Jack Merlot's 'Orchids' Album now available FREE

Hey folks -

Cool beans, it looks as if Jack Merlot has released his most recent album, 'Orchids for Betty', for FREE download at his website today.

So, head on over to Jack's website and grab a copy before the site gets swamped! Right now it's downloading pretty fast, but it's only 8:00AM, so nobody's quite awake yet (at least in THIS time zone. ;-)

- Mark

The Lunalux Redesign Goes Live

Without further ado, it is my pleasure to present to you the Lunalux website redesign.

The new design incorporates a variety of enhancements and upgrades, and has a completely new look and feel as well.

To summarize:

  • Fluid, three-column layout automatically resizes the content to fit your browser.
  • 100% CSS-based layout, no tables involved.
  • CSS drop-down menus for the main navigation.
  • Context-sensitive sidebars transform themselves depending on where you are on the site.
  • The post archive has been completely redesigned, and has a CSS fly-in menu*.
  • Attractive tag cloud courtesy of Jenni Undis.
  • RSS syndicated photo feeds from Flickr's "letterpress" pool.
  • Letterpress-related links section automagically changes on every page load.
  • SEO techniques have been deeply incorporated into the site.
  • Related posts show up in contextually appropriate places.
  • The typography has been updated to reflect a more contemporary look and feel.

*This may not however be working with Internet Explorer just yet; I don't have a Windows machine around to test it so it might be a little while.


There is still a lot of work to be done on the site, but it's coming along nicely and is (mostly) functional as of this morning.

We're busy building out the e-commerce engine and loading it with products, so that should be online within the next few weeks or so, which will allow Lunalux sales representatives to restock their wholesale items, as well as making the Lunalux product line available to the general public.

New CD covers

We went ahead and fired up the ol' Heidelberg printing press today at Lunalux, and pushed out 250 letterpress CD covers for the new album.

I will be numbering and signing each cover by hand, since it's a limited edition, and the artwork looks really great. Suitable for framing, some would say. Lunalux never fails to deliver top-quality results, that's for sure. I'm thinking of getting some of my line art printed there next, which would be pretty wild.

I still haven't canceled the plates, yet; I'm actually thinking that rather than canceling them, I'll go ahead and mount them in a shadowbox with the original drawings, the film negatives, and some of the first test runs off the press (as well as the perennial favorites, the Artist's Proofs, which were struck in much stronger relief than the standard prints.)

I know some purists out there might claim that it's cheating, but I really don't know if I can bring myself to do it. Besides, the plates are only one indicator of a limited edition; you can always tell by looking at other variables (i.e. the inks being used, the paper, slight variations in layout, etc), so I don't really think it's a big deal.

Besides, what if twenty years from now we decide to reprint another run? Sure, we can always make more plates from the negative (or even send the digital artwork back to our suppliers, I guess), but in any case, I think I'm too attached to the album at this point to limit our future possibilities.

The masters we got back from Diamond Fiction sound really great, and I'm looking forward to pressing the disks and designing the disk label this week. The demo tracks we've published have been getting good pre-release reviews at AmieStreet, AloneTone, Last.fm, ReverbNation, and elsewhere.

I also helped Jack set up a podcast for the website now, which is live, so you can head on over to the website and subscribe it right into your cute little iTunes or whatever. We've been giving away free tracks a few times a week now, and it's pretty cool to hear some of the reactions from longtime friends and new fans.

Also, if podcasts aren't your thing, you can actually subscribe to our email newsletter at the site as well, which means you'll get the free singles sent directly to your inbox instead of having to deal with a PodCatcher, if that's not your thing.

Anyway, good things are afoot, and I'm pretty pleased with the direction we've taken lately, so kudos to our friends at Lunalux, our family for being so helpful and patient and generous with their time and support, and to our fans for making this a possibility.

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