Designing the album artwork (let us know what you think)

Marc's first draft design of the 'Lost Days And Nights' album cover.

Hello all

The pic above is a rough draft for the ‘Lost Days And Nights’ album cover, we’re still sifting through the artwork  ideas and should hopefully make a final decision in a couple of weeks.

Originally the artwork was going to be handled by a local photographer/cartoonist called Alistair Murphy and our meetings with him were very fruitful with many ideas brainstormed, unfortunately other commitments got in the way and Alistair had to back down which was disappointing but we all understood he’s predicament.

With Alistair leaving  the project I (Marc) decided to take a crack at the artwork. I wanted to create an interesting theme where the design could look edgy yet simple. I had recently seen a film called a ‘Scanner Darkly’ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405296/ and loved the dark gritty comic book effect and felt some of our songs especially Coked Up Russians, Tied To Shadows and Apperception really identified with themes explored in the film. I decided to take pictures of the band and edit them to create a similar effect to the film. For the name of the band and the album title I decided to keep with the comic book theme and used speech boxes that should hopefully capture peoples eyes.

All comments and thoughts are very welcome

Have a good week

Marc (D.A)

Marc's first draft design of the 'Lost Days And Nights' album back cover .

Watford live gig/Album progress

DA Playing Watford Live 13th June 2009

As you’re probably aware by now, we have spent the best part of a year recording our debut album.   Because of the recording we’ve had to put gigs on hold to put the time into the album to make it as good as possible.

During the past twelve months we’ve been restricted to just a handful of unplugged gigs, and haven’t played live since recruiting Rob at the start of the year.  On Saturday we finally got back to doing what we love doing best, which is playing live. The gig was an acoustic set for the Watford Live! Festival, which is a series of events across Watford during June.  This is a great showcase of the best talent in music and the arts from the region, and we were very pleased to be asked to play. Interspersed between album preparations, we spent several weeks rehearsing and getting all the songs tight, and took the opportunity to play a few new songs in the set that we had been itching to play for a long time.

The sun was shining on the day and the crowd were enjoying both the music and the brilliant weather from the surrounds of the square.  Pete, who was doing a fine job of compering the St. Mary’s stage, was slightly surprised and impressed that Stee had driven down from the Download festival especially to play the show, and announced to the crowd the commitment to playing live. Having not played live for several months, it took us a few songs to get into our stride but once we rolled out crowd favourites Old Street and Alarm, there were a few who couldn’t help but move to the beat. We were also really happy with the crowds positive reaction to a new song called ‘On’, and hope those of you who haven’t heard it get to once we announce some live dates.

We’re happy to report that the album is 95% complete and that Shane is finishing off the last few mixes and then it’s off to the mastering engineer to make it sound even better. We hope to have the album available as a download via our website which is currently being developed and should be up in the next few months. The physical release of the album will be announced in the coming weeks so make sure you keep an eye on this blog and our myspace site: www.myspace.com/dearacetate

Thanks to those of you that came to the gig, have a great week.

Marc