rosetta-anaesthete

[Derek™]

I may be the only one, but even though I can't stand the artwork, I'm looking forward to the music.

Hardly the only one. I think your statement is a given. The kind of people who use album art as a deciding factor for exploring new albums... aren't the kind people who'd listen to post-metal to begin with.

[phoenixinflight]

i think we can all agree on that. I loved the wake/lift artwork

 Me too. Easily their best

[daegor]

The Junius Split was my fave, actually.

[Skeletal Lightning]

I didn't think the art was that bad, but compared to the older stuff it's a little mind-boggling. I loved their earlier material, but haven't quite been able to get into the more recent stuff.

[diddydong]

A determinism would be my favorite art work. Especially when you see the work that goes into it in physical form. The gloss and raised bits, uuuuuuuuunf 

[Portsi]

New song here.

 

So... does it still sound Rosetta or have they turned into a black metal band?

 

I'll wait the whole album so wont listen that yet... just under 48 hours left for the release!

[andi]

Next song: also here

[phoenixinflight]

Digging both the tracks, not really a radical departure in sound IMO, which is fine because neither was Determinism. Will definitely be grabbing it from Monolith

[diddydong]

Yeah, this is good.

[thepunkguy]

Info about the release of The Anaesthete

The album download goes live late tonight. The link to the album page will appear on Rosettaband.com sometime after midnight. Here is what you need to know about it:

PLATFORM

We’re using Bandcamp to host it. So for most of you, this will be a familiar interface. It also means you can stream the whole album before you pay for it.

PAYMENT

It is pay-what-you-wish. That includes paying nothing, which you can do by entering ‘0.00’ in the dollar amount field. We will still ask you for your email address if you want to download for free. Please note: there are only 200 free downloads available. Once they’re gone, they’re gone, and everyone else will have to pay. This is standard Bandcamp policy for pay-what-you-wish albums, not our decision. Though we would hope that if you like the record enough to download it, you would pay what you’re able to, even if it’s only a couple dollars.

Bandcamp uses Paypal to collect your payment. You don’t need a Paypal account to go through the checkout process. Payment is accepted in US dollars only, but if you use a credit card or your Paypal account, the conversion should be done automatically anyway.

Please contact Bandcamp if you have trouble paying (there is a link on the album’s download page), not us.

PHYSICAL MEDIA

As we have said many times before, there will be CD and vinyl versions of this album, but all will be available LATER — probably later in the fall of 2013. The CD version will be released in Europe by Debemur Morti, the vinyl will be released in the USA, Europe, and Australia by the band, Debemur Morti, and Monolithrespectively.

AUDIO GEEK CORK-SNIFFER INFO

The master for this album uses no peak limiting whatsoever. It is clean and free of clipping. It’s so good, in fact, that the same exact master is being used for digital, CD, and vinyl versions. So go ahead and download that FLAC version. You’re not missing anything, we promise.

[daegor]

AUDIO GEEK CORK-SNIFFER INFO The master for this album uses no peak limiting whatsoever. It is clean and free of clipping. It’s so good, in fact, that the same exact master is being used for digital, CD, and vinyl versions. So go ahead and download that FLAC version. You’re not missing anything, we promise.

 

 

Excellent! I'll shell out for the FLAC for sure then.

[geezfools]

hey nerds, full album here:

http://theanaesthete.bandcamp.co

[drds89]

something for everyone, this album rules hard; and is Rosetta primo... Plus, seeing them tonite!

 

no spoiler alert. that is all.

[radiatorhums]

Going to listen to this when I get to work, very excited.

[phoenixinflight]

Album is awesome. Can't wait to see what variants they come up with.

[radiatorhums]

First listen though, it hasn't grabbed me like I was expecting it too.  It wasn't bad by any means, I think it's going to take me a few listens to really appreciate it.  Hodoku / Compassion has an Appleseed Cast vibe to it.

[drds89]

so what I get for gloating about getting to see them yesterday, 9 band lineup "fest" 3 bands cancel, Rosetta gets slated for 10pm...and has this EVER happened in the universe... a band goes on ONE HOUR EARLY??? 

 

On a positive note, I got to talk a bit with them afterward,  and please keep giving what you can for this release!!... it is vital to this Rosetta's survival and they send MUCH LOVE to all who have done what they could so far and excited at the positive response.

 

I for one still have variantitis for all things Rosetta (still need that BLACK 3 way split with EOTW and YONL!!), though I 'm not typically one to bug band or label for TP's -- just you guys on the boards here haha.  But if the opp comes up, I think I am getting the bug for a few more TPs.

 

SOOOOO, Go out and see them, back them, be patient with them on the email back log and heck I paid for 3 tickets and got to hear 3 minutes of their last song...it was worth it. 

[deletedunknown]

SOOOOO, Go out and see them, back them, be patient with them on the email back log and heck I paid for 3 tickets and got to hear 3 minutes of their last song...it was worth it. 

 

Then you missed all the equipment problems they had at the beginning. They still put on a great show despite tech difficulties.

[thepunkguy]

from their website..

 

 

Explainer: The Anaesthete

 

Since we’re on tour right now, there has been no way we could answer the hundreds of emails and Tumblr questions we’ve received in the week since the album release. This post is an attempt to condense some answers to the most frequently asked questions about The Anaesthete.

Has the independent, self-release strategy worked?
We have thought of the Bandcamp self-release as an experiment. The goal was to find out whether an independent publishing and distribution model can be self-sustainable for a small DIY band. Right now we consider that experiment a qualified success. It does appear that we will be able to recover production costs and release vinyl in the USA.

 

We do not plan to release sales or revenue statistics for this release, so please do not ask us. However, you might find these statistics interesting: approximately 25% of the people who downloaded the album paid for it. Of those who did pay, the average purchase price was about $9.40. The median purchase price was around $7. Before the release, we talked about whether to have a $1 minimum price on the download, and decided against it for a couple of reasons: 1. to see how many people would actually pay (since it would inevitably end up on filesharing sites anyway), and 2. because we thought Bandcamp would limit the number of free downloads to 200, at least at first. In practice, because people were consistently buying the album, Bandcamp added virtually unlimited free downloads and thousands of people have downloaded it for free. This may be in part a messaging problem – we never intended the album to be ‘free.’ It is pay-what-you-wish (which on this release happens to include paying nothing). There is an important difference, though maybe an abstract one. We’re not upset that people have downloaded for free; we chose to allow that. But the reality is that a disproportionately large number of free downloads have been made possible (financially) by a relatively small group of people who took it upon themselves to pay. We’re still thinking through the ramifications of that.

 

One of the most unexpected positive outcomes of the release was how many new people were exposed to our music. Because of the large volume of first-day traffic on the album, we hit Bandcamp’s front page as the best-selling release for the day and week (in any format) and stayed there for quite a while. We also saw a large viral reach over social media, about 5 times the exposure that a typical news release or tour announcement would get. People were excited about the release and letting their friends know about it – this is the lifeblood of DIY music and the most important factor in the success of this album. We owe our fans and friends a big thank-you!

 

When and where can I get a physical copy?
As we have said, Debemur Morti will be releasing CD and 2xLP versions of the album in Europe. Monolith will be releasing a 2xLP in Australia. You should start seeing preorders for these soon. Assuming the financial resources are available (from digital sales), we will move forward with a North American vinyl release ourselves, although the timetable and specifics of this are still up in the air. Remember that a nice vinyl release is EXPENSIVE to do, and it’s a lot harder to recoup your costs than with a digital release. There are no plans for a CD release outside of Europe, though people in other parts of the world should be able to order a CD from Debemur Morti very easily.

 

What about other digital distribution – Spotify? Itunes? Rdio? Something else?
There are no plans to put the album on other digital distribution platforms. Bandcamp is the epitome of a good-guy company, they are helpful to bands and their revenue share is very fair. The vast majority of sales revenue goes directly to the band. We have had a good experience with them and would recommend them to other bands who are thinking of self-releasing. This stands in stark contrast to the ‘big’ digital distribution platforms like Itunes and Spotify, where there is a large amount of red tape and the band sees a vanishingly small proportion of any revenue generated (typically less than a penny out of every dollar for an artist like us) – not to mention DRM and advertising, which we have no interest in. After a lot of research, it seems to us that the primary purpose of these other platforms is to alleviate ‘filesharing guilt’ while enriching the shareholders of large corporations, NOT to fairly compensate artists for their work. We feel that releasing on these platforms would be more ‘devaluing’ to our music than releasing it for free (see above).

 

Where are the lyrics?
Lyrics will be included in the physical releases. On our early releases, we didn’t include lyrics. The intent was that the listener would construct their own meanings in the songs, instead of hunting for authorial intent. Later releases have included lyrics, because people wanted them and to encourage a more participatory and communal element at shows (think: hardcore singalongs). With this release, we wanted something in between – so the lyrics will come out later on, with the physical releases. Even if you’re not buying one of those, they’ll certainly pop up on the internet after those are available.

 

What’s the deal with Hodoku/Compassion? Who is Eric Jernigan?
Eric is the guitarist/singer of City of Ships, the band we have toured with the most over the years. He lives not far from the studio where the album was recorded, so we asked him to contribute to a track. He was originally going to play guitar, but decided during tracking that he’d rather do vocals.

 

Hodoku/Compassion was originally intended as a reprise of Ryu/Tradition, but took on a life of its own during production. Studio G had a Bösendorfer baby grand piano in the live room that we loved, so Matt wrote a piano part for the song during breaks in tracking.

 

What’s the album concept about?
Anaesthete can be understood to mean “someone who can’t appreciate beauty” but also suggests “anaesthetic” or induced numbness. Over the past couple of years we’ve been thinking a lot about if/how music communicates, and about the responsibility that artists may have for how their work affects people. Music can be deeply therapeutic, and seems to be a space where pain and beauty coexist in tension. There’s a paradox in that killing our pain often involves killing our sensitivity to sublime beauty and wonder. Music can be a means by which people confront pain with beauty, or falsehood and injustice with truth. We’ve heard countless stories of people who have found this kind of value in our music – often people who couldn’t be more different from the standard ‘metal kid’ demographic. These people aren’t passive recipients of some kind of artistic charity from us. Rather, the music itself has connected us together in a way that is really hard to understand. Their stories work in us in a similar manner to how our music works in them. We’ve come to understand that music is bigger than musicians, bigger than fans, bigger than entertainment. It has a life of its own, which is mysterious.

 

What about the song titles and weird flow?
The titles are from the book Sword and Brush by Dave Lowry. (The English in each title is just a translation of the Japanese.) This is a book that has been very meaningful to Dave in particular as he has begun teaching Jiu Jitsu. You can find more about the meanings of the characters and concepts in the book. The album is arranged like a hurricane: semi-symmetrically but disintegrating.

[daegor]

tl;dr version:

 

[...] It does appear that we will be able to recover production costs and release vinyl in the USA.

 

[...]

 

 

When and where can I get a physical copy?
As we have said, Debemur Morti will be releasing CD and 2xLP versions of the album in Europe. Monolith will be releasing a 2xLP in Australia. You should start seeing preorders for these soon. Assuming the financial resources are available (from digital sales), we will move forward with a North American vinyl release ourselves, although the timetable and specifics of this are still up in the air. [...]

 

 

 

Unless in the unlikely cases that the Euro or Australian orders are cheap, I'll probably hold out for the US release.

[radiatorhums]

tl;dr version:

 

 

 

Unless in the unlikely cases that the Euro or Australian orders are cheap, I'll probably hold out for the US release.

 

Same here.  I don't mind waiting since it's officially announced and it'll most likely be cheaper.  Since the band is handling the release, I'm assuming they'll see a little more money out of it too.

[Portsi]

Limited European only vinyl edition is up for pre-order: http://www.eitrin.com/

 

To be honest: the album feels like a major disappointment.

 

But i love Rosetta and will order this.. hopefully i will like this new one too some day.

[lexicondevil]

Want it, but not for $40 shipped. I honestly haven't really gotten into this record yet. It's not like the first time I listened to A Determinism of Morality and kept it on repeat. Just going to wait for the US version when it is someday released. I wonder why they're not releasing through Cavity?

[cwhitmuzik]

Those sales facts are fascinating

[thepunkguy]

LP version  (European pressing...)

 

looks nice.

 

http://rosettaband.tumblr.com/image/61601389926