toxic frock

We have a prospective new drummer in the form of noondaydemon so it looks like we'll have to book some rehearsal time in the near future to see what she can do.

anisotropica has expressed an interest in playing lead guitar which would definitely be interesting, seeing as we've never officially had a lead guitarist before. We we still be able to claim to be punk I wonder?

I'm still hopeful we can find a bass player to try and fill the shoes of the mighty spidosaur - who incidentally we'll have back like a shot if he's interested - and if anyone would care to offer their services now's the time :)

Well I may be a deadbeat when it comes to mixing the new EP (I think I might have to buy a shiny new MacBook Pro if I want to motivate myself sufficiently) but never fear, publicity is near. You can now listen to our classic twisted sounds at:

• NME New Bands


• MySpace


• NME New Bands

We have a tentative title Dearly Departed and the artwork is in hand but mixing of the tracks is taking longer than I had hoped. So far the only completed mix is Coffee Hiouse Blues which you can preview on SoundClick. Other commitments allowing I intend to finish the mixing in time for a late-August or September release.

They say the internet is a wonderful place if you're a no-budget band looking for exposure so I've decided to put this to the test and have set up a few online sites where you can get at various tracks from our back catalogue. You can find us on MySpace, World Sentiment and SoundClick with more to follow as time allows.

Join us in spreading the message that garage punk is far from dead...

It's been a long time in the planning but it looks like we're on track for releasing a three-track EP this summer. You can listen to the first song Coffee House Blues at Soundclick.

Yesterday we received a very charming e-mail from Tracy Tyler, the lead singer of Chicago band Switch citing Toxic Frock as one of their inspirations. They have rather nicely included a link from their site to ours and next time we do a site update (one is probably due anytime soon) we will be reciprocating.

I don't know if this will be the beginning of a trend as I know that the transgender music scene is growing and thanks to yours truly a lot of people in that scene view us as part of it even though it's never been a major theme in our music or public image. However the fact that many of the bands coming through in that scene are aligning themselves with the harder rock and alternative scenes does sort of fit in well with where we've come from.

Perhaps it's time I dusted off last year's recording sessions and put together that new release I promised...

The TGMS Compilation Vol #1, featuring Black Witchcraft, has been nominated for a StoneWall Society Pride In The Arts Award in the Music Arts category. To me the StoneWall website is a navigation nightmare so I’m not exactly sure how one votes, but I’m sure those of you with an interest in such things will figure it out.

Visit our page at SoundClick.com to hear six of our tracks streamed live to your desktop.

The album Sindrome is still available from our website as a free download for those who want to burn their own copy, or you can ask feyeleanor nicely and she’ll burn you a copy including full colour cover art for a small consideration.

The Music Download page has been modified so that it no longer loads the full content of Sindrome for playing via Quicktime. Instead a track from the album is selected at random and played when the page loads, making it practical for people to download the album.

New material is in the works. More news to follow.

Talk about a busy day on the publicity front. Pamela deGroff has submitted a profile of the band for her music column in TGForum as a result of our inclusion on the TGMS Compilation album. Further info to follow.

Robert Urban has reviewed Black Witchcraft as part of his favourable review of the TGMS compilation on After Elton, a Gay- and Bisexual-oriented entertainment magazine. Not only is the review of the CD highly favourable in general, it’s also pretty complementary from our point of view as well >:)

To quote:
Track 8 – “Black Witchcraft” by Toxic Frock of London, U.K. Be very afraid!
The dark side of the trans world, (plus who knows what other demons), are conjured up here via the spooky mumbled invocations of this very, very weird band. As if slowly circling a bubbling cauldron of witches’ brew, the chanting casts its spell. The musical accompaniment to the subterranean sounding vocals on this song is so bizarre I can’t even tell what instruments are used. My best guess is a string quartet thru a fuzz box. “Black Witchcraft” culminates by morphing into a heavy metal dirge worthy of the first Black Sabbath album. To quote TF’s website, “This is not music for relaxation but an exultant hymnal to anarchic excess. You will never see this band live, never experience the tawdry disappointment associated with so many clay-footed musical legends. This is a band whose music reaches beyond the grave to stab two bloodied fingers in the air and scream a defiant “Fuck You!” at the bloated corpse of consumer-friendly unit shifters that passes for modern alternative music.” Like I said, be very afraid!

Not only do I recommend that you all go and read Mr Urban’s review, but please visit the album’s distribution site and purchase a copy. All proceeds are to go towards funding future compilations and helping transgendered musicians to make their presence and music known.

It seems that the UK charts are now accepting downloads from commercial sites as part of their listings.
So I’m wondering, should we break our non-commercial principle and deliberately prepare a single release for this new and potentially amusing outlet? I’d love to see us on Top of the Pops or CD:UK, acting like the Pistols on one of their good days...

Earlier I was looking at MusicTank, a music industry site aimed at business collaboration across genres, and in the events listing they refer to an upcoming “Creative Commons” seminar being held on the 27th.

As those of you who take an interest in Toxic Frock will have noticed, we release our material under an open-media license that in some ways is not dissimilar to the Creative Commons license. So why you may ask didn’t we use the CCL? Is it because we’re worried about the loss of control that the CCL represents?

Hardly. Our Anarchic Ownership License pretty much lets anyone do anything they like with our music (including using it as a WMD if they have sufficient amplification), but unlike the CCL it offers a little added protection: in the contractual exchange that is performed anyone who uses our music must either attribute its origins to us, or else give us a legal right to use certain pejorative terms about them until such time as they do attribute us.

You mean the Anarchic Ownership License is basically just a legal fiction to allow you to call greedy plagiaristic fuckers just that?

That’s right. The very moment we play our music to someone else we’ve lost control of it, so who gives a toss about fighting a rearguard action over something as pointless as what someone else chooses to do with it? But just because Mabus, Gog and Magog all decide to climb out of their sulphurous pit and launch the apocalypse to the soothing strains of Black Witchcraft (with which we have no basic problem - that would be their free choice after all and in no way is an endorsement by us of them) doesn’t mean that they have the right to tell the world that they wrote it, played on it, or produced it.

One thing that I am wondering though is whether or not we shouldn’t add a term requiring a disclaimer of endorsement as well as attribution. So say that Nike decide that Our First Waltz is the perfect muzak for their various factories world-wide, the license would then require them to tell absolutely everybody that their use of our material in no way indicated endorsement of their product, their company, their corporate philosophy, or their obvious desire to appeal to the mighty Black Pound [tm] of the goth-compatible economy.

Toxic Frock anthem Black Witchcraft is one of the twelve tracks featured on recently released compilation album TG Music Society Compilation Volume One, available from Trans-owned record label Pirate Princess Productions SoCal for $10.99 + S&H.

The album features tracks by twelve different artists/bands, each with a connection to the transgender scene, with all proceeds going to non-profit organisation Where_We_Stand.Org.

Six lovely copies of the Transgender Music Society CD dropped through the letterbox this morning and as soon as I get settled down to working for the day I'll be giving it a spin to see what it sounds like.

As the first commercial release to feature Toxic Frock it's a bit of a milestone in our usually dormant career >:)

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Last month saw the release of the new collector’s edition of :Sindrome: at hip North London club-night Playlist! along with the first ever public airing of Anything, possibly the definitive musical expression of anarchy.

Catherine Shoard writing in the Sunday Telegraph described my brutally honest assessment of the album as “appealing modest” which I think counts as a positive statement. Anyway, the album received a full plug in her article on Playlist! along with a brief description from our web-site “a melange of techno-lust and necrological social decay”.

This Saturday is yet again Playlist day, and I shall be premiering another track from the album during my DJ spot as well as hopefully distributing a few more numbered copies.

For the last six months current album Sindrome has been available as a free internet download only, but now you can have a physical copy burnt exclusively for you and with a unique serial number. For just £4 + p&p Eleanor will personally burn you a copy of the disc, print the artwork on a colour laser printer, hand-insert it into a slim-line jewel-case and ship it to your choice of address. It will still sound like unlistenable shit, but it really does look very pretty >;p

Sindrome will always be available free of charge from the website under the anarchic ownership license for those of you who either can’t afford a physical copy or don’t approve of this kind of commercial exploitation.

All proceeds to go towards supporting the site’s running costs - help us ensure that the album is always freely available to as many people as possible!

Saturday 26th February guitarist/producer Eleanor was in attendance at fashionable London club-night Playlist to distribute a few free CDs as part of a new guerrilla marketing campaign. Public response to the current album Sindrome was strong and mostly favourable.