Pre-ording info. to come as soon as Crunch Pod’s mail order goes back online…

As you may have read over on [syndika:zero]’s blog, they’ll be only doing the West Coast dates with C/A/T. It’s really unfortunate and I don’t really know who our support act will be now (if anyone) for the East Coast… that is apparently still up in the air and I’m supposed to get more details later tonight from the booking agency as to what will happen now.

So far, the only confirmed date heading East was in Champaign, IL. I’m hoping we can keep that date but the contract was signed for C/A/T & [syndika:zero] so I have no idea what will happen there.

Also, check out the new songs that [syndika:zero] uploaded to their page. I’m really impressed with their upcoming album and am pretty saddened they’re now not going to be able to bring this East with us.

Lastly, I’ve been busy trying to arrange some events for Captive Six so stay tuned for some updates regarding that soon as well.

I’m finally settled in to my new house and now that the tour is back out of my hands and control at the moment, I’m going to finalize the track listing for We Are Still Alive tonight and start post-production this coming week. As it will be an EP we’ll be doing the standard Crunch Pod deal of a limited number on disc and unlimited on digital distribution / MP3. I’ll be making slightly more of these than the Captive Six EP so we’ll have more for sale on the road in August / September.

Anyway, thanks so much for sticking with C/A/T through this tumultuous year for us that has been full of disappointments, broken promises and heartbreak.

-Ben

C/A/T

Wish I had better news… but I don’t.

Here is where the “In Chaos We Trust” tour stands for C/A/T & [syndika:zero]

August 6th – DNA Lounge :: San Francisco, CA (HexRx headlines)
August 10th – The Central :: Seattle, WA (Pill Brigade supports)
August 12th – Club Vegas :: Salt Lake City, UT (Cervello Elettronico supports)
August 15th – Club Skandal :: Riverside, CA

one off with both C/A/T and [syndika:zero] – August 18th – Club Atomix :: San Antonio, TX

Due to other obligations, [syndika:zero] cannot perform any dates after August 18th. As such any dates after August 18th are “tentative” at best and I’m scrambling to salvage at least a small mini-tour for C/A/T to hit some Midwestern and East Coast cities.

As you can probably imagine I’m beyond frustrated at this point as far as our live bookings have gone for 2009. As it stands we’ve played *one* show since October 2008 even though we’ve had no scheduling conflicts so far to prevent events from happening. Having now *four* tours either get canceled or severely shortened has pretty much sapped my desire to even do this anymore. The only thing keeping me even involved anymore is the flood of messages I’ve received on MySpace, VF.com, Facebook and email showing me that you guys give a shit and want to see us perform sometime this year. I’ll slog through this and do my best to make things happen, but please promise me you’ll show up to a gig near you and bring a friend. We’re set to more or less lose our asses this year financially in a best case scenario so just a few extra people at each show will help stop the money bleed a bit.

“We Are Still Alive” (honest, we are, despite what our lack of live shows this year may reflect) will still come out as planned and a huge way to support C/A/T right now would be to pre-order that when it’s listed in a few weeks as we’ll have far less dates than anticipated to support that EP.

“Chaos And Terror” will likely be pushed to 2010 at this point as we unfortunately do not have enough dates to justify releasing a new album in 2009. I’ve never had to sit on an album for 6+ months before release, but that is the unfortunate situation I find C/A/T in at the moment.

Also, as we have no clear plan apparently for Captive Six, I will take a huge gamble and still release “Let It Burn” as planned in October and hope I can manage at least a few one-off dates to support that album. I’ve begun that process today, but booking shows is definitely not a strong skill in my repertoire so we’ll see what happens.

I really wish I had better news, but unfortunately I do not.

-Ben Arp

Late June Update

Hey everyone -

Sorry for the sporadic or sometimes complete lack of updates. I hope to have a bunch of new tour dates and C/A/T & Captive Six related news very shortly.

While musically, we’re kind of in the “calm before the storm”… personally, I’m in the eye of a storm at the moment.

My wife, Kat (who you may remember from the live line-up), and I have been put into a situation where we had to move from the house we’ve been living in for the past three years. While we didn’t want to move, we didn’t really have any other viable option. We are in the process of moving now – just across town, actually only 3 miles from where I sit right now.

However, we’ve been dealing with a lot of obstacles that come up when you move AND we’re actually being harassed and spied on by our current landlord, despite there being no real reason for this person to be doing this to us.

Needless to say, this week is pivotal in the whole move process and due to the harassment and general fatigue due to the move itself and the weather, I haven’t been online or able to respond to things as quickly as usual.

Thank you in advance for your patience – we will get to everything as soon as we can – just know that we’re dealing with a LOT this week.

That said, this also affects the mail order as we run that as well… so I’ve been sending out the Captive Six “Noizemaker” EPs just as quickly as I can sign them, pack them and drop them off at the Post Office – amidst all of the chaos that is going on in our lives at the moment.

I just finished up some post-production with [syndika:zero] on their label-debut “Blindness” which is currently being mastered in Germany at the moment. And once I get my studio set up this weekend, will finalize the vocal recordings and have a new EP from C/A/T coming as well. We’ll be doing pre-sales for both C/A/T and [syndika:zero] starting in early July so I’ll be posting all over when those are ready to go.

Also, I know many of you have been commenting or sending us direct messages asking us to hit your area on the upcoming tour. We’re working on it. If you know your local club or promoter would want to bring us in on that tour, please have them contact Massmovement USA immediately so we can hopefully line something up. Their contact info. is: massmovement-usa@massmovement.de

So, that is what is going on. Hopefully my next update is more “music news” and less “personal life drama and stress”.

Take Care,

-Ben

C/A/T :: Captive Six :: Crunch Pod

1. Tour dates are currently being booked for our tour with [syndika:zero]. We have 3 already listed (San Francisco, Seattle and San Antonio) with more to come shortly. Any interested promoters should get in touch with Mark @ Massmovement-USA as he is handling the lion’s share of booking. These dates will be in August ONLY as that is when the tour is happening. If you want to book C/A/T outside of August, then please inquire about us doing a one-off show for you.

2. The EP “We Are Still Alive” is quickly coming together. I hope to post some finished tracks uploaded before the end of June on our MySpace / Facebook / VF.com pages.

3. I’m unfortunately moving across town later this month so I’ll be away from the internet on and off from June 18th until around the 26th. So, I may not update as frequently later this month for about a week. If you need to reach me about something from now until after our tour in August PLEASE be patient. I get a lot of messages and emails and it’s hard to respond to everything.

4. Due to the move mentioned above, plus writing an EP and two albums AND prepping for tour I will NOT be able to complete or begin any new remixes until September at the earliest. I apologize for anyone who was hoping to get a remix out of me any time soon but it’s just not going to happen. I appreciate your understanding in patience. Get in touch in early September and we’ll talk.

5. I just released the debut EP of my side project, Captive Six, digitally. It should be up on all of the iTunes / Amazon / etc. shops by the end of this week and is already on many of them. If you buy direct from http://www.crunchpod-distro.com/ you get an extra track and have the option to pick up the limited disc verison as well.

6. Our label, Crunch Pod, just released a free sampler of the label’s most recent releases. You can grab that at http://www.crunchpod.com/screaming

7. My email was not working properly right around the time we were hiring for an additional live keyboard player. I apologize in advance if you tried contacting me via email but I most likely did NOT receive your message. We HAVE filled the position and Dr. White will be debuting with the band at some point in 2010. Thanks to everyone who contacted us and sorry again to anyone who may have had their email bounce or never get to us.

That’s all for now.

-Ben
C/A/T

Force Of Nature is please to announce the release of FON17: L’Echec de la Matiere as a FREE internet download.

L’Echec de la Matiere is an eclectic compilation of remixes and re-interpretations of tracks originally found on FON10: Triomphe de la Matiere by Perfection Plastic. All tracks are 320k CBR mp3s and a PDF of the artwork is included.

Many thanks to all the bands and their labels for contributing to this release and allowing us to give it away for FREE. Many of these bands are very well known and established in their respective genres and they have graciously agreed to provide their work here at no charge. If you can show some financial appreciation for this work, please consider buying their music from one of the links noted in the tracklisting found on

http://www.forceofnature.cc/releases/?rid=FON17

Follow the link above to download this FREE album.

-Ben

C/A/T and Captive Six

Hey,

To support our upcoming album “Chaos And Terror”, C/A/T is now booking a US Tour for August 2009. We’ll be bringing along our labelmates [syndika:zero] who will be touring in support of their label debut “Blindness”.

We’re booking this thing ourselves so if you’re interested in bringing this tour to your city, please contact: booking@​crunchpod.​com and either myself or Paul from [syndika:zero] will get back to you with more information.

Thanks for reading and we hope to see you out on the road soon!

-Ben
C/A/T

www.​crunchpod.​com/​cat/​
www.​myspace.​com/​syndikazero

I can finally announce that the next C/A/T album, “Chaos And Terror”, will be coming in August 2009.

We’re doing it a bit differently this time around. We’re going to be submitting the album to digital distribution (ie. iTunes, Amazon, eMusic, etc.) the minute we have a final master. This means it will be at the whims of the various digital sites and could be available as early as a month before the official release date. I feel I’ve been putting this album and news about it off for far too long and I want it out there as quickly as possible since I’m done being patient.

That said, the disc version is going to be available for pre-order from Crunch Pod Mail Order the day we send it to digital distribution – likely 4 – 6 weeks before the actual release date. The first 100 pre-orders will get a signed copy of the disc and (we’re still working out the exact details) will get a link to an mp3 version of the album upon pre-ordering.

Also, and this may change – but is the current plan, will be doing either a limited version of the album with bonus tracks OR a limited “tour only” EP that we will be selling exclusively on our upcoming tour dates.

I can’t really get into specifics just yet, but I’ve been sitting on a bunch of this info. for a while now and can finally do this, Plan A – so to speak – so the “Vacant” single I posted about last week (part of Plan B that is no longer relevant) will likely be postponed or canceled now that I can forge ahead with the full album as I had hoped.

Also, once I get a few more bits of info. back over the next few days – I can finally announce what the touring plans for C/A/T will involve for 2009. Sorry again for everyone who has been asking when we’re playing this year… it’s been kind of crazy and a lot things we never imagined would happen – well… happened.

Furthermore, I’m in the middle of the final mixdown for the debut, digital only, EP for my new project Captive Six. It features a re-mastered version of the C/A/T track “Noizemaker” from way back in 2001 as well as 2009 version of this track by Captive Six along with two exclusive tracks called “The Joke” and “Shut Down Everything”. I’ll have samples up for that on the project’s MySpace and VF.com pages once I get the final masters in – and then of course give purchasing info. once it starts showing up on the digital distribution sites.

Sorry this is so long, but I’ve been holding back a lot of info. and wanted to get it out there so people know what is up since a lot of crazy stuff has been said through the grapevine the past week or so.

Thanks for reading,

-Ben
C/A/T

June.