#185 - 13th October 2024 - The bunny is dead. Long live new 💩.

I saw it coming. And interestingly, right in the same week when I wanted to call it quits, the singer I worked with wrote me a letter, stating she would not identify with the project anymore and that our working styles were too different.

So these lines are most of all a reminder to myself. Just to give the future me a chance to look with sufficient detail in the past when new developments require perspective.

When we formed the duo in September 2023, I was quite clear about what I would want and what I would not want.

a serious artistic endeavour, aimed at playing live shows and becoming a touring band.
the development of an artistic concept, including music but also visuals.
a duo that could get support from hired guns for playing live gigs.
an ambitious roadmap. I had enough tracks ready and aimed at an EP release by May/June 2024, so we could play local gigs in the second half of the year and try to apply for smaller festivals for the time after.

What I was missing and were I could not compromise with what I got instead:

ambition and seriousness: I always struggled with the idea of setting goals and not reaching them without any obvious good reason. If the goal is to play live, and playing live means someone has to book you, and that someone is likely driven by economic factors like „how many guests does a band bring?“, then being able to bring guests is helpful. Promotion increases the chance of doing so. This logical chain makes a for a good starting point for a sequence of activities to make progress towards mentioned goal. If almost no action is taken, goals will not be reached.
elbow grease: a band with an ambition has a lot of ground to cover. Production, Marketing & Coms, Sales, Logistics, HR, Legal - from ideation, to make vs buy decisions, to execution and improvement afterwards. It‘s an enterprise after all. This needs time, commitment, willingness and a certain sense of entrepreneurial getting shit done attitude.
artistic vision: it‘s a constant struggle. In the most positive sense of course. Hunting the best idea without even knowing what best really means. Art is fluent, transitory, volatile, dissipating. It‘s rarely compromise and should most certainly not be driven by the opinion of people who happen to be close. You can only formulate and express art for yourself and then see if it finds an audience.
feedback: … and in the context of a duo, it‘s super difficult to do this mostly alone, empty canvas, no feedback, especially if the final result is supposed to work for all parties. Constantly offering new ideas and not getting actual feedback e.g. on whether or not something works for the joint vision, is cumbersome.
reliability: When I say that I‘ll do something, I give my best to actually do it. I expect the same from my partner musicians.

Retrospectively: I can be worked up and have a tendency to manage when jointly agreed things don‘t work. People with differing working ethics my find this irritating. Not sure how to react in these situations in the future.

The release with the seven tracks we finished will release end of October.

Off to new shit! 💩