Happy Saturday to all you music lovers out there,

I hope your week has been fantastic.

On my side, my week has been great thanks to you joining me in the help-the-rAged project.

And r-Aged I have been.

I spent all my savings paying an English producer to record my album. We recorded 7 songs, great songs, with the wonderful Rob Ellis but by the end of 3 weeks in commercial studios the recordings and mixes were not finished enough to show to labels. 30,000 euros down and still no definite mixes, enough to make any artist freak out. Rob was hoping to mix with people that cost per day what I live on for 3 months…. err nice in theory but I am an indie artist, not Sony International….

Next i worked with the very talented Marc Collin- He said we just needed some synths which sounded great to me, but then he told me he wanted to take the songs in a more French direction. He said, you need to go to America to make the album you want to make or you adapt to France. I wanted to stay in France at the time, so I adapted.

(Word of advice to artists-Working with 2 producers with very different visions is not recommended. Especially on 3 different operating systems. Its like having a business meeting with 3 people- a person who only speaks chinese, a person who only speaks french and one anglophone… takes forever to communicate or come to an agreement about anything and neither person makes sense to the other anyway).

After I had finished working with Marc, recording 5 more songs in a new studio, with new musicians I had some pretty good unedited rough mixes but i still didn't feel I could show them to anyone in the states as they were too European and not quite finished. Maybe I was wrong, but that's what I thought at the time.

I thought it would be simple to get some U.S friendly mixes together but I spent a few weeks in America with a friend Jeff Moxley just trying to make the recorded instruments (audio its called) line up so we could do some rough mixes. It was exhausting.

Jeff works in Protools, Marc in Cubase, me in Logic. None of the files were sitting right which means the drums and voices and guitars are all playing in different places so the music sounds like one big mashed up mashedness, kind of like musical vomit. Its called not being "locked to grid". And when you have over 50 tracks/instruments all playing at different times, cleaning it up is like cleaning up a bomb site- overwhelming. Sending huge heavy files from France to LA across the web is not ideal and alot of the audio tracks were not even labelled so we had to rename them all- very laborious and so frustrating to say the least.

And unavoidable which was the upsetting part.

I cried many times- why didn't these producers all just work on the same system or at least work on a grid so this would be easier?

It was a disaster.

I left America with no real finished rough mixes to show to any Americans and foot surgery waiting for me in France.

I had foot surgery in November, got infected and had a haematoma-ed ankle the size bowling ball.

I went to Australia to recover and then went back to hospital on Christmas Day with a re-infected foot.

At the same time my manager said he looked for a label in France but couldn't find one with the mixes he had so it was " good luck to you nadeah" and I was left with a half finished album and no real support to finish it. 30,000+ euro's down the drain and no one wanting this album in France. Awesome DUUUDE!

This was January 2014

It was hard, really hard as I felt so alone with it ; A mess of an album with people saying HURRY UP but how do you hurry when you don't know where to go and you don't have the money to go there anyway?

That's enough stress to make anyone feel uncreative.

And a bomb site of audio to understand and sift through, some of which unusable due to some clumsy engineering (to be fair recording 9 drum takes in 2 days is a lot so it's normal that some details got missed…. kind of)

I had taken a huge risk and failed and now i didn't know what to do.

I asked Rob for the Original Files.

I took Marc's files.

I asked poor Warren my sound engineering partner to line them all up like I had done with Jeff.

It was daunting

We had to go through the whole tiresome process again.

Edit drums, make things line up, cry, yell, continue…...

At the same time a very dedicated fan by the name of "Isabelle" asked me where I was at with the new album. I told her I was screwed financially and morale-wise and within a week she helped me put together this kiss kiss project.

For some reason the collective power has impact.

Huge impact!

I feel inspired.

The people around me feel inspired (Nico and Warren thanks guys, Greg)

I can ask people to try mixes knowing I will be able to pay them.

I can meet with artwork people.

I am reminded there are a lot of people who want to hear this album.

And alot of people who are now part of this album

And I am definitely not alone with it anymore

So for that I say I thank you, from the bottom of my newly creative heart.

"Help- the- rAged": associez-vous au financement du nouvel album de Nadéah!