It’s starting to get some very nice reviews:

“It seems Environmentalists everywhere now have a soundtrack.” Jenn Ashton, Rave On Studio and NXEW

“… expert compositions and some brillianly played instrumentation. This is an important album for all ears of our modern times, and a very enjoyable listen too.” Ryan Fletcher, host of ‘Melodies in Mind’, CJSF Radio

For those of you in Vancouver, we’ll be having a CD release party at The Railway Club on August 19th. I then do a bunch of shows at communities and ecovillages with my friends Dve Kytary before heading off back to the yurt. I’ll be touring the UK later in the year.

The album is available at itunes and all the other usual places, but it’s cheaper for you and better for me to buy it direct from my website. It’s available in digital and CD formats. The CD comes with a 16-page booklet of writings and some beautiful photographs of my yurt in the Spanish mountains, where the songs were written.

In Defence of the Wild has arrived!

The CDs are now available, and will be discounted until their official release date of 2nd Aug.

They come with a 16-page booklet of writings and a few images of my yurt, and are very beautiful (sounding great too!). They are selling pretty well already, so I’m excited to see what happens when the reviews and touring starts.

You can hear the whole album and order yours here.

Become a Padma dealer

Buy 5 copies at once and get them for just $10 Canadian each (that’s about £7.50). You can either club together with your friends and everyone gets them massively discounted, or try your hand as a dealer – sell them at the full retail price of $15 (or £12) each to people in your local scene and make some money!

This offer is NOT available on my site and is for people on my mailing list ONLY.

Drop me an email to padma@padmaland.com and I’ll hook you up with some class A merchandise

Other news

I’ll be touring Vancouver, the island (I’ve been invited to play the Coaltown festival in Nanaimo on BC day) and hopefully a couple of gulf islands before heading off to Europe in September. See the site for tour dates. I’m going to play as many communities and eco villages as possible, as well as a bunch of regular shows.

I was interviewed recently by Jenn Ashton of Rave On Studios. You can now read it on NxEW.

And I just found out that my album is going to be Album of the Week on Calon FM (a Welsh radio station) so pretty pleased about how things are going really.

I hope all is well in your world, and for those of you in the Vancouver area, catch you at a show soon!

Om shanti shanti shanti

Padma

The album now has its very own website!

Yes friends, there is now a dedicated In Defence of the Wild website, where you can stay up to date on all the happenings, as the album worms its way into the collective consciousness of the world.

And what’s more, it’s the go-to place for buying your copy! It’s available in collector-friendly CD format with a 16-page booklet, in dropcard format (the dropcard is made from 100% post-consumer paper and is embedded with wild flower seeds, so once you download your copy, you can bury the card and watch the flowers grow), and regular digital download.

Something for every taste, something for every pocket.

Head on over to indefenceofthewild.com to read reviews, watch interviews and videos, and hear the entire album.

The album is FINISHED!!!! It’s called ‘In Defence of the Wild’ FOR DEFINITE!!!

I tried mastering it myself but have in the end decided to send it to a pro with BIG SPEAKERS and a proper room.

Photo shoot is done. Video shoot is done. Dedicated website is in process (get a sneak peak here).

The cover of the album is finished too. It features a fantastic and amazing illustration of kung fu rabbits PROTECTING THEIR HOOD by the eccentric existentialist illustrator Rob Spittlehouse of Slightly Fox. Rob is currently sitting right in the middle of all the happenings on the streets of Athens. During the design phase I got emails saying things like “Sorry, couldn’t do much on this yesterday – riot police.”

One nice piece of news is that The Independent have decided to feature my blog on their home page! So, every time I write something, it gets a mention on their ‘Independent Minds’ section. Needless to say I am using this opportunity to RANT LIKE A NUTTER, and occasionally explain calmly and clearly that we should really organise a revolution in the not-too-distant future before the economy and the political system go tits up. Oops – too late!

‘Defence’ is due out in August, due to having a PILE of work to do on the promo side of things so that hopefully it will make a bit of noise on the music blogs and get some reviews in the right kinds of places.

This record will be coming out on BACKSTAGE VANCOUVER in Canada and TRILITHON RECORDS in the UK, but there will be no big bad marketing machine helping to give this album wings. It’s down to us. And YOU CAN HELP!!!

Please start to talk about this impending work of genius. On Facebook, on your blog, in your pub. When you storm Parliament to demand a change to this shoddy system, wearing nothing but a cock ring, as they are dragging you away, surrounded by TV cameras, scream out PADMA MADE ME DO IT!!!

And PLEASE join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/padmaland. It will help us book a better tour if we can fool people into believing that I am not a complete hermit.

Thanks gang.

Padma

The filming went pretty smoothly though:

Beautiful weather, beautiful room, did a nice live version of ‘Consumers of the World, Unite!’ complete with loop pedal, plus an interview for the EPK (electronic press kit).

I will of course be posting these when they are edited. Thanks to Josh Klaassen for the filming and post production, and Lauren for pulling this all together.

Since Saturday was cancelled I ended up spending much of the day uploading the album to Tunecore. That’s who I’m using to distribute the album digitally. They need the tracks in very specific formats – bit rates, sample rate, and all that malarky, which took a bit of getting my head around. And the files are pretty big and take a while to squeeze up through the pipes and into cyberspace. So that was a few hours, and I still haven’t finished!

I’m also working on layout of the album cover after receiving a totally excellent illustration from a friend in Athens (check out his other work at www.slightlyfox.com).

I have decided I will offer the album in both digital and CD formats, since feedback from various quarters strongly suggests that people who still buy music often buy it on CD.

For me personally, this is a bit of a compromise, since the environmental impact of CDs is bigger than digital only. Still, the packaging will all be from recycled sources, containing no plastic, and the inks used will be organic and non-toxic. So I have found ways to limit the impact at least, while at the same time giving the album a decent chance to get out there in the world and be listened to.

I am actually quite excited to be getting another CD out. It DOES feel different to be creating something physical with music on it, rather than just a bunch of ones and noughts floating around on the world wide web.

It’s quite a job, releasing your own album. I mean, being a musician is plenty of work in itself – maybe get a blister on your little finger, maybe get a blister on your thumb – but when you add all the other stuff it really mounts up.

It’s really mounting up at the moment. I’ve got an illustrator friend working on the album design, shooting videos next week (which means we’ve been having meetings to work out what to do and how to do it), photo shoot in the next couple of weeks (so I’ve just been out buying clothes and I’m gonna need a haircut I guess), researching physical and digital distribution options, building a website for the album, writing promo babble and press releases – I can see why record companies were invented.

Oh yes, and I’ve got a Canadian and a UK tour to organise too.

At the same time, I’m developing a new live set, to include my shiny new loop pedal, and probably a harmonica mic, so I’ve been playing about with that quite a bit.

I’ve also got an MA dissertation to get in for the end of May – with LOTS still to write!

And living in community means meetings and spending time with people – a community isn’t a building, it’s something people do. Friday night was spent eating nachos and houmous and talking about how we can reduce waste. The goal is to get it to zero and I LOVE being around people who want to try to achieve this. We are going to be constructing a dedicated recycling room soon. Someone raised the idea of making it out of recycled bottles and stuff, a la Earthship. So that’ll be cool!

Initiate headless chicken mode.