1st January 2012 - New website & new release!
Welcome to the new Ross Baker website! There are many changes, most of which reflect that this is definitely a new era, and not just Second Thought under a different name. The return of a colourful website (the first since the pre-cynical Vacuum Road Songs days), the 'writing' and 'images' sections, and first-person style are all in the aim of making this a personal site rather than just an advert for my music. Also, I've removed the 'news' page and replaced it with this blog, so I'll be filling you in on any changes and updates in here. This means I might be a little late reporting certain things, but it'll all be far more personal, which I think is a good compromise. Finally, the discography tidies up all the Second Thought material I endorse, alias releases and collaborations. And of course, my new material...

I hope nobody will be too disappointed to discover that some material from the A Room sessions will be appearing as part of a future release, and the album in its original format has gone. It was just all a bit cold on the whole, and I didn't enjoy it enough. That just leaves two releases.
First up is Revolution, which is a slightly silly experimental collage of material from the pre-Second Thought tapes. After some consideration I decided it would be perfect to release today on the launch of the website, as it works as a nice pair of bookends: material recorded before Second Thought, and the first thing released afterwards. You can read more about that in the Discography and download it for free from my Bandcamp page. Note: this does not sound like the material I'll be putting out in the future!
Secondly, and more importantly, is The Blackbirds' Revenge, my first proper album as Ross Baker. It's actually more of a transitional record, as it contains much of the ambient computer processing of Second Thought. You can read more about that, including tracklist and liner notes, here. It should be out on the Jozik cassette label soon, more news on that as and when it comes in.

I recently got diagnosed with Asperger's, which came as quite a relief as it's allowed me to make sense of a lot of things. The response from others has largely been of disbelief though. I think they should read through the older blog entries here, there is no better evidence for the utterly irrational obsessive thinking than those! That, along with a planned move back to the midlands, ties in nicely with this new site and the new musical direction (I recently got my mics and 4-track setup sorted, so it's back to lo-fi basics) in terms of a whole new era of my life. I'll end this blog in the way I ended my first Second Thought blog: the future's bright, the future's storange.

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