Good news first is the usual order, right?

So the good news is that SURGE: Wordsongs & Soundtexts is essentially complete. We (Will and John) are triple-checking all of our 20 tracks and perfecting the mixes; within the next 48 hours, we’ll be sending them to the engineers over at DiscMakers for mastering and printing. We could not be prouder.

The bad news is that the damn thing came out too well for us to go forward with our original release plan. It would be unfair to our contributors, and to our potential listeners, to drop this diamond into a void, all shinied up and groomed, to reach only the ears of our friends and parents. Since we’ve usually been more interested in the quality of our work than its distribution, that easy route is very familiar. But when we listened to what we’ve got in our hands, we realized it was no longer an option.

So we’re pushing back a few weeks. We’re using that time to do this right: we’re having the album professionally mastered and printed on CDs, and furthermore we’ll be doing everything we can to make sure SURGE gets the exposure it deserves. We want this to be heard.

Here’s what you’ll want to know:

SURGE: Wordsongs and Soundtexts will be available on July 20th. It will be posted in its entirety on this website, www.listentosurge.com, where you can listen to the whole album free of charge. If you listen this way, we humbly request a small, totally voluntary contribution via Paypal to help defray our costs: SURGE was produced for love, not money, but it was by no means free to make!

By popular demand, we are also releasing SURGE in CD form. (Two CD’s, to be precise: at 2:25, it would not fit on just one disc!) The album will be available at CDBaby.com for $18. You can purchase directly from them, or access it via their digital and retail partners including Amazon, iTunes, Spotify, and many more.

In the meantime, please continue to check back with us from time to time. We’ll continue the occasional posting of album material: featured contributors, audio sneak peeks, album art, and more.

We hope that you’re as excited about this as we are! If so, there are a couple of ways we hope you’ll consider helping us out: promotion is not (yet) a strength for either of us, and while we’ll do everything we can to get this right, we could use you assistance in a couple of ways.

Tell us about yourself. Seriously! Who are you? Why do you like SURGE? Our message must give a clear picture of our audience, and you can help us paint that picture. (We might share what you say as a testimonial, but never without asking first.)

Social media. The usual: like us on Facebook! Share the site! Share anything that caught your ear! If you were into this, it’s a fair bet you know somebody else who would be — don’t keep them in the dark.

That’s all for now. Thanks for your patience. As a reward and a teaser, here’s the pre-master version of Letters I: To the Mother of Norberto Renteria, the first of a six-part cycle spread throughout the album: