A three-part update

Ouch, haven't posted anything here for a while... Been busy. I mean it, I'm not just making up excuses - had to work a lot (I actually have a day job that pays the bills and funds the arty farty stuff), rehearse with the bands, kill a bunch dragons in Skyrim, and dig a heap o' mines in Minecraft... You know how it goes. And, woe is me, I intend to become a sith inquisitor in February, when I'm back from a little vacation I have planned. Hope we don't make it big until then, so I have the time to hit level 17 in about a month (considering the pace I'm usually able to play computer games at :))

Anyway, here's a bit of an update on stuff related to Cynicism Management.

1) GIG - METELKOVA, Ljubljana

The first gig with the new sound engineer, so no problems in that area this time. All in all it was great, although in terms of numbers the audience was rather... erm, less than considerable :) Unfortunately we played quite early and there was another concert next door. The gig got a very cool review in Profanity webzine, though.

A couple o' pics:

More pics over here.

2) GIG - FIGA ROCK BAR, Koper

A video says a thousand words:

The concert was recorded with a Zoom H2n in mid-side mode, and later processed a bit. So nothing fancy, but quite bearable.

Head to YouTube for three more videos (Four-Circle Penile Substitute, Another Place Another Time and Tit). A bunch of pics are over here.

3) EPIC TALES OF CYNICISM MANAGEMENT

Finally found a native speaker willing to read the Epic Tales of Cynicism Management novel and give feedback. A writer, at that. Hope he doesn't hate it :D

Dead Dildo Drome & Cynicism Management @ Figa rock bar, Koper

A FREE CONCERT: Dead Dildo Drome & Cynicism Management, Figa rock bar, Koper (Šalara). 16 December 2011 @ 22:00

DEAD DILDO DROME

(hardcore/metal)

CYNICISM MANAGEMENT

(progressive rock)

--> Click here for Facebook event <--

Holy fuck! A free concert!

Yay, a free concert! Voluntary contributions accepted. Klub Gromka - AKC Metelkova - Ljubljana, 28 November at 21:00.

THE NEBULAE ENSEMBLE

(rock/fusion/blues)

+

CYNICISM MANAGEMENT

(progressive rock/experimental)

--> click for FB event <--

Gig: Bellevue, Pohorje

The expedition to the summit of the Pohorje hill was highly entertaining. Listened to Ian Dury and the Blockheads all the way up there. Yep, 'twas a bit cold at the top, especially relatively speaking – since most of us are used to the far more pleasant climates of the coastal area, and as far as I know not a single soul among us is into mountaineering much. The concert went fine. The guys and gal got courteously drunk. I drove. Bummer.

RPP 2011

On 12 November we're attending the release of the Rockers Sing the Poets 2011 compilation (Rokerji pojejo pesnike) with a bunch of other bands. We'll play an acoustic version (huh?! :)) of the following track, recorded especially for this compilation... Lyrics by Ervin Fritz:

Opus 0 by Cynicism Management

Gig: Orto bar, Ljubljana

The gig in Orto bar, Ljubljana, on 21 October 2011, would have been great, if our sound guy didn't arrive two hours late, and a total nervous wreck at that. Hell, we don't blame him or anything. He'd had a terrible day, he said.

Well, what can you do - consequently the sound sucked donkey balls, of course (especially the vocals were nowhere to be heard). The drums were supposedly very loud but sounded very good, probably because the Orto bar's "resident" sound engineer did a good job taking care of that (thanks a heap, Boban!) while our own sound guy was still busy being horrendously late. OK, so some people thought drums were far too loud. Ah, well, can't please 'em all...

Fortunately we all use in-ear monitoring, so we'd been blissfully unaware of the technical problems for a while. However, once we found out that the sound below the stage was quite bad, we couldn't help but showing that on our faces, and the problem was probably also hinted at by our slightly annoyed demeanour. So, yeah, after the concert some people thought we'd had a bit of a "negative" attitude: well, I say, a good ole "screw you guys" to you – you haven't seen anything yet. I think we were even far too laid-back, nice and polite – not nearly negative enough!

Furthermore, I'd also like to send a firm "fuck off" to all the people who thought my drumming was too loud – fucking hell, how am I supposed to turn the volume down on the acoustic drums and cymbals?! What the hell, you pensioners want to enjoy some kind of a pleasantly unobtrusive lounge music easy jazz progressive rock metal, while chatting with your pals and sipping on cocktails? How the hell does that compute? Besides, once again: I'm not the fucking sound guy, so I can't change the fucking volumes, especially not while playing! I apologise profusely for not also taking care of the sound below the stage while sweating my ass off pounding on the drums!

Tit - the digital release

Our debut album Tit has trickled into digital stores all over the Net, including Amazon, iTunes, 7digital, etc. Digital distribution has been taken care of by AMAdea Music.

OK, cool, now all we have to figure out is which tropical tax haven we'll use to optimise our tax burden after all these heaps o' cash start rolling in :))

New guitarist... again :)

Looks like we haven't been very fortunate with our guitarists... After Jan Urbanc got pregnant last year and was replaced by Enej Demirović, we can now also confirm that our (now already former) guitarist-in-chief Aljaž Tulimirović has retired from plucking strings and soloing over rather unorthodox odd-time chord progressions. He wishes to focus on his highly complex (as well as incredibly complicated) personal life, and we will, by no means, attempt to stand in the way of such a thing :)

However, we're very happy to report we won't even postpone any of the gigs already announced, since, fortunately, the work with our new lead guitarist Andrej Babič is already well underway. So it looks like we're still playing in Ljubljana (Orto bar) on 21 October and in Koper (MKSC) on 5 November.

We certainly hope we have a solid team now, as constant crew changes tend to put a dent in the unbridled optimism we're so famous for... :D

Gig: Šmartno pri Litiji

Just posted a couple of photos from the gig we had on 6 August in a pub in Šmartno pri Litiji on our Facebook page. The PA system was rather, ummm... basic... But the sound engineer who, this time, came with us instead of our regular sound guy worked minor miracles and did the best he could under the circumstances. Eager listeners were few and far between: the enraptured crowd consisted, more or less, of two friends of ours, one of whom had convinced his unsuspecting girlfriend to accompany him, and a certain random hysterical fan we've dubbed "the naughty gentleman". Nevertheless, the concert was quite a blast as far as our performance was concerned (if I may say so myself), and I think we can finally play the whole setlist without injuring ourselves too badly in the process.

Here are a couple of photos:

And here is the naughty gentleman:

Click here to check out the rest of the photos.

3rd revision of Epic Tales finished

The third revision of the Epic Tales of Cynicism Management "literary musical" is finished. A heap o' typos, various blunders and other assorted mistakes fixed, structure improved, a couple of paragraphs added. Hopefully this is gradually starting to resemble the final version. Any takers? We'll send you the link to it all (.doc, .pdf and kindle format + related audio) if you promise to provide some feedback :) E-mail us HERE or drop a comment.

Album available for download at Bandcamp

Immediate download of the 12-track album Tit by Cynicism Management at Bandcamp (320k mp3, FLAC, or just about any other format you could possibly desire) is now available at Bandcamp. Comes with complete artwork (1000px jpgs - 16-page booklet, inlay, CD artwork) and lyrics.

Complete artwork

Just uploaded the complete artwork (cover, booklet, inlay & CD) for our debut album on Facebook. Check it out!

June rehearsals

We had our June rehearsals in the Rock 'n' Roll Tavern in Malečnik for a change. A) it's hot like hell in our place at the Coast, and B) some of us had other errands to run nearby, so it was convenient. Especially for band members from Maribor :)

The material is now finished and relatively "stable", so we can hardly wait for some gigs in the autumn.

Live video: The End of the Vilewood Road

Here's the last (relatively useful) video from the gig at the Rock 'n' Roll Tavern in Malečnik near Maribor. That is, at least until the owner of the second camera decides to solemnly unveil what he managed to record (if anything).

As with the other videos below, the sound was recorded directly with the camera, so it's not exactly something to write home about... Though in comparison to other camera recordings I've had the misfortune of hearing I think it's surprisingly good in comparison. After I got my paws on the videos I also extracted the sound, processed it (to a feasible extent :)), and sent it back to the video guy, who then re-rendered the videos using the processed sound tracks.

Live video: Tit

Live video: Herbal Haze

Here's another video from the manifestation in the Malečnik gorge:

Live video: TV Turns on You

Here's a video of TV Turns on You from the gig in Malečnik. The sound's been recorded directly with the camera (and post-processed a bit, as far as possible), so all things considered it actually turned out relatively well, I think. In my experience camera mikes frequently clip uncontrollably, mangling the sound beyond recognition, but I find this quite... erm... passable :)

A couple o' pics

Finally got around to organising the photos from out first full-length gig (Rock 'n' Roll Tavern, Malečnik, 21 May 2011). Here are some of them:

More pics here.
A couple of videos coming soon.

Whoa...

Whoa, we've somehow managed to survive our first real gig. I'd hereby like to thank the (barely) alive band members, the (equally barely) living members of the supporting band Second Chance Blown, as well as the impervious staff of the infamous Rock 'n' Roll Tavern located in a fabulous gorge east of Maribor. Pics and videos most probably coming when we're done with stringent scrutiny and data exchange. :)

Yippee...!

Yippee, the album is off to the printing press! Or, rather, was off to the printing press last Wednesday, but I forgot to post the good news here. So, I'm doing that now. Plus, I'm also attaching the cover:

Graphics done

The artwork for our upcoming debut album is done, all conjured up by Matej Peklar. Thanks a heap o' heaps, he has SERIOUS quantities of beer coming to him :)

Check the stuff out at our Facebook page.

The physical release of the album is planned for the end of May, just before the two gigs we already have booked. Whee, it's almost an all-Slovenian tour, that! :D

April rehearsals

Oops! It's been a while. Yep, we've skipped the March rehearsals, I suppose... So here we are, after the April rehearsals, which were... Well... Regular, nothing to write home about. I suppose we can play well enough to make April fools of ourselves in public now. I hope that not many musicians who know what it's all about will be present when we stage the vile thing.

Anyway, here's some pics, as usual. We've also recorded the audio output of the whole affair (yes, another lousy live take), but I haven't yet brought myself to sift through it. Maybe some other day. Today it might depress me. It may make me laugh on Thursday, though.

February rehearsals - excerpts

Here are a couple of excerpts from the February rehearsals. As always, the sound is horrible because it's a simple recording from a JamHub output with nothing but two microphones on the drums, but at least it was fun to listen to all the so-called "liberal musicianship" (i.e., plain old crappy playing) :)

Rehearsal Excerpts 2 (feb2011) by Cynicism Management

February rehearsals

The February rehearsals were a blast! We can finally report that we're now actually ready to go forth and entertain the hell out of people, who can most likely hardly wait to shake their booties to the ear-poppingly exquisite choruses in groovy 17/8 beats we have carefully constructed for them. We've also made some quick recordings, so we'll post something here soon.

Here are some photos:

First draft of Epic Tales complete

The first unrevised and unedited draft of the Epic Tales novel is FINISHED! yippee...
That means we now have 151.577 words / 729.413 characters without spaces / or 395 pages (as set up in Word) to edit, revise and polish :))

Epic Tales of Cynicism Management (the novel) deleted

This blog used to contain a "work-in-progress" novel entitled Epic Tales of Cynicism Management. The text is currently being revised and finalised, so due to practical reasons we've decided NOT to publish any more of it here, and all the old draft chapters have been removed. The "online" blog version of the novel has been discontinued. Anyone who'd like to read the complete draft of the novel when it's finished (probably in a couple of months) and possibly comment on it, please drop a comment here or e-mail us at cynmanagement[at]gmail.com. Any input will be very much appreciated and taken into account at the finalisation stage.

The blog has been redesigned and will, until further notice, only contain posts relevant to Cynicism Management (the band). To listen to the enchanting tunes use the music player above :)

January rehearsals

Here are some photos from the January rehearsals (on 8 and 9 January, but I've been rather busy... :))

And now for something completely different... We've got our paws on a sexy piece of equipment (www.jamhub.com) and are now rehearsing with it, we can also make some quick recordings while we're at it. So here are a couple of excerpts from the January rehearsals. Recorded directly through a JamHub output, only 2 mikes on the drums, so the sound sucks donkey balls, naturally, and as far as the performance of the band members goes, well, there's still a bit of room for improvement... But, hey... :)

Rehearsal Excerpts 1 (jan2011) by Cynicism Management