Since then, alot of stuff has been going on so be prepared for a big post with some answers to some FAQs I’ve been receiving.

How many people have downloaded “The Pursuit Continues”?

3000. I never would have expected that when I released the cd. I guess it just goes to show that putting it out there for free was a good idea. I had my album featured on many websites where the cd was warmly received by the website communities.

Have you had many reviews?

Yep, it’s been really great seeing people review my music. Doing a simple “google search” has found some reviews from all over the world. I had a review from some website in philadelphia where she states that she only listened to it casue of the band name!

I’ve also had some other reviews. Here is one from the The Stu Reid Experiement which also features a clever image.

I was also featured on 2 podcasts from The Brown Couch Of Leisure. You can listen to the first one here, and the second one here. The tracks featured were Villains and The Bank Robbery.

Also don’t forget the fantastic review my brother-in-law Stuart Grant did on the Turkish Grants In Bulgaria Blog.

Finally, someone also uploaded The Bank Robbery onto youtube!

Is there a new album, if so when?

I’d definately like to make another cd, and there definately will be a follow up to The Pursuit Continues. The question is when will I have time to record it. Well, unfortunately it won’t be happening anytime soon. I’d like to at least have some songs and rough recordings done by 2012.

Will your music change direction?

Yeah, I guess it will. There’s no point doing the same thing again. There’s a tonne of possibilities. I wouldn’t mind using some real drums, and real drummers. There’s also more chance that I’ll get other musicians to feature too, I think that would be more fun and add more to the creative pot. However I’d still like to keep some core Giraffe Incognito ingredients, I guess you’ll just have to wait and see.

Will you ever play live?

At the moment, no. In the future? Maybe but probably not. The best thing about making the cd was that I didn’t ever have to think about performing it live. Hell some Giraffe Incognito tunes would be rad live, but I just don’t have the time or resources (musos) to pull it off. If I was going to play live, it would probably be a collab of some sort and we wouldn’t be playing Giraffe Incognito tunes.

So the follow up album is not being rushed, and you’re not playing live, so what the hell are you doing with your time?

Ahh, well you see last year, during the recording of the album. I was only working full time (I was recording at night time and on weekends). Now, I’m back at university and still working full time. That’s where all my time has gone. I’ve also been told by alot by my friends and family that I should chill out a bit.

But surely you’re not just relaxing?

Well no, I’m also taking on design work as well. Just incase you didn’t know, I designed this website, my album art and also put my album up on the web in various places. I want to get better at this type of stuff, so I’m actively looking for new clients to take on. So if you’d like a website design, myspace design, wordpress theme, web banner, album art and basically anything else design related done then just let me know.

I have a website for my design stuff, it’s
http://william.rainbird.me

What? You have another website?

Yep, I made the decision to seperate my personal/design stuff with Giraffe Incognito. Giraffe Incognito is solely for the music and that is all. If you want to know what I (William) is doing, then check out this blog.

You can also find me on twitter.

Anything else?

Once again, thanks heaps to everyone who downloaded and listened to my cd. That’s why I made it. I’m really blessed with the reception I have received and never expected it. That’s why and why I will make another CD in the near future.

Other than that, stick around here for Giraffe Incognito news and also check out my personal blog.

Peace, William AKA Giraffe Incognito

Well I only printed 50 Digipak Copies, so if you want to grab one – please send me an email.

However, you can also download the album. I’m offering it under the pay-what-you-want- scheme.

You can download it for free, or pay $1000. I won’t lie to you – a $1000 dollars would be nice, but that’s not my aim. I put alot of effort into making this cd so I want YOU to listen to it. I don’t care if you don’t want to pay for it – in fact I actually encourage you not to.

October is my goal, and even though it’s already hit the fabled month – I still have until November to finish it yeah?

But, because I know you guys are waiting (the whole 4 of you who check my blog!), I’ve decided to give you a nice little treat for being so patient.

It’s my whole album, every song, in just under 2 minutes and 23 seconds! I will note, that the full album is 53 minutes. So if you think about it, you’re listening to some sort of percentage…

However I am not.

So for the last few weeks, I’ve been really getting into making my songs sound as best as I possibly can. This has been quite a timely process, as I’ve been real anal and am aiming to make all my songs stand alone.

I’ve had a go at EQing all my songs. This is something that engineers take 20 years to learn. So when I dived into the deep end I’ll be honest I didn’t really know what I was doing. I hit a few forums and got some advice.

Basically, EQing is making sure that there aren’t too many instruments in your mix clashing. E.g. you want to make sure the bass drum and the bass guitar sit really well together, like in a pocket. You also want to make sure that the frequencies that the lead guitar are using aren’t clashing with the vocal track.

Doesn’t really make sense does it? Well put it this way… You have made heaps of cupcakes, but you want them to sit together nicely. So you don’t just throw them all willy nilly into the box. Otherwise when people see the box they’ll be like “OMG, there are like cupcakes on top of one another and icing is like going everywhere”.

However, if you were to place the cupcakes nice and tidily into the box, you can open the box and people can see all the cupcakes in all their glory, and know exactly what each cupcake represents and how good it will taste.

If my music was a tray of cupcakes, I’d like it to taste pretty damn good. Get it?

First things first, how awesome is this picture! It was by a guy named Jan Oliehoek, and he’s done some really cool photo manipulation work – you can check out some more of his works here

Haven’t posted for a while. But hey – been busy getting this nasty little cd completed so you can hopefully get your dirty mits on it by the end of … september (realistically).

I’ve been awaiting feedback from several reliable sources and am now going to give my music to the mastering dudes for some more feedback, so that’s all starting to looking promising.

I’ve also started work on my album art, this is one of the main reasons I wanted to make a cd in the first place! So it’s been really fun playing around with ideas.

I don’t want to give anything away but here are some teasers – it will most likely be black and white, be a font lovers paradise and there will be hidden giraffes for you to find!

As for the title of the album – I haven’t chosen it yet – and no it will not be ‘the prototype’ (that’s what I wrote on the draft cd I gave to people!).

Have a good weekend.

Those posts mentioned above really show a great collection of album art. It’s a shame how this art has died away since music has mainly been assessed online. I love going through people’s ‘vinyl’ collection and staring at the album art printed onto a nice big sleeve. Some people say album art is dead, but I still make the album art show up on my computer when I listen to tunes. I even know people who will impulse buy albums just because they like the cover, without even listening to the music! So I still think it’s important to get good album art for your cd. If your album art is average, people will think your music is average and will most likely put your cd back in the rack and move on.

I decided to go through my collection and pick out my favourite album art, just to get some inspiration before I start on my own. Although the collections of album art on smashing magazine and abduzeedo have already done excellent posts on this, it was good to go through my own collection and pick out the album covers that I never seem to get sick of.

The list is in no particular order, in fact I went through my music collection, picked them out then randomized the list!

The Shins – Chutes Too Narrow

Air – Moon Safari

Bryan Scary & The Shredding Tears – Flight Of The Knife

Cold War Kids – Robbers & Cowards

Eels – Electro-Shock Blues

The Go! Team – Proof Of Youth

Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin III

Beck – Odelay

The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots

Pink Floyd – The Dark Side Of The Moon

Dr. Dog – East Beat

Eric Dolphy – Out To Lunch

Man Man – Rabbit Habits

Deerhoof – The Runners Four

Zero 7 – Simple Things

Modest Mouse – Good News For People Who Love Bad News

Beirut – Gulag Orkestar

The Herbaliser – Take London

Oh No! Oh My! – Oh No! Oh My!

The Rolling Stones – Let It Bleed

Elliot Smith – Figure 8

Spoon – Kill The Moonlight

The Beatles – Abbey Road

Sufjan Stevens – Come On Feel The Illinoise!

Radiohead – OK Computer

Franz Ferdinand – Tonight: Franz Ferdinand

Clogs – Lantern

Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend

Stars of the Lid – And Their Refinement of the Decline

Dappled Cities – Granddance

And last, but not least,
Spinal Tap – Smell The Glove

If you’re still eager to check out more album covers, then look no further than this website called Sleevage. It’s pretty much an awesome blog about design and music, focusing mainly on album art.

I particularly like their article on 10 Landmark Albums That Have Created Landmarks.

Have fun.

Pretty interesting to see my most popular words are don’t, even, just, like, please and growing. That’s along with the song titles of course!

Well it’s a cool site developed by Jonathan Feinberg that makes nice images based on text that you input. The way it makes the images is based on how frequent the word is.

So I thought, it’d be cool if it can generate a ‘Wordle’ based on your last.fm, for example artists with more plays would be bigger in the resulting ‘Wordle’ image. But that would involve copying your favourite artists’ name several times and can be a waste of time, so I’ve made it easier for you. Simply enter your last.fm username, choose what charts you want and then click go.

Note: Results will open in a new window, you then must copy the text and paste it into the ‘Wordle create’ textbox.

Warning: Last.fm users with high playcounts on their artists (for example 2000+ on some artists!) may take alot longer to load the results. Be patient!

New: You can now select top track charts!

I’m not the world’s best coder. So if anyone wants to help me make this work better, shoot me up an email!

araci

Damo_The_Bo

willbo27