The Myspace Years (Rarities and Outtakes from 2003 to 2006)

NEW ALBUM WITH OLD MATERIAL. So the other day I was looking for a drum plug on a really old hard drive and found a folder that was bluntly named DO NOT SHARE! Turns out the folder contained a bunch of old recordings dated 2003 to 2006. Interesting, because I had completely forgot I had them. So I put like all songs (around 25) in my media player and started listening to them. Sure, most of the tracks made me cringe A LOT. The production was sloppy, vocals were strained and off key and lyrics were lazily written. However, some tracks were also very interesting to hear after such a long time and in fact some of them were pretty good. In 2003, I was in constant trial-and-error mode musically. I had discovered all this new amazing recording software (like Reason and Cubase) so I was really experiment as much as I could in my home studio. Even though a was kind of in a creative frenzy, I hadn't yet built up the confidence to launch Stars in Coma publicly, so I was still writing without a perceived audience, which I guess made the songs very honest, innocent and naive. I didn't really have to fin-tune everything because I knew those songs wouldn't never see the light of day (until my older self found them on said hard drive...). Even when I released my first couple of SiC albums I was still living in this bubble where everything was possible. Then reality kicked in and I became more self-conscious after I received my first bad review in 2008. So why risk getting a bad review again? Well, I know that some people like the early Stars in Coma releases, and this compilation doesn't differ that much from that stuff. In fact, some of the songs were written prior or around the same time as those early recordings. Also, I think it's always interesting to consume an artist's work in progress even though it's unpolished, unfinished and abandoned, and perhaps people will find this release interesting from that perspective. I've always liked it when my favorite artists are over-prolific and even put out bad stuff, because it tells a truer and more interesting picture about the artist's whole work. I named this compilation "The Myspace Years" because I associate a lot of these songs with that era. That time period was such a creative time when an artist could upload their newest song without thinking too much about a career or a PR campaign. There was this perceived sense of hope that every unknown indie pop songwriter or musician could get an (albeit small) audience, and it was such a wonderful feeling, because we never had an audience to speak of before Myspace. It was a time before the internet-based indie pop scene had become truly over-saturated and people were still keen on finding new small bands. I'm not saying things are all bad today, but I felt that people dedicated more time to discover and listen to emerging artists before the era of endless Facebook ad campaigns and Soundcloud subscriptions. Anyway, back to this release. Some of the songs I found on my old hard drive were simply too cringe-y to officially release. Plus, I would bore the hell out of the listener if I should release everything, so I decided to set a tracklist limit of 12 songs. Hope you'll enjoy it.