already somewhere inside them. 

Maybe it's not the first time this has been noticed.

The album is an expression of desperation and heady filth, the kind of thing that even if not a single person buys it but someday validates through all the classical stances, dsp routines and countless obscuring methods used to communicate things that are better barked at a sweatlodge i'll be happy to be known, that my lines will blur with yours for that brief moment if only by another part of this huge whole...

This huge struggling flailing blind and futile thing that has no idea how great and perfect it was to begin with.  Yes, i'm talking to you, life.

Just one of many, but one altogether someday.

disclaimer - the words here express but a passing glimpse and may or may not withstand the greatest of trials (time) but were deemed genuine at time of keyboard pounding (7:51am, April 23, 2009) and thus are for discussion and historical document more than any sort of ethos-founding.  But if you did build an ethos on any of this, i'd love you all the more for it.

DROPS PUBLIC JUNE 9TH!


Today has been a magnificent day. 

After more than 2 years of writing and development, in and out of hospitals (and minus at least one spleen) i can finally say that the work on 'From Unity To Segmentation' has come to fruition.

In the label's words:

The release page is now live, and you can hear samples of it by clicking here.

The album will be out for purchase via En:peg Digital and other digital retailers for $8.99 on May 12th (for n5md mailing list members). Public release date is June 9th.

Downloads will presumably cripple the internet (ha) when the purchase links go live... both on May 12th and AGAIN on June 9th when the entire row of DNS sameservers will explode as the world attempts to simultaneously go to the release page. Dream a little dream with me.

BONUS!  If you purchase it and let me know here i'll send you some stuff -- mysterious, awesome stuff.

Hello Friends,
I was slow to be convinced of the values of social networking, or keeping tabs of anything/one online.  For a long time i totally snarked on my friends for using facebook, twitter, even this very website.  Seemed like a veritable churn for stalkers and other unsavories.

Fast forward to 2009:  i'm still not convinced that myspace is 'a place for friends', that facebook's petitions and mounds of ad-laced-aplications are anything more than a good way to waste time feeling semi-productive, or that twitter amounts to much more than a way for me to peek in on my favorite underground superster's daily lives...

BUT I DO USE EVERY ONE OF THEM. 

~Albeit primarily to contact fans and collaborate, but i've managed to establish friendships with a few interesting folks along the way too :]

You too can follow the relentless madness of my internet stumblings:

Phylum Sinter @ Twitter --- generally a synopsis of my day can be seen there, though when i come across a sexy way to tweet (like yesterday's discovery of tweetdeck) i may flood the channel briefly.  If you see alot of nothing at myspace, chances are i've been tweeting about the smaller updates.

My blog thing, @ tumblr --- subtitled '~roots, branches, leaves', this site contains everything that has influenced me or originated from me.  Sometimes doodles get tossed up there, occasionally something resembling writing goes there.  NSFW now and then, but mostly family-friendly.

Soundcloud page --- when i first came across soundcloud, i thought it was going to be free forever.  It seemed like a great alternative to myspace (which sometimes really tears my music up while converting to the player's format).  As is i've hit the wall, but i might get a 'pro' account there if the usage warrants it.  Have a bunch of stuff i made with a nintendo ds on there primarily.

Feel free to add me all over the place!  There's a new homepage coming soon too... oh and while i'm here, i'll mention the MMR EP i'm working on will contain 5 songs total, and will be out at the end of May most likely.  Watch any/all of these pages for updates.

Wishing for more arms and minions to juggle internet-land with,
C. Todd
phylum_sinter

Hello Friends,

I'm happy to be able to announce the release of the Xynthetic Netlabel Compilation 'Second Statement' - Available for free download!  Press Release below:



"Second Statement" features 15 tracks from a variety of new and long-standing members of the Xynthetic family. click here to listen and download

The compilation features tracks from:

Amorph
Logical Disorder
Sascha Müller
Aphorism
Acrylic
Countered
Rafa Rabio
Suan
Carlos Tevez
Xyn
Craque
Collothen
Phylum Sinter
Fabrics
Dirty Fire Project

-_-_-_-

Click the links above, and let me know what you think!

Big Thanks from all those involved,
c. todd
phylum_sinter

Dear Friends,

Happy Full Moon Day - I hope you find a way to spend it writhing in some kind of excellent sweetness. 

Today i'm announcing the following:

1)  The 'From Unity To Segmentation' EP will be released soon Date TBA but should be sorted out soon. ***EDIT*** - Negotiations are still open.  Three possible homes, two digital/itunes/FLAC, one cd primarily... what would you prefer?

2)  I'll be releasing a 5 track EP on Middle Management Recordings, somewhere around May 25th - art, title, and tracklisting are being decided as my team of international jetsetting supermodels types this.

3)  Compilation tracks that i've written for many different labels have somehow voltron'd.  There are currently four separate compilations to be released in the coming weeks.  Right now 'Before We Melt', a collection put together by IVDT  has been released and is free to download - click the image at the top of this message to go to the release page.  The remaining compilations for Xynthetic, Soulseek Records, and Volume Voice will each get a blog post/bulletin when they go live.

4)  Work on the next LP 'Amongst Fauna and Wiring' for Tympanik Audio  is my biggest focus, with the aim being to have the recording completed and turned in by next month, which should mean a release not long after.  Remixers TBA!

That's it right now.  Let me know what you think!


With love,
c. todd
phylum_sinter

Hello Friends,

I've just uploaded a track from the completed, yet still unreleased EP 'From Unity To Segmentation'.  The track is titled Sedna_Demik.  Take a listen and let me know what you think!

This album is currently in Label-free limbo.  Since it took me so long to complete -- over 2 years -- i'd love to see it have some physical representation.  CD and Vinyl ideally but i'll settle for one of the two :)  The label it was to be originally set to be released on, Xynthetic Digital, will not be releasing it -- as they are set up to distribute online only.

So the long and short of it is i'm sending out demos for this completed EP.  I do have a pretty good idea of where it'll be released already, but it's still up for negotiaton.  If you know of a label that you think i'd fit well on drop me a line and i'll check it out!

Much love,
c. todd
phylum_sinter

Hello friends,

I'm writing today to ask for some feedback on a track in progress.  

There are currently two versions Glass Rust -- both unfinished but have two different attitudes going on.  The track is for my upcoming album for Tympanik Audio.  I'm going for the steampunk aesthetic for this album: that sense of baroque, iron technology and Jules Verne imagery (also: dirigibles aplenty) that would sit well in an alternate universe, akin to a very hyperactive, technology obsessed 19th century London.

Anyhow the track in question:  They're the two top tracks on my page/player right now... do you have a preference?  Are both directions failing to meet your satisfaction?  Let me know!

Messages directly to me, comments on my page or replies to this blog entry are all welcome and encouraged... you can help me finish this track :)

Take a listen and put your thoughts on the screen.

Much love,
c. todd