Brian Ralston's
SelfTort

In about 2005 I was informed by the late Kat Speel of a website called Mixposure which had a great community feel. I joined the site and the next four to five years were the most productive, musically, of my life. As someone who had not, at that stage, released any original music I was able, with the support of my fellow "Mixers" able to release 2 CDs of original material between 2006 and 2010.

During my time with the original mixposure I came to meet some wonderful musicians and had the opportunity of collaborating with many of them. This CD includes 4 of the collaborations I was involved in with people I had met there: Nigel Potter ("Just Keep Breathing"), Mel Barnett ("Hold Me Back"), Carol Douglas ("Two Grand Wager") and Lex Zaleta ("Once is Enough"). 

There still exists a mixposure.com and it remains a great site. However, sadly the arrival of new toys such as myspace, facebook and other social media platforms conspired to reduce the amount of time which people were able to spend on any one site, and whilst there remains a great sense of community at the current mixposure, sadly, and through no fault of the owners or members of the site, it just can't reach the height of community that was generated by the original site in those halcyon years.

David Pendragon and Brian were both members of a site called Mixposure in the early 2000s. By the time of Brian's arrival at the site, however, David had largely moved onto other endeavours and projects although he still had a significant presence on the site in terms of quality of music he had contributed to the site and a reputation as an acclaimed producer. Brian and David did not actually cross paths on the site, but each knew of the other, and, as is the way, they inevitably became Facebook friends. In early 2013 David posted on Facebook of the arrival of some new microphones that he wanted to try out and offered discounted rates for those who got in early to act as "guinea pigs" for the new purchases. 

At that stage Brian had recorded two CDs of material under the performing name of "Self Tort". The songs on these two CDs were recorded as is Self Tort were in fact a band with Brian doing vocals and playing guitar and keyboard, with Stewart Havill who produced both CDs programming bass, drum and other sundry tracks. 

Brian thought that David's offer was an opportunity to record some of his material in a purely acoustic setting and after two days hard slog in David's "The Studio" in Canberra, ACT, Australia, some 8 tracks had been recorded of just voice and guitar. On reflection each of Brian and David came to the view that there would be merit in expanding on the songs with the addition of other musicians, whilst at the same time retaining the acoustic, almost folk style of the recent recordings.