Kupek is my band, or my musical alias, or whatever. A whole bunch of Kupek songs have been available on my website for the past year or so, but I just formally added a Creative Commons license to that page. Mostly because I realized I could. Also, I made zips of the albums, so you can download all the songs at once instead of having to click on one, then click on the next one, etc, etc. It's very convenient.

I've been occasionally working on a new Kupek album. It's been "almost finished" for months now. I have one more song to do, and some little things, and maybe I will get some people to sing some parts, and I need to get John to do me some cover art, and then I'll hopefully put the damn thing online. My target date for this has been May, and it's still possible that I'll make it.

TCAF is this weekend, August 18-19, in Toronto.

It's at Victoria College, right beside Museum Station (across from the Royal Ontario Museum).

It's FREE! to get in!

About a million fabulous cartoonists will be there exhibiting and signing and sketching and selling their fabulous stuff!

It's in scenic downtown Toronto, on the beautiful University of Toronto Campus, as seen in Scott Pilgrim Vol 3, which is nominated for a Doug Wright Award, to be given out Friday Night!

It's right down the street from Yonge where you can get good cheap Thai food and whatnot. (The Amazing Toronto Reference library, as seen in Scott Pilgrim Vol 2, is also just a few short blocks away.)

I'm on the second floor, beside Wright-nominated HOPE LARSON and Wright-nominated REBECCA KRAATZ. I will have:

• All my books for sale! $12 each! 60 copies each! How long will they last?
  
• THE ANNOTATED PILGRIM! $3 each, or free with a purchase of any two $12 books (or a piece of expensive artwork)! I printed 200 of them! First-come, first-serve, if it comes to that!
  
• Expensive artwork! Some of which will be cheap! I am reducing prices soon/now!
  
• Free, beautiful, full-colour, double-sided postcards, featuring Secret Pixel Art on the back, which has (somehow) not yet made its Internet Debut! I am good at keeping this secret!

I will do signatures and sketches in your books for free! If you have all three Scott Pilgrims for me to sign, I usually do a sketch in one of them and just sign the other two. If you also have Lost at Sea, I usually do a little sketch in there too. Two book-sketches per person if they have all four books, dig?

I usually do small sketches for free, if you provide paper or a sketchbook. My wrist is troubling me lately. Please don't ask too much of me. I will beg you with my sad, sad eyes.

On Saturday night I'm playing some songs on my guitar, at Sneaky Dee's, followed by some real bands. Exciting! This event costs $5. Explore the fascinatingly weird coincidence of me playing a show at a bar that is a prominent location in Scott Pilgrim Vol 4, and is depicted in the secret pixel art on the back of my free postcard.

Very long post! That is all for now!

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I am involved in two panels - something about MANGA at 1 PM on Saturday, and something about GAYS IN COMICS at 4 or 5 pm also on Saturday. Note: I am not gay, but have been roped in as the Token Straight Guy (who writes a well-known gay character) for this panel. Other note: I would have more information, but the TCAF website is down right now, and so is my website, but hopefully everything will be back soon.

I just uploaded some more "official" Kupek stuff: the Nameless, Faceless Compilation, 18 songs, including this bonus track, "Born Slippy", an Underworld cover song that you may not have heard.

Kupek is my pen-name when I write and record songs, and this compilation has all my best stuff from 2002-2004, a time when I was reasonably prolific at it. (Since then I have, un-coincidentally, been doing a lot more graphic novels and a lot less of anything else.)

I know I said I would try to post something more interesting, but I decided to post something much less interesting instead.

In my continuing experiments with creating an online archive of songs I've made, here's another collection of music for you to download.

For the not-that-interested, here's one track to get: "You Just Don't Exist", a cover of a Plumtree song (recorded by me in May 2005, after finishing Scott Pilgrim Vol 2).

I put this set together in October 2006, then kind of forgot about it for a while. It's a good variety of miscellaneous tracks I recorded between 2002 and early 2006, stuff that never got included on the "official" collections, covers, junk. I tried to correct the sound on everything, so it shouldn't be too offensive to your ears. Some points of interest, some fun stuff, whatever.

Here's some more information on each track.

Awkward Songz is now available as direct mp3 downloads.

Awkward Songz is a split album that I did with my friend Jacob (aka Faux Photos) between 2003 and 2005-ish. I recently remastered all the tracks to try and make them less toxic to the ears. It's still not the best thing ever, but it's got some decent moments. In the course of remastering I also trimmed the length of some songs and added two "bonus" tracks.

(The story of the album is that it wasn't done but I accidentally deleted the working files so I had to release it as it was. At least with a few years of experience mixing songs I have corrected the sound slightly.)

If you just want to get one, I think my favourite song on the album is Jacob's "You Break My Art".

I will try to add the rest of my mp3s soonish.

--

Maybe tomorrow I'll talk about something else, less boring!

Apparently the Oni Press Wikipedia article has been flagged because it is suggested that Oni Press is not a "notable" company, and should be deleted. As everyone knows, there are plenty of Wikipedia articles about ridiculous crap, and I think a 10-year-old comics publisher with a good stable of creators and a solid library of works qualifies for an article.

SO: if you are a Wikipedia person, or a writer in general, and you know a little about Oni Press (or know how to Google the information), could you please go in there and rewrite the stupid article and cite sources and all that stuff? I would work on it, but I don't have the time (and I have a conflict of interest, sort of?).

Other news: I'm playing songs at Gus' Pub tonight. My guitar (which is really Hope's guitar, handed down from Hope's mom) is really old and the wood is splitting and it's a little buzzy. I could probably patch it up with like, duct tape, but that would probably wreck the finish. I need to take it in and get it looked at. We did that once in Chicago a few years ago, but it needs some more loving care, obviously. Anyway, clearly I can't do that until after the show, so hopefully someone will have a guitar for me to borrow, or maybe I'll just be ... reeeeally careful?

P.S. I got a few reference photos of Sneaky Dee's (see my previous entry), but if you were planning to go take pictures, I'm sure a few more wouldn't hurt. Like for example I can't remember what the floor looks like.

I am playing some songs in the setting of a bar next Saturday, February 10th, in Halifax. It takes place at Gus' Pub. This doesn't happen very often (or really ever), so if you're around you should come out. I plan to have a few drinks, play a few songs, and have a relatively good time. You can also watch the Stolen Minks do their thing, and Catriona Sturton is going to do some songs also (plus she might play some harmonica and stuff on my songs?).

Also, I'm doing a speaking thing at the North York Public Library on February 20th for Keep Toronto Reading. In relation to that, Book Buzz is hosting an online chat on February 19th, and they have my book "Lost at Sea" as one of their books of the month.

I put a new song on my purevolume page. It's a demo of this one song that i've been messing with for a few months. I played it at MoCCA if anyone was at that party thing where i played some songs or whatever. It's called Don't let the archons get you down. i guess it's about dealing with the perils of being alive and how you should try to enjoy yourself even though everything is extremely shitty.

I also noticed that they put up a two-part Hot Fuzz Comic-Con Video Blog, which might entertain you.

i wrote and recorded a new song that you can listen to and download from my purevolume thingy, called "don't bother". it's about... uh... a tropical storm... and... some stuff that's been on my mind, or something?

( lyrics, if you want them )

One last thing before I sign off for the weekend: I didn't have a chance to include this with the torrent because i was waiting to get permission to use the art. It's by Thomas Galloway, friend of my friend Will. I thought it was cute and made a nice cover. It's part of a larger drawing (here).

Anyway if you got the album, grab the cover image from flickr for your files!

http://www.scottpilgrim.com/bt/

I finally fixed this thing, so I would really appreciate it if a bunch of people could go in there and seed stuff for a while. Especially my "new album", Before the Beginning and After the End. That's twelve songs I've been slowly working on since last May, and some of you might like it. I think this is as official a release as it's going to get, so please seed (and let me know what you think of it).

I put the song "I'm Done" on my PureVolume player if you want to hear a sample (it's also downloadable).

The album / songpack / whatever doesn't have any cover art, but the zip file includes a .txt with all of the lyrics.

Everything on these songs was done entirely by me, because I'm an irrepressible egomaniac. (Track 2 is a cover of a song by the Microphones / Mt Eerie / Phil Elverum, done without permission or anything, but purely for fun and out of respect/admiration/etc. None of this material is intended for profit in any way.)

P.S. If you have some of the torrents already downloaded on your computer, and you are a nice person, could you please re-open them and seed for a while? Right now I am the only person seeding, which is sad for everyone.

http://www.scottpilgrim.com/bt/

this is kind of a sneak peek at the album i've been working on for most of the past year: "She's an inventor" is available for listening and downloading on my Purevolume page. This song didn't actually make the album, it's more of a b-side. Just a little ditty, but I think it sounds nice. I think I've learned a lot about production and stuff (I mean, as per home recording with only 3 pieces of gear plus a computer). so it's, uh, a bunch of ethereal faux-strings and piano plus a weird nintendo synth bass and drum track.

if you enjoy it, let me know what you think, 387 friends!! there are two other (older) songs on there, if you haven't heard anything by me before.

for my next trick, i will draw comics.

Oops, I had caps lock on.

I put up a new song ("It's all in your head") on my purevolume page for Kupek. if you want, you can stream it and download it. It's kind of rough but everything is there. It sounds pretty weird on the stream because of the way they compress it -- I don't know why? There's a lot going on in the mix? The guitars are very, uh... loud? In a ... complex... way? Maybe? The download sounds a bit better. This WAV i have right here sounds another huge leap better than that. So... uh... enjoy! It's only two and a half minutes long, if that entices you.

At this point I don't know if I will bring copies of the album to SPX. We'll see. Making actual CDs is such a pain in the ass, and not really worth the trouble, because nobody really cares. I mean, not enough to buy a crappy homemade CD. They care enough to download albums for free, which is fine. Anyway, Hope has decided she doesn't have enough time to finish the minicomic she was thinking of doing to go with my CD, so I'm on my own in terms of content, and I'm not really... I don't think my music is that good? But I enjoy making it, and I'm glad some other people get a kick out of it too. It's just not worth... money? On its own?

Hello to everyone who has me friended. This is like 230+ people at this point. I'm gonna do that thing and say if I don't know you (which is like 80% of you) and you feel like it, maybe you could comment and say hi? Or tell me if you liked the song? (Oh, wow, I'm ... begging for it... what a loser...)

The whole world is so fucked up that I'm kind of numb with it. I'm just trying to like, eat pie and try to make some comics that you enjoy and whatever. Hope and I might do some charity art auction stuff this coming week, so have your fat wallets at the ready. If anything bad has happened to you in the past week or is happening right now or will continue happening for the coming weeks and months and probably forever, you have my sincerest condolences.