James Thomson

Australian musician James Thomson is back in 2020 to release his third studio album: Golden Exile

Hi, my name is James Thomson.

I'm an Australian musician and songwriter based in Newcastle, NSW. I've been writing music for over 10 years and in this time I've released two albums - James Thomson (2013) and Cold Moon (2015).  These previous two albums were released through a fantastic Indie record label in Sydney called Laughing Outlaw Records.

Cold Moon (2015)

Cold Moon review/press clip

James Thomson (2013)

Live onstage with my band at Dashville Skyline Festival 2019

On top of making these albums, I have also toured Nationally/Internationally, played countless live shows and festivals, met interesting people and on rarer occassions - made lifelong friends. Music, in other words, has been a huge part of my life. 

In 2019, I travelled from Newcastle to Melbourne, to record my third full length studio album with engineer/co-producer Roger Bergodaz at Union Street Studios. We set aside seven days, arranged the band and then I booked some flights.  I'm extremely happy with how the sessions went - both the performances the band put down and the production ideas Roger and I came up with to suit the songs. Since the recording sessions, I have had the 9 original tracks from the album mixed and mastered [by Steve Smart at Studio 301 in Sydney].

In August 2019, I released the first single called 'Desire' from this new album, which you can find on Spotify, Bandcamp, Amazon Music, Apple music (etc.)  - or here on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSgmh1iqKHw

The title of my new album is Golden Exile - it has been my favourite album to write and record, and I think my best to date. I have always wanted to release an album on vinyl and this pozible campaign is all about making that happen for Golden Exile. Because the studio time, mixing, mastering, musicians etc. have already been paid for - I envisage this pozible campaign working as a kind of pre-order for a limited edition vinyl run of Golden Exile. If this pozible campaign is successful, I would aim to have the vinyl editions ready to ship by Mid-April 2020.  While this pozible campaign is running, manufacture of CDs will commence, with the expected release date for the CD and digital verisons of the album being 13.03.2020.

So if the reward you selected was (for example) both a CD version and a Vinyl version of the album, you would be mailed a CD version of the album on or around March 13th and then the vinyl version of the album would ship approximately 3-4 weeks later - simple! Of course if you live local to the Newcastle area I'm happy to deliver your copy of the album. There's also plenty of other options too; as well as vinyl/CD versions of the album, thers merch/t-shirts, songwriting sessions/lessons, live performances - or even just no reward at all if you want to contribute some much appreciated dollars towards this project.  

If you're interested in getting involved by making a pledge, then thank you very much in advance and feel free to get in touch if you have any questions or want to know more about the project/album.

Best,
James

This is the first time I've truly released a record 'independently' - its an exciting, daunting and expensive process. The expenses associated with studio hire, musician hire, the recording engineers fee's, flights to Melbourne and back to Newcastle, the mixing and mastering costs, CD Manufacture and everything else in between has been covered solely by me to this point. To date I've spend over $7000 on this record.

As you can no doubt guess, there is a lot of hard work, sacrifice and saving that goes into covering these expenses as a solo, independent artist.  I wouldn't have it any other way mind you, as the trade off for all this is a feeling of being completely intune, responsible and dedicated to each step in the long (at times challenging) process of releasing an album independently. But the simple truth is after all those aforementioned costs, in order to get this album manufactured on vinyl and out for people to hear as soon as possible, I will need a little assistance from new and old fans, friends, passers-by, drifters or anyone else in between to help make that happen.

My budget for getting this record pressed on vinyl is as follows:

Manufacture and shipping [200 Units] of Golden Exile' on 150gm Vinyl - $2900 [incl. GST]
Re-master tracks for Vinyl - $150 [Incl. GST]
Artwork/Design to suit vinyl template - $150 [Incl. GST]

TOTAL: $3200


This has been my favourite album to make, I'm excited to release it and hope that you are equally excited to hear the album.

Thanks for stopping by.

James Thomson