2nd Edition of "Cynicism Managment" novel published

The second edition of my first novel, Cynicism Management, is now available on Amazon (the link should automatically take you to your local Amazon store) for $2.99 / £1.99.

HOWEVER! Be warned that this price can vary greatly between the countries you're buying the book from, Slovenia being one of the most unfortunate ones. In Slovenia the $2.99 book will cost you $6.09. For example, these are the prices I've been able to confirm (when browsed in different countries, on Amazon US) after some research via VPN servers and/or with the assistance of friends living abroad:

- USA: $2.99 (my price at Amazon US)
- Germany: $3.29 (most likely my price of €2.99 at Amazon DE, with currency conversion from €)
- UK: $2.96 (my price at Amazon UK, with currency conversion from £)
- Switzerland: $ 3.26
- Latvia: $ 6.04
- Lithuania: $ 6.04
- Czech Republic: $ 2.99
- Romania: $ 3.71
- Slovenia: $ 6.09
- Portugal: $ 3.68
- Spain: $ 3.26
- Sweden: $ 3.74

I tried clearing up the issue with Amazon, but for three days of fruitless back-and-forth they kept evading and muddling the issue with diversionary tactics and nebulous quasi-information before finally sending the following statement (after I demanded explicitly that they send me a clear breakdown of how exactly they calculated the Slovenian price):

"The availability and pricing of titles in global Kindle Stores may vary by home country or region, because of taxes and other operating costs. However, it is our operational policy that we don't disclose the breakdown to our publishers/authors. Unfortunately, we're unable to provide why we can't disclose these information to publishers/authors either."

In other words, they won't tell me why they charge the extra $3.10 in case of Slovenia, and they also can't tell me why they won't tell me that.

I know of no taxes and reasonable "operating costs" (of sending a digital file to a Kindle and charging a credit card) that could result in an increase of price in excess of 100 %. However, the last sentence of the final response was probably volunteered by a rather disgruntled Amazon support staff member, and the actual interpretation from "bamboozlese" would probably be – I'm reasonably sure – that Amazon applies some ridiculous arbitrary surcharge in case of certain countries... And they obviously don't want to advertise this fact.

Be that as it may, the book will soon be published as epub in various other e-bookstores as well, hopefully without this astounding surcharge.

Complete Pendulum Pet playlist

Here is the complete playlist for Pendulum Pet, the new album by Cynicism Management. It can also be downloaded from our Bandcamp page (name your price) or purchased in most digital stores.

Entry for the ADAM Audio soundtrack competition

Here is my entry for the ADAM Audio soundtrack competition. I certainly wouldn’t mind winning a pair of new monitors, although chances for that are virtually zero - judging from the vast number of high-quality contributions... :)

Pendulum Pet released!

I'm happy to report that the new Cynicism Management album, entitled Pendulum Pet, has just been released! For now it's on our Bandcamp page, with the digital release in a heap of online stores scheduled for 11 November. It's been a long and arduous run since the last full-length release (Tit back in 2011), and a puny single and flimsy EP don't really count, as far as I'm concerned. So I certainly hope it takes us substantially less than another four years to come up with the third one, which we fully intend to record some day.

Without further ado, here it is. On Bandcamp you can download it for free, or, alternatively, you might even decide to wire us a few bucks for it, it's up to you.

  PENDULUM PET by CYNICISM MANAGEMENT   All tracks written and arranged by Borut Praper. Lyrics by Borut Praper except Digging Deep by Borut Praper & Monika Fritz. Vocals co-arranged and performed by Monika Fritz. All instruments played by Borut Praper except guitar solos for Don’t Let Me In, Bats Left the Belfry and Keep It Simple by Jure Praper. Recorded, produced and mixed by Borut Praper in Studio S.U.R., Berlin. Mastered by Torulsson @ 808 Mastering.com.     Loads of thanks: Jan Baruca, Stojan Kralj, Jan Urbanc, Aljoša Mislej, Andrej Babič and Rok Predin for listening to the material at the mixing stage and providing crucial feedback. Sunčan Stone for reading the lyrics. Borut Bernik - Torulsson for providing technical advice and polishing the vocal sound. Nika Hölcl for taking our mug shots and making us look nice(r).    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. P + C 2015 CYNICISM MANAGEMENT

I Found Them Twitching

Track 10 of "Pendulum Pet":



I FOUND THEM TWITCHING

It's seeping through my body
It's oozing through my brain
I can't unsee the blight and
It's driving me insane

No way to close my eyes and
Too late to turn away
The time from here on out will
Keep feeding my dismay

'Cause I found them twitching oh no
'Cause I found them twitching oh no no

Attempts to disremember
And hopes to disregard
Just fuel the searing blaze
And feed on the corpses charred

Mastering of "Pendulum Pet" done!

I'm happy to report that the mastering of Pendulum Pet, the upcoming full-length album by the alternative / prog rock band Cynicism Management, has just been finished. I'd like to thank Borut "Torul" Bernik @ 808mastering.com for a superb job. I'm absolutely positive that the collection of eleven new tracks, clocking in at just over an hour, will make for the best Cynicism Management release to date.

So here is "Quickening", the last track on the album - an instrumental coda or "outro":

More tracks coming soon.

Pendulum Pet Teaser Excerpts

Here are some (pre-master demo) "teaser" clips from the upcoming Cynicism Management album Pendulum Pet. The release is planned for October.

Graphics for "Pendulum Pet" done

Just finished the graphics for the upcoming Pendulum Pet album by Cynicism Management:

"Pendulum Pet" mixed

The mixing of the new full-length Cynicism Management album, entitled Pendulum Pet, is finished, and the tracks are off to mastering. The release is planned for October.

Finished recording "Pendulum Pet"

We've just finished recording the vocals for the new full-length Cynicism Management album, entitled Pendulum Pet. The final and polished mixes should be ready in a couple of weeks, and then the material will be off to mastering. The release, consisting of a total of eleven tracks, is planned for October.

First draft of "Pendulum Pet" complete

I'm overjoyed to report that yesterday I finally wrote "THE END" at the very bottom of the first draft of "Pendulum Pet", my second novel (after my debut, entitled Cynicism Management). I concluded the novel with a short epilogue after a surprising writing spree which happened to me (of its own volition, it seemed) on Tuesday, when I managed to sit outside all they long, typing away until I had the entire 6000 words that now make up the very finale of the novel.

On the balcony, where I kept freezing my posterior off in this quasi-spring in Berlin, having my way with my wife's satanic laptop, I enjoyed the company of an inflated yellow bastard named Hans, our neighbour's currently still nameless donkey, and some figurine that the neighbour had found in a Müllhaufen somewhere (which would be a German word for "a pile of garbage", and I find it - the word, I mean - particularly funny for some reason). As a reward for coming up with 5000 - 6000 words in a single writing session I got a nasty whiplash in my right shoulder.

Once again music will be composed for the novel as well. In fact that's already been done, but we have yet to finish recording the vocals and then go through all the post-production torture. The same goes for the novel: I have to re-read it now and polish it a bit before sending it to a few pals who have volunteered as "alpha testers". Should anyone else wish to receive the pre-publication manuscript and provide feedback (either the upcoming first revision or the second revision, which should be ready sometime in the autumn, probably), feel free to drop me a note.

Aperçus by Ray Kosmick released

Aperçus, a full-length instrumental soundtrack album by Borut Praper, a.k.a. Ray Kosmick, has just been released. Most of the tracks on this album were written for the Survarium Music Contest, opened by Vostok Games, which called on the game community to produce music for the massive multiplayer shooter Survarium. The competition was in two categories: covers of the game's main theme, composed by Vladimir Savin - Dargalon (first prize); and new original tracks for the game (multiple second prizes). The winners were selected by the developer and will be included in the game soundtrack.

Ray Kosmick's original track "Nightfall 2" received one of the second prizes; while his cover of the Survarium Main Theme received the first prize and was the main winner of the competition.

All tracks on Aperçus written, arranged and recorded by Borut Praper (a.k.a. Ray Kosmick), except for Red River (an "online" collaboration between Borut Praper and the Slovak composer/producer Alex Turčáni - Alyctro and another entry for the Survarium Music Contest) and Survarium Main Theme (original theme composed by Vladimir Savin - Dargalon). The album also includes a few recent works (Fractures, Backyard Barry and Fractures Rend) which have not taken part in the aforementioned competition. All of the noise (except for Red River) made by Ray Kosmick, be it organic, synthetic, electric, acoustic, or any combination thereof. Produced, mixed and mastered by Ray Kosmick in S.U.R. Studio, Berlin, in 2014 & 2015. The cover artwork is a screenshot from the film Nosferatu by F.W. Murnau (1922).

CONTRIBUTORS:

Borut Praper - music, arrangement, production, mix, mastering; drums, keyboards, bass, guitar, percussion, programming

Survarium Main Theme:

composed by Vladimir Savin - Dargalon

Red River:

Alex Turčáni (Alyctro): original idea, music, production; guitar, bass

Borut Praper (Ray Kosmick): arrangement, production, mix, mastering; drums, keyboards, additional music, bass & guitar

Final tracks for the Aperçus album

Here are the final two tracks for the Aperçus album by Ray Kosmick (to be released later this month). Actually it's one track, but Fractures Rend is a slightly reworked excerpt of a longer composition, entitled Fractures. This was done because the shorter "cut" wraps up this rather diverse (loose?) collection of tracks nicely, while the complete Fractures will serve as the opening track.

 

New Ray Kosmick track

Here's a new Ray Kosmick track, entitled Backyard Barry. I've decided to record a couple more and release them, together with all of my original contributions for the Survarium Music Contest, on a digital album entitled Aperçus I (just stumbled upon the fancy French-origin word recently, so I might as well make use of it :))

Caveman released!

Yesterday "Caveman" released a self-titled extended EP, making it available as a free download on Bandcamp, Jamendo, and SoundCloud.

"Caveman", based in Berlin, is a collaboration between the German singer-songwriter Carlos Kolmer, Slovenian producer and multi-instrumentalist Borut Praper, and Slovenian singer Monika Fritz. The project began soon after Monika and Borut moved to Berlin and ended up being Carlos's neighbours by pure coincidence. The first result of the work, carried out in 2013 and 2014, is the six-track extended EP, entitled simply "Caveman".

CREDITS:

CARLOS KOLMER: music, lyrics, arrangement, acoustic and electric guitar, keyboards, lead vocals, co-production

MONIKA FRITZ: backing vocals

BORUT PRAPER: co-arrangement, drums, percussion, bass, keyboards, additional electric guitar, EBow guitar, production, mix, mastering

Won the Survarium Music Contest

Great news - at least for me, ha! By some miracle I actually won the Survarium Music Contest, which I've entered recently by submitting several tracks under my "Ray Kosmick" moniker.

The Survarium Music Contest was opened by Vostok Games, calling on the game community to produce music for the upcoming massive multiplayer shooter Survarium (which is currently in beta and already looks and plays great, by the way, you should check it out). The competition was in two categories: covers of the game's main theme, composed by Dargalon (first prize); and new original tracks for the game (multiple second prizes). The winners were selected by the developer and will be included in the game soundtrack.

After a few months and 9 entries (one of them a collaboration with the Slovak producer and composer Alyctro), I managed to win the first prize for my cover of the main theme (a nice pair of Sennheiser HD 380 Pro headphones which actually came in the nick of time, because I actually need them :D)... AND one of the second prizes, as one of my original contributions (Nightfall 2) is going to be included into the game soundtrack as well, so I'm also getting a load of in-game currency and a special decal! Too bad I can't shoot for shit and everybody manages to kill me on sight :)

So, without further ado, here are the winning tracks:

And a playlist of all the entries:



So now I'm off to be shot in the game's beta a few more times...