From: "Smith, Brian"
Subject: Got this letter the other day.....
Get ready.....
I wrote to Steve Kilbey last week, and he wrote back !! (Thought I'd get right to the point.)
I sent him a one page letter consisting of the following: telling him (briefly) about myself, quite a bit about e-mail and this group, and a couple of other little things. The only direct question I asked was about a "Church movie short" they did a while back. I also asked him if I could take questions from all of you and send them to him. Anyway, here's his answer.
Dear Brian
Thanks for your letter.
The Blurred Crusade film was actually only Almost With You and You Took videos which is mostly available on our video collection thing.
At the moment I am writing some auxilliary songs for the Church album with M.W.-P. and a little bit of musical pottering about in my own studio. Jack Frosts second Album to be entitled "SNOW JOB" is coming along slowly but slowly. But what we have is good.
GOOD LUCK WITH THE E MAIL
STEVE KILBEY
From: mosk (Morten Skjefte)
To: seance@thechurch
Subject: Oh wow! Way cool!
I received this letter yesterday. I am not a 100% sure who it's from, no sender info on the envelope, no letterhead, and only a couple of initials at the bottom of the last page to go on, but I think I have a pretty good idea of who it is...
I think you all may find this interesting, so here it is in it's entirety, complete with misspellings and punctuation errors, except for a couple of Swedish letters which I can't reproduce over the net...
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Hej Morten,
Tack for brevet. Visst, jag kan prata eller skriva svenska, atminstone att prata med mina barn som prata svenska och engelska darfor dom har en svensk mama.
Well heres afew answers anyhow. There will be a new Church l.p. called "Sometime, Anywhere" released in Jan/Feb 94. The first 25,000 copies will have a free C.D. with 8 new songs, included is a song called "Drought" which was recorded in Amsterdam in 88 with Ploog still in the group. You hear a little bit on those in between excerpts on our video goldfish. Its been lost for 5 years and has just been turned up. The master tape has been lost and we have to release the monitor mix of the song which luckily isn't too bad. Peter Koppes is out of the group simply coz hes "had enough" Who can blame him? Marty + I did the album ourselves with him playing 75% guitar and 25% bass and me vice versa. An Australian drummer call Tim Powles played drums on all but 2 tracks. He is a great drummer. Marty + I produced it, Dare Mason co-produced + engineered + mixed it. It was recorded at my studio "Karmic Hit" and mixed at 301. The songs are: Loveblind, Day of the Dead, Angelica, Fly Home, Two Places at Once, Lost my Touch, Lullabye, Cut in Two, My Little Problem, Dead Mans Dream, Time Being, Eastern, The Maven.
The Free L.P. entitled "Somewhere Else" will contain the following. "Business Woman, Drought, Macabre Tavern, Authority, Myths you Made, Leave your Clothes on, Freeze and Burn.
Although I have quite a few tracks in the can, I have no plans to release them at the moment. I am, however working on a new Jack Frost with G.W. Maclennan which is turning out great!
Unsubstantiated belongs to Capitol Records and they will do with it whatever they will, but if we can get it back, I'll try to make it available.
I have a song on the Sountrack of "Reckless Kelly" an Australian film. The record is released through Mushroom Records but maybe Warners will release it in the U.S. It's not a bad song, worth tracking down, possibly. The song is called "As you Like it".
I am in the process of starting up my own label called "Karmic Hit" and will be releasing my own solo work plus records by Curious Yellow, Warp Factor 9, Bhagavad Guitars, Fake and a few others. The music is all of a similar aesthetic and people will hopefully like all the records on the label. Some of it is absolutely excellent, I think.
I have produced an album + co-written with Canadian singer Mae Moore, whose album "Bohemia" is just released in U.S.A. by Sony / Tri-Star. Recommended if like the Joni Mitchell type of trip. I have produced + cowritten another album on EMI in Australia with Australian Singer Margot Smith. This album is definitely worth the trouble of finding from import shops. She posesses an exquisite voice and the songs are uniformly excellent. The album is called "Sleeping with the Lion"
Hope that answers a few questions.
Love S.K.
-----
Needless to say, I am walking around in a daze... Three pages, all handwritten by the Man Himself! And all that information!!! I bet certain magazines would kill to get that pre-release info! I guess he must have been pretty bored that day, because I didn't ask for the track listing, but I did mention that it sometimes was hard to find or even know about the stuff they released over here. I guess that's why he took the time to mention everything.... He did not answer my question whether there would be a live Church album released....
The only problem is, the only proof that it is him, is the initials at the bottom. I'm going to have to ask him to sign his full name next time! :-) And you bet there will be a next time!!! :-)
Is it January yet?????
-morten
From: mosk (Morten Skjefte)
To: seance@thechurch
Subject: Letters, letters, letters.....
Here's a thingy that ended up in my (snail)mail box last week. It should be fairly self-explanatory...
---------------------------------------------------------------
Hej Morten,
Sitting here, it's Christmas night, very warm, on my own. Thought I'd answer a few of your questions though I must confess record collecting type questions are not my strongpoint. But here goes.
1. Correct. "S.N.S. + I.A.H." are the first Aust single. "She N. S." is just a different mix (quite different).
2. There never was a version of Heyday with instrumental tracks. Although recently in Thailand I puchased a bootleg Gold Afternoon and it had an extra instrumental track at the end called "Into the Light" which was some sort of jazz fusion thing, but I've no idea who it's actually by, certainly not the Church. I've seen ads in various collectors mags for the Heyday with 2 instrumentals for lots of money. I wonder if it originated via Thailand?
3. I was asked to do something "Christmasy" for a benefit record for a Kids hospital. I knocked that song off in a couple of hours at home when I was Eight track. I can't remember much about it at all.
4. Redeye was never my label. Although me and my 2 brothers + Karin were on it, we never had any part of it business wise. We all left too, at the same time as Redeye took on new directions and new acts. We need a label thus the formation of Karmic Hit.
5. No new Curious. Karin has made a record called "Invoice" with Boris Gudonov who works with all of us now. He is a brilliant musician and techno-boffin. It's an unbelievable good record. Also seek out as imports: The Bhagavad Guitars album "Hypnotized" (Youngest Brother Johns now defunct band great album tho) and Warp Factor Nine another group with Boris, John K and Russel K (my other brother) the album is called Five Days in a Photon Belt and it's beautiful stuff. It's out thru Polygram.
6. No more plans for Asphalt Eden....too many new things to do.
7. I came across a cache of my "Earthed" books (not the booklet a la Ryko) and wondered if anyone out there would still like a copy. If so they can send me U.S. $20 as a postal note or whatever, however money is sent and that will include postage and package - all autographed. These are the last 50 from the Two Thousand I originally printed up. Worth 40 pounds on the continent! Can send it to P.O. 56 etc. (What a breadhead eh?)
Also did I tell you I had a track on the soundtrack of an Australian film "Reckless Kelly" an awful film, but my song is quite o.k. It's on Mushroom and shouldn't be too hard to import. Seek out also a record called "Used + Recommended by" on which a band called Ripe does a great version of Milky Way (better than ours in fact) (on Mushroom too).
O.K
Love + Karlek
and
etc etc
Steve Kilbey
^
| authentic sig.
---------------------------------------------------------------
The address he's talking about is:
Mr. Steve Kilbey,
P.O. Box 56,
Rozelle,
N.S.W. 2039,
Australia
And the authentic sig thing is because I asked him to sign his full name (instead of the S.K. that he did on the previous letter). And the envelope even had "Kilbey, Aust" as sender on it... I guess there's only one... :-)
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