I went on a website redeveloping rampage the past few weeks, and the result is the new and up-to-date GERALDPROKOP.COM. The header is a sunrise in Nebraska from my 2009 road trip. This too is a new day. I'm working on a new record--my first in over two years. At the release of 2009's "Open," I was at a place that I worked very hard to get to. I poured all my energy for over 10 years into private creative pursuits. That has it's pluses and minuses. The plus side was a mature, fairly solid work like "Open." I did a great job writing and producing that record. It's the culmination of 10 years experience doing whatever I wanted--I learned where to fly with it and where to hold back.

And the minus? Stress and short-sightedness. I missed out on a lot of life while I was stuffing mics in my acoustic guitar and annoying my neighbors. "Open" was one last release of energy. I had to wait. I needed to let go of this career. I thought letting go meant I was giving up, but it doesn't mean that. Letting go means you can come back without all the attachments and hangups. It means you can work smarter rather than faster. The way I see it now, I made the best record I've ever made, but I needed time to heal from the path that it took. Now I have a better frame of mind, and I can finally pick up where I left off.

I mentioned a little bit about what strategy I'm taking over on my personal blog. It's been so long since I made a record that the process is kind of new to me again. I feel like I'm 22 again when I mix down a rough version of a song and hear all the instruments blended together in the headphones. So rather than working in secret and hiding the sounds until the record comes out, I'll be publishing the progress as I go. I'm tweeting my to-do lists, drafts are going on Soundcloud, and I'll post lyric edits on my blog. Major news will happen via this news feed which I just integrated with my website, using some very helpful and aggravating PHP scripts. Keep track of it with the RSS feed.

The record is shaping up so far to be much more of an electronic/shoegaze hybrid. I'm making extensive use of my delay pedal, VST synthesizers and pretty extreme vocal reverb. I'm doing it all in my 12'x12', intricately designed, cozy, Seward bedroom-studio, which I hope to blog about soon.

17 songs from 7 projects I released between 2002 and 2007.

Tracks:

• Separating
• Just Friends
• On the Edge
• Nothing to Protect
• On Falling
• Life Inside
• Temporal Lobe
• Autonomy
• Time
• Opt Out

You'll be able to buy it from places such as CDBaby, Twin Cities record stores, Prokiev Projects + Publishing, etc. by Sept. 1st. There is also going to be a big CD release show at the Hexagon on September 3rd, with my friends Teenage Moods and Ficshe. Mark your brains!

Dates are tentative but generally I plan to leave MN to the south in early September and arrive back from the east in late September, being on the road for about three weeks.

• Iowa
• Nebraska
• Colorado
• New Mexico
• Texas
• Arkansas (or Oklahoma, Missouri)
• Illinois
• Indiana
• Wisconsin

Enormous Problems is an eight-track, partly instrumental CDR with lots of noisy keyboards and transistor overdrive.  Two tracks from it, "Woken in Half" and "The Drill Return" are up on Myspace and you can also stream the album at iLike and Last.FM. 

The physical package includes an inkjet-labeled CDR with photocopied art, a fictional text and a Prokiev sticker, housed in a clear bag.  Buy it at Prokiev Projects + Publishing

Buy the MP3 album on Myspace, in the Snocap store.

I also have a totally different project in the works: recording another band.  Bla Bla Blacksheep, my friends, fellow zinesters and travelmates, are letting me record their album for them.  I'll be documenting it on my blog.

I added some stuff to the top of the website so you can subscribe to the periodic news feed (this), receive RSS notification of upcoming shows and subscribe to my monthly email newsletter.

• January 25 at Acadia Cafe with Brad Senne and Me You Like I
• February 28 at Fort Awesome, with Fleetwood Marx and more TBA
• March 14 at the Beat Coffeehouse with Telepathos and Ghostband

The Detritus Volume I project is a collection of old recordings that I'm posting as free downloads.  It includes out-takes, demos and otherwise unused tracks.  Detrius Online Mess is a creative interweb dumping ground that will hopefully grow to be hopelessly convoluted and unmanageable.

Quelquechose main page

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To track the progress of this project, visit the Quelquechose Blog.

Gerald is now the proud owner of a new Tascam FW-1082.