Damian Cowell, That Guy From TISM, Has A New Project

Damian Cowell, the artist formerly known as the drummer from TISM, is working on an adventurous new project that includes a double concept album and a web series and he has taken to Pozible to fund it.

Cowell was a member of TISM and has operated his own projects ROOT!, The DC3 and Damian Cowell’s Disco Machine. This new one will most likely be released as the later.

Damian Cowell will use his Pozible funding to develop a web series around a double concept album. “It is a double concept album which when you think about this modern era of byte-size chunks of music being consumed on playlists on streaming services, it is quite irrelevant of me to come out with a concept album,” Damian tells Noise11.com. “I had to find some way of telling the story that I could afford to do that suited it. I came up with the idea of it being like a comic book. Inside the frames the people come alive like the paintings in Harry Potter. It is a YouTube series so each episode of the YouTube series is a song and it builds up to tell this ridiculous story.

The project has a name. “Its called ‘Only The Shit You Love’ and it’s a love story set in a dystopia which is rather hauntingly exactly like the world we live in,” he says. “‘Only The Shit You Love’ applies to life as we know it because of the way our experiences are being curated for us by megarich corporations. The songs we like, the clips we choose, the shows we watch, the news that we get, the opinions we read, if you want to take that sinister world view is all being curated behind the scenes according to our tastes”.

After just a few days of the crowdfunding exercise Damian has raised $17,210 of the $20,000 projected budget.

https://www.pozible.com/profile/damian-cowell

Here is the Damian Cowell bio:

TISM wore masks and performed under pseudonyms.

But the rest is more interesting: 20 years, 7 albums, 2 ARIAs, at least one lawsuit, top 10, TV Week, Big Day Out, programming Rage, being called ‘Scum’ by Nico, quoting James Joyce to bogans and James Hird to intellectuals, doing radio interviews with a motor mower, performing two songs simultaneously from both ends of a venue, talking to the rock press via megaphones and 50 metres of string, making the guy from Rolling Stone wear a wetsuit, becoming a recurring question in TV quiz shows – if you want the boring version, check out Wikipedia.

Deciding his youthful good looks had gone, Damian Cowell ‘came out’ in public in 2007. He released two albums as the front-man of ROOT!

In 2011 he was commissioned by David Walsh to create a soundtrack for his Museum of Old and New Art (MONA). The soundtrack was titled Vs Art. It is only available in MONA. He released two albums as front-man of The DC3. In 2013 he combined music and surreal monologues to present ‘The Ringtone Cycle’ at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and ‘Modern Unconsciousness’ at the Melbourne Fringe Festival, to rave reviews.

His writing has featured in a range of publications from The Age to The Kings Tribune. The ABC has commissioned him as an ‘arts commentator’.

Noise11.com