This blog took an intentional hiatus from posting any Gotye related news owing to its reluctance to be confused with some kind of raving fan blog.

Anyway, I’ve been in contact with Lucky Number Music over in the UK about their plans for the release of Wally’s material in Europe. There have been many rumours about new tracklists, EPs and singles but no concrete data that I’ve seen yet, so here’s the deal.

Hearts a Mess (7″ / download)

Will be released 26th May 2008.

Some new remixes have been commissioned which will back up the release. Here’s the tracklist:

1. Hearts a Mess (radio edit)
2. Hearts a Mess (Lull edit) – download
3. Hearts a Mess (Ocelot remix) – download
   (released on digital download only)

Learnalilgivinanlovin (7″ / download)

This will be the second single in the UK and will see release on the 11th August 2008

Tracklist unknown

Like Drawing Blood (album)

Formats will include CD, vinyl and digital download

Release dates:

• UK: 19th August, 2008
• Japan: 23rd July, 2008
• Belgium: 23rd May, 2008
• Rest of Europe TBC

Interestingly, the tracklist is changed slightly (subject to change, etc)

1. Like Drawing Blood
2. The Only Way
3. Hearts a Mess
4. Coming Back
5. Thanks for Your Time
6. Learnalilgivinanlovin
7. Puzzle With a Piece Missing
8. The Only Thing I Know (new mix, track originally from Boardface)
9. Seven Hours With a Backseat Driver
10. Night Drive
11. Worn Out Blues

Yes, that’s right: A Distinctive Sound will not be on the album.

I haven’t put on my reporter hat in a while, having not anything unique or interesting to add to an already well-catered field. But seeing I haven’t seen this news announced anywhere else…

Gotye has inked a deal with a UK label by the name of Lucky Number. Details at this point are limited to a fairly unsubstantial press release, as reproduced here:

Gotye is our new signing. Gotye is a young Australian fellow named Wally De Backer who makes the most wonderful music in his bedroom. Wally told us that in Australia they pronounce Gotye as “gore-ti-yeah”, using that inimitably dry and elongated sound they call an “accent”! Wally can say that because he was born in Belgium (and he speaks English good). Parties from overseas wishing to “name-check” Wally’s musical moniker should employ a complex system of pops and clicks, or alternatively, engage in a series of hand symbols that represent the following character: §.

We will be releasing Wally’s album in 2008 so you will be hearing a whole lot more about him soon. Needless to say he is, quite frankly, one of the most ridiculously talented people we have ever had the enormous pleasure (and luck) to meet. It took us 18 months and many a horrendous phone bill to sign this young man and during that time his Australian career went like this: record album in bedroom, release said album on his own label with no help, album tracks get played and championed by Triple J radio, word-of-mouth spreads, wins the AMP Award for outstanding potential (like our Mercury Award), sells some more records, goes on tour with his mini-orchestra, sells more records, gets nominated for 5 (yes 5!) Australian Recording Industry (ARIA) Awards and then, last month, only goes and wins the big one – the ARIA for Best Male. Now, that’s a good story don’t you think!?!

It seems that they are already at work promoting the upcoming release, having uploaded a full-length stream of the Hearts a Mess radio edit to the Gotye Last.FM page, which is curiously tagged under the name “Heart’s a Mess EP”. Whether this is a real upcoming release or not is yet to be seen – no details seem to have been released. But if there really is an EP on its way, that means extra tracks – which means good!

One tidbit of interest: I can say that Wally has revealed to me that there will be a new, remixed version of The Only Thing I Know released in the UK (possibly on the album itself). If you’ve ever found yourself wishing the Boardface version had a little more punch to it, this will be interesting news to your ears! Allegedly Wally did the mix with Franc Tetaz (who mixed and mastered Like Drawing Blood)

At any rate, one thing seems certain: UK residents (and possibly the rest of Europe) can look forward to an inundation of messy hearts and distinctive sounds very soon!

This is kind of a tail-end to my original post about my 3AM remix of Gotye’s Hearts a Mess. I just found a couple of early demos of the track by accident and decided there were elements buried amongst them that I kind of liked, so I’m posting them here so they don’t get completely lost. I guess I’m kind of taking a page from Tim’s book here.

Warning: these are rough. Basically, when I’m demoing ideas for a remix I perform the whole thing live to my hard disk with a keyboard and mouse in realtime (I used Audiomulch, if you’re wondering). There are plenty of mistakes to be heard.

First I start playing around with ideas for chords and textures for a remix. All of the drum sounds are hastily sourced from my stock repository of samples I use to get things going. I apparently hadn’t quite worked out what vibe I wanted at this point.

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The next day I think Carly and I were moving house. Somehow during the course of this I found time to mutate the mix into this. Don’t be deceived by the fact that the first minute sounds fairly similar to the way it is now: it’s pretty different.

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From this point onwards it fairly rapidly became what it is now, but they’re the two early working demos that I turned out.

Again, thanks to everyone who gave feedback while I was playing around with these.

Update 27/06: This post has been updated with confirmed information

Well, my referrer logs indicate that the audience is getting anxious: they’re beginning to wonder what is going be on this new Gotye remixes and covers album? And just who is doing the reworkings?

Let’s not draw out the suspense too much, eh? Here’s the tracklist for your anticipatory glee:

1. Joe Hardy – Hearts A Mess (3AM remix)
2. Karnivool – The Only Way (cover)
3. ENS – Puzzle With A Piece Missing (remix)
4. DLake – Hearts A Mess (Electro-Baltimore Club remix)
5. Faux Pas – Get Acquainted (A Distinctive Sound remix)
6. Bass Kleph – Learnalilgivinanlovin (That’ll Learn ‘Em remix)
7. Bitrok – Thanks For Your Time (remix)
8. Infusion – The Only Thing I Know (remix)
9. Duosseudo – Hearts A Mess (remix)
10. Rocky Lolo – Seven Hours With A Backseat Driver (Way Back When remix)
11. King Charlie – Out Of My Mind (Oceans of Dub remix)
12. Velure – Puzzle With A Piece Missing (cover/remix)
13. Inga Liljestrom – Coming Back (cover)
14. Fourth Floor Collapse – Worn Out (Worn Out Blues cover/remix)

• The CD’s new release date is July 15
• It will be released to iTunes exclusively on July 8.

Cool!

Given I just made the terrifying discovery that it got airplay on Triple J a couple of days ago, I suppose it’s safe to assume that the cat is out of the bag and that I’m OK to blog about it.

Admittedly, secrecy was poorly maintained to say the least, but nonetheless I’m now officially pleased to announce the existence of my 3AM Remix of Gotye’s excellent song, Heart’s A Mess. Here’s the 20 second snippet I posted a while back:

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The remix was an entirely unexpected project, both for myself and Gotye (aka Wally de Backer), but one thing has lead to another and it now seems that it will appear on the next Gotye LP, a remixes and covers compilation scheduled for release in July entitled Mixed Blood. You can read many different announcements about this.

In conjunction with making my own announcement of the remix, I would like to say thankyou to Wally, who offered phenomenally helpful advice and generous amounts of his time to see it through to completion, and to my brother Michael who inspired the project in the first place. Also many thanks are also due to Janet, Colin, Jatin, Yimmy, (the long suffering) Camilla and far above all, the ever-awesome Carly. Thanks also to Michael Morrow for helping out with some details in the mix engineering.

Briefly about the track for those interested: most of the sounds were created and programmed in Audiomulch, following which I transferred everything across to Pro Tools for additional production and mixing. Wally played some brushes on it early one morning while we were playing with the song, and Michael added some polish.

If you’ve just surfed in after hearing it, I’d love to hear what you think of the track. Feel free to drop me an e-mail (link on the right hand side) or leave a comment.

And don’t forget to buy a copy of Mixed Blood when it hits stores! I for one can’t wait to get mine. To sate your appetite for the time being, go listen to the very cool ENS remix of Puzzle With A Piece Missing on the Gotye myspace.

Update: the Mixed Blood track list has been posted.

Update: if you’re here looking for info on my Gotye remix, check out this article: 3AM Remix of Heart’s A Mess

Gotye has announced his first Australian national tour with his mini orchestra, supported by Mountains in the Sky.

Dates are available on his official news release.

See you there!

what has Joe been up to for the last month? here’s a teaser:

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More to come…