hey, about the whole sold-out thing

if there was anyone on the waiting list or who was interested in buying a copy but, well, due to bad luck or misaligned fates we never managed to meet up since the release— the ship might have sailed, but do email us. we believe we have a secret solution :)

200 sold!

I am writing this in the car with Alia behind the wheel. Fueled by the purchasing power of kind strangers and in the mighty shadow of Farish Noor's new book launch, tonight we have sold absolutely all 200 copies of our self-titled EP! Thank you everyone for making us feel a little like rockstars :)

Juice Magazine voted us Best Spoken Word Album of 2009 which is also crazy awesome. Alia and I personally think there might not have been many other contenders in the category, but since it's now out there, we're pretty psyched at the possibility of spoken word releases proliferating henceforth.

I don't always write like this but we're happy and in a traffic jam! Thank you everyone!

DELIVERY ANNOUNCEMENT

For those of you who want us to post you the CD, please email us with your address at dizzyandthe [at] gmail, so we can work out payment methods (money order? bank draft? well-concealed benjamins?). For deliveries within peninsular Malaysia, it will cost around RM20. For deliveries overseas, we'll customize costs according to order, which will include price of CD + price of postage + possible processing charges, depending on payment method. Or just email us to say hi, we're very nice little girls :D

So watchoo be waitin' for, foo?

OMG 404

Rocket just called and said her favourite track was wrongly numbered! Okay so for future reference, tracks 6 and 7 are wrongly labelled in the booklet tracklist; so it's

• immigrant & interpreter (track 6) - Rocket's favourite
• scarecrow & songbird (track 7)
  

Sorry about the confusion, the CDs were burned by Alia, the booklet was made by me separately, so the little error slipped past us somehow. if you (like me) can't stand little errors like this, I will make you a new booklet. Sorry again!

the waiting list

copies left: 137 <-- not so sure anymore, I've lost count - Dizzy purchases pending:

• Srikasih Febriyanti Supriyadi (1)
• Uzair Sawal (2)
  
• Rocket Queen (1)
• Farah, California (1)
• Jin Hackman (1)
• Fariz NBE (1)
• Farid Saph (1)
  
• Yung Shen Schizzow (1)
• Johan Nordin (1)
• Noah Lee, California (1)
• Lili, New York (1)
• Noorazah Hanim (1)
• Mohd Effuan Aswadi (1)
• Anjanna Kukreja (1)
• Adam Kasturi (1)
  

email/facebook/text us for any changes and additions!

we don't have a show coming up soon just yet. Dizzy might have a show in late February; but until then, maybe we'll bump into each other at events, or to be more certain; if you'll be in the area of Curve / Hartamas / Bukit Jalil / KLCC, give us a day's notice or so and we can COD + maybe some makan makan.

o hai pplz.

i am here to inform you that the album is in its final stages of packaging. we're really taking our time, we know, but there's been a lot going on. from being an extra in a malay drama... to just general drama overall. that's another story. anyway. we should, however, have copies ready for when i go to singapore next week for stars! so if any of you singaporeans were to be so kind as to want a copy, please drop us a line at our email and i will bring one for you! and come say hi if you see me, i will reciprocate with bear hugs.

peace. (and have a good 2009!)

ps: in the meantime, we're on katagender as part of their tomboy photo project here.

spinster city

me: i wanna use the computer for a bit
li: i was just about to update the blog to tell them we were working on packaging, why don't you do it?
me: you're more eloquent than i am, you tell them
li: you're already there, just go to blogger
me: tak pandaiii
li: mengada

(5 minutes later, after she sees me typing out this entry)

dizzy: shouldn't it be dizzy and the? instead of me and li?
the: oh yeah it probably should
dizzy: tell them we're having a how i met your mother marathon at the same time

coming along

A little too much has been going on personally, resulting in so much rescheduling that we haven't gone into the studio since last week. Johnny needs to give priority to Oh Chentaku as Myo is leaving for Switzerland next month, so recording's going to be a little slow until they're done. Since yours truly will be interning there for the next 2 months anyway, there'll be plenty of time then to pretty up what's necessary. In the meantime, we'll keep you updated!

bloopers

Johnny snuck in a lot of things I said that shouldn't be there! We'll see what makes the cut later. Speaking of cut, Alia passed me the rough cuts online, I just listened to them. And the rough cuts are yummy. Makes me want steak.

My favourites are Scarecrow & Songbird, and No Questions Asked.
I wonder if we'll have to redo Urban Sea Gypsies. Been listening to it a few times now. Hmm.

PS: The packaging idea is coming along.

belum masak lagi

I sit here giddy, listening to the raw cuts of the EP. Everything is in its right place. We just need to spice things up here and there, a little cleaning up. And then it'll be done.

Did I say I was giddy? Yeah.

(hee)

p/s - head here for outtakes from Prime Number! Hear if you can spot Imam, Paan, Faiz, Johnny, Li and I :D Humor us, we were bored.

atom choke, coming to a cinema near you

Dropped by the studio to hand Johnny our first payment last night. What was intended to be a five minute drop-off turned into a half hour session of him telling me how he spent his Sunday. Among other things, he outlined an entire movie plot that walked into his head while he was working on dizzy & the tracks. Aside from the fact that he was working on our tracks voluntarily without complaint, I was floored that he. came. up. with. a. movie. The scenarios that he comes up with to get Li in gear have nothing against what he was envisioning for Atom Choke (the movie, not the poem). Taking elements from all the poems we've recorded so far, the movie he imagined is about an immortal girl hallucinating about the real world, and the details were staggering. Even my sleep later that night was fucked up from it because I kept waking up and imagining the barren landscapes and solar flares, and I'm usually a tido mati kind of person and never toss and turn.

On the way back home, I called Li to tell her all of this and she was speechless. We are really moved that Johnny's this involved and inspired by us (I wasn't kidding when I said we made a believer out of him), and we can't believe our luck that the producer who picked us (and we him) is turning out to be so amazingly cool. There is many an ampersand working on this EP with and for us, but we've come to the conclusion that he deserves the title the most. Thank you Johnny. Really.

in the studio, part trois

I'd like to say that being at the studio for 10 hours straight isn't a picnic, but bonding with our engineer, having Maryam & Zher & Devi drop by, getting Imam to session on No Questions asked, and the general cuddliness of Pa'an made for a very fun night.

Johnny and I worked on Scarecrow & Songbird (turns out this is his favorite track - who knew?) and after much arm-twisting he still refused to play guitars for No Questions Asked, but Imam oh-so-kindly agreed. The result? Misty, moody, near-perfect loveliness yang amat lumayan.

dizzyLi aka Michelle Buble laid down her vocals for Latitude in all of 2 takes and that's it for her basic vocal tracks. All that's left is for Johnny and I to work on the rest of the music tracks and come up with some interludes to pad the poetry and up the mood. Which is actually a lot, come to think of it. This is not going to happen anytime soon though, what with exams coming up next week, but that's okay.

We're putting all of us into this recording. Even we didn't know we could go this far. If we can make a believer out of Johnny, we hope that we can make a believer out of you.

maybe baby

This is the tentative tracklist for our as-yet-unnamed EP. Tracks are not in order yet, but here they are anyway:

Atom Choke
Prime Number
No Questions Asked
Urban Sea Gypsies
Immigrant & Interpreter
Scarecrow & Songbird
Latitude
As-yet-unnamed cello solo track
As-yet-unnamed piano solo track
As-yet-unnamed commissioned track
(Instead of full instrumental tracks, we're going with extended intros and outtros instead. You'll see)

recording means unlearning.

Since I've never read in a studio environment before, it's been a tough, turbulent few nights. I've been trying to unlearn the way I read before, in all the gigs we've performed at as dizzy & the, and all the times I've been onstage solo. The main goal we had walking into the studio was to make it personal. A lot more vulnerable transparent sincere, to let it be something between only us, and you. No one else will be there, no audience. But even in the studio there is an audience, right? So I had to unlearn that as well.

It was an unusual way of doing it; Alia's music is based on my writings, Johnny Thunder's imaginary scenarios are based on her music, then he listens to us, and I listen to him, and read again, and again, push them further & further away but still trying to unite his idea as a listener with mine.

They may be my own words, but I realise I can't project sincerity in the studio totally on my own, as the writer/poet/whatever. It's not about me anymore & I can't ignore the listener completely. I need some kind of balance to really break me down & bridge that writer-listener gap, to bring out the solitude, the frustration, the giddiness of the tracks.

to recap: our album, we want to make it personal. we're going great lengths to get there; to make sure that this is no live gig, no audiobook, worth your money and above all, your time. you haven't heard us like this before.

recording recap, not relaxed (not just yet)

We went into the studio last night, finally! After many a late-night call from Voldemother demanding I come home to Johnny laying out twisted scenarios so dizzy can be in the right frame of mind, we managed to lay the bare bones of 6 tracks down: Immigrant & Interpreter, Atom Choke, Scarecrow & Songbird, Urban Sea Gypsies, Prime Number, and unexpectedly, No Questions Asked! The tracks are turning out to be more complex in layers than we previously imagined, but it's all very good, it's all very purty.

Johnny has been a huuuge help with arranging and ideas and such. We've broken a few barriers with what he usually has to go through for recordings, but he's taking it all in stride along with his 3-in-1 Nescafe and bags of chips. Recording poetry is a lot harder than we all thought, haha. You will, I promise, be pleasantly surprised to hear how different we sound now that we have all these extra ears listening in. Thank you to Pa'an for being a faithful groupie (groupy?) and of course to Faiz and Imam for the best laugh I've had in a while :)

I will return to the studio in a couple of nights to work on the layers for the tracks already in place, and hopefully start on my solo piano track and Johnny's commission, and yes he commissioned. Off to sleep, study, sleep, study until then!

thunder, lightning, (not yet) strike!

Tonight we went to see Mokhtar of iseekmusic at his cavernous yet cosy home studio for preliminary discussions about the EP. (The man will be recording, mixing, mastering, producing, what-have-you for us, and because of his 'sporting'ness we shall henceforth dub him Johnny Thunder - long story) So far so good: costs are being roughly finalized, schedules are basically planned. Hopefully we'll be recording the recording process with photos and videos and posting them here for your enjoyment, and our memories :) Imam of Lightcraft was also at the premises, and might just lend his vocal chords and guitar-strumming fingers to us for a tune or two, so that's something else to look forward to! We're pretty excited to see what Johnny has in store for us next week since we're both floundering in unchartered waters. In the meantime, I've to get the guide tracks done, along with all the other assignments I have due this week...

Next task: cari groupies.