GO STREAM MY ALBUM FOR FREE, FROM NOW TILL RELEASE ON MAY 13!

After the way you guys came through on that MTV voting a few weeks ago, (80,000-90,000 VOTES?!) it got me to thinking. 

I thought about when my last album came out, and debuted at #19 on iTunes hip hop and I watched all day, as it climb up the charts to #9...all because of y'all.  People wrote me, saying they bought my album just to see it go up the charts, people who never buy stuff from itunes, and people who bought my album MULTIPLE TIMES...just because they wanted to see me win.

I thought about so many conversations i have had with you guys, online, at the merch booth, in the street, and even in the middle of the GAT DAMN dance floor at 5AM, during the Prince memorial dance party at first ave last week!  Having total strangers come up to me, and tell me, what a song of mine, or an album of mine means to them.  Or how it helped them get through a rough patch, or how a couple fell in love to my song, or met at my show, or walked down the aisle to "oceanwalk"...it means the world to me.

You guys have given me SO MUCH over these years, rode SO HARD for me, and supported me, my music, my friends, given me a platform to stand on, and always taken the time to listen to my records, as i bounced through genres, and styles, and grown into the artist i am today. 

After i did some thinking, i got talking with my labels, and my team, and we all agreed, that we were tired of waiting, and tired of making you guys wait, and you guys have been so good to me, that we thought, "Fuck it!  Let's give it to 'em early!"

So, as a small token of our appreciation for everything you have done, from now, until its release on May 13th, we are going to make my new album available to stream for free, from my soundclound.

This album is a big step for me, as an artist, and a human, and honestly, i think it is the best thing i have ever made.  And it would have never have been possible for me to make this record, to live this life, to see the things i have seen, to tell these stories...if it wasn't for y'all.

So thanks, for the support, for showing me your world, for sweating, and for singing your god damned lungs out at so so so many shows.  This is going to be an exciting year, an exciting release, and this is just the beginning. 

I am so happy that you guys are here, to be apart of it all.

Thanks again,

   *andy

ENJOY: https://soundcloud.com/astronautalis/sets/cut-the-body-loose

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     My first time in New Orleans was in the spring of 2006, six months to the day after Katrina hit.  A couple of my dear friends had made plans a year before to get married in the Crescent City, and, despite logic and all good sense, they remained undeterred.  Even after hell and high water had come to Louisiana.

    Now, I am from Florida, i have seen Hurricanes, but i have never seen anything like that, even six months after the storm had come and gone.  Beyond the simple difficulty of trying to navigate and city with no street signs or stop lights (without a GPS or a smart phone), there was far more shocking scenes of destruction, none more shocking than the miles and miles of destroyed cars that had been intentionally deposited, and organized under the elevated highway of interstate 10.  Cop cars crushed flat, a stretch limousine filled with mud, and ambulances with high water marks.  It was a truly overwhelming, and unsettling symbol for everything that city had been dealing with.  Yet, through all of this destruction, you saw people working, struggling, and fighting to get their lives back, to build their homes back, and in the case of the happy couple, start their life together, despite the forces outside themselves, working against them.

    Years later, i found myself in an old Slovak mining town called Čadca, which didn't need a hurricane to bring it to it's knees.  The mines took care of that when they went bust years before.  But, when i got a Facebook message from some guy named "Twiggy" asking me to play a show there, I, of course, said yes.  They cleared out the top floor of a coffee shop, set up a little PA, and folks packed into that little sweat box and got the fuck down!  This isn't the kind of show you take for the money, prospects are low in rural Slovakia, and folks are more inclined to scrape their euros together for Beer and Tatransky Caj (a local liquor made of herbs)...not merch.  And who could blame them?  And still, despite an economy collapsing under them, and a town declining around them, people came out, danced, drank, sang, made out, made do, and made the best of what they had.

    Later, on that same tour, (or perhaps the next one?  They blur together sometimes) we were booked to play a show in a really legendary squat in Bern, Switzerland called the "Dachstock".  The Dachstock has been putting on shows in it's main room (which holds 2000 people) since 1987, in addition to the small room, the cultural center, the restaurant, and the artist housing, it is quite an astounding compound...and it is entirely illegal.  Think of the nicest big venue in your town, and the Dachstock probably has better sound, a better paid staff, and takes far better care of their artists, and again, IS ENTIRELY ILLEGAL.  To an American, this seems impossible to conceive, and so naturally i was full of questions.  Which i dumped on the club's front of house engineer after soundcheck was finished.  I asked her if the government has ever tried to shut them down, to which she casually replied, "Ja, every few years, some politician will send the cops to try and stop us".

"Well, what do you do?!"  I asked, naively.

"We lock them out", she responded, as plain as can be.

Realizing, i was already looking like a dumb American, and there was no point in trying to cover my tracks, i doubled down, and asked, "Well what do they do, when you lock them out?"

"Most of the time, they get bored, and they go home, sometimes they try to come in"

"And when they try to come in?"

"We fight them!", she said in a tone, that translated in any language as "DUH!"

Coming from America, at a time when established, iconic venues in Seattle, and Austin, where getting shut down because of gentrification and condo expansion, the idea that a club would not only ignore the protests of the city officials, but repeatedly fight the cops to keep their doors open, and WIN?!  All of this because they want to keep outsider music and art thriving in an otherwise, very conservative city.  This is was nothing short of mind-blowing.

     The more i tour, the more I travel, the more i see things like this, people working against, or around, the large forces pushing them down.  People sidestepping the rules, ignoring their kings, killing their masters, and instead of running to the arms of their gods for help or comfort, they are running away.  They don't let the size of the storm drown them, or the depth of the void swallow them whole, and the cops don't have weapons strong enough to crush them.  Everywhere i go, i see people who are undeterred, unwavering, and in turn unstoppable in their relentless pursuit of a full and happy life.

     And that is the most inspiring thing i have ever seen.

OUT MAY 13TH!  PREORDER NOW! 

OUT MAY 13TH!  PREORDER NOW! 

HERE WE GO FOLKS!!!  PRESALE IS ON! 

PRESALE THROUGH SideOneDummy:

 https://sideonedummy.com/store/artist/astronautalis/1

THEN, HEAD ON OVER TO ITUNES TO COP THE INSTANT DOWNLOAD OF "RUNNING AWAY FROM GOD":

 http://snip.ftpromo.net/cutthebodyloose

EUROPEAN PRESALE THROUGH CARGO RECORDS:

 http://www.amazon.de/Cut-Body-Loose-Astronautalis/dp/B01CV04F9I/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1457947859&sr=8-6&keywords=astronautalis

ORDER ON CD THROUGH AMAZON EUROPE:  

 http://www.amazon.de/Cut-Body-Loose-Astronautalis/dp/B01CV04F9I/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1457947859&sr=8-6&keywords=astronautalis

VIDEO COMING SOON!