5 Years

Hope your new year is getting off to a great start! We haven’t forgotten about you. Thanks for thinking about us.

On January 16, 2008, we uploaded “Dark Lotus” to OurStage.com. The next day, we shared “Automatic Doors”. OurStage uses judging software to allow its users to listen, judge, and rank artists’ music. If you haven’t used their service to discover new bands, we’d highly recommend it. Full disclosure here: we may be a little biased. Per this month’s report, 5 years later, “Dark Lotus” and “Automatic Doors” remain in the top 20 in their respective genres.

5 years.

Thanks, guys. That’s quite an accomplishment and we share it with you.

-Mason

Updates

I realized it had been a while since we posted about what we’ve been up to, so I wanted to take a moment to share some news with you. First, 2011 was one of a’tris’ most productive years. Last year, we wrote and demoed 22 new songs, over 2 albums’ worth of material. As many of you know, each song was released in the form of a music video on YouTube. Some of these videos featured public domain footage while others were conceived and created by our friends at Bouncing Ball Films. Each song featured an original logo by either alphabetica design or the band and we wanted to thank every one who purchased one of our logo shirts at the a’tris merch store. While we set out to do all of these things once every week, when the dust settled, we averaged one demo every two weeks. We’re totally cool with that.

Did you miss some of our videos? Click the above image to see an archive of our work.

Last year, we had the pleasure of collaborating with Tiger Darrow on a few songs. One of our favorites was a cover of Jonathan Seet’s “A Million Hungry Eyes,” which you can check out here. Tiger recently released a new music video for her song, “Machines.” We’re big fans of what she’s doing and have already begun collaborating with her on something new. We think you’re going to really like it and will keep you posted.

This year is already off to a great start. “Dark Lotus” was the second most popular rock video on Ourstage last month. That puts an a’tris song in the top 10 for 12 months. Craziness. Seriously, thanks for all of your support! Until the next post, we hope to see you on Facebook and Twitter.

-Mason

a’tris Featured on OurStage

Allison at OurStage just posted a piece about OurStage artists who are gearing up for 2011 releases. First artist tagged on the list, yours truly. Check out what she had to write about us below. You can read about some of the other great acts who were featured by clicking here.

Thanks Allison!

A’tris – OurStage resident rockers A’tris have been a constant fixture on the OS charts since debuting in the Music Video Channel in 2008. Since then they’ve gained recognition in genres across the board, including alternative, electronic, electro-pop and rock, in addition to going strong with videos. Suffice it to say they’ve got a ton of material, so their plan for putting out a new demo every week in 2011 seems totally appropriate. The band is asking for fans feedback on each track and will eventually use all that input to put together their new album. You can read blog posts and descriptions of the demos when they’re released each week right on A’tris’ Web site.

A’tris – One Demo Released Every Week of 2011 – www.atrishq.com

Numbers are cool.

Here are some numbers that made me smile almost as much as the sugar rush I had last night

As you can see, “Selling Oxygen” is currently the 7th most popular alternative track as chosen by Ourstage users this month. How sweet is that? We’re pretty stoked that the music from Lensing, despite having been released over a year and a half ago, is still continuing to resonate with audiences and find new listeners.

Here’s another cool cap for you. This one shows the current position of our music videos. It’s really awesome to see that they’ve continued to stay in Ourstage’s Top 10 as well. “Dark Lotus” is number 5 in rock videos and our performance video for “This Mortal Engine” is also in the fifth spot. W00t!

Ourstage’s community is made up of smart and savvy tastemakers like yourself. We’re honored to see our music continually championed there.

Another great place to check out new and emerging artists is Somojo.net. And, as many of you may have seen, a’tris was recently nominated for Somojo’s band and alternative artist of the year awards! Would you like to see us take this one home? If so, please take a moment to vote at
http://www.somojo.net/index.php?t=polls
.

Hope this finds you feeling healthy!

-Mason

What do Ourstage, Meat Loaf, and Neara Russell have in common?

To answer the question I posed in the title of this post, we love them all!

When I signed on Twitter today, I saw this awesome message from our friends @ourstage:

How cool is that? Those guys are the best!

The above picture was taken by our awesome friend, Brooke McGowan

A couple of days ago, I had the chance to catch up with Nate. Our meeting was actually entirely unplanned. Ben was playing a show at The Local, a great bar in NYC, with his jazz trio and I came out to support. I had no idea that Nate had the night off from his tour and was in the area. When I felt a pat on the back, I was totally not expecting him to be there behind me. I was also totally not expecting to discover that the sound guy who was working with Bens’ band was actually an old roommate of mine from college. How crazy is that? This music biz is a small one.

After Ben’s show, Nate and I ducked out to let him schmooze with the crowd and headed off to Café Vivaldi to catch the last half of Neara Russell’s set. Neara is a good friend of Nate’s. He introduced me to her years back and I have been a big fan of her and her work [Official, Myspace] ever since. Needless to say, the show was awesome and we had a blast catching up with Neara afterwards. She had to head back to Boston that night which was a shame (overnighting it to another gig is always a drag) but that gave Nate and I chance to talk about some of his experiences touring with Meat Loaf! I’ll share more about that soon…

Hope this finds you feeling healthy!-Mason

Ourstage Love

Today I was totally blown away when I opened up my Nambu, my Twitter client of choice, and saw the following tweet:

A while back, I shared some analytics from Ourstage with you in my post, a’tris loves you. Because of your awesome support, we have constantly been in OurStage‘s various Rock Top-10 lists and, as a result, we’ve received some super great exposure and made some awesome new friends and fans. Still today’s blog post from Rob Petrini at Ourstage (aka ‘Internet Warrior’) was totally unexpected. It came out of nowhere and jumped in to my radar like a surprise birthday party or a hidden Christmas gift. Have you ever come across a present that your parents/partner/friends or family bought for you that you know you weren’t supposed to discover? Wasn’t that awesome? Maybe that’s just me But I digress.

Seriously Rob’s words are incredibly kind and it was a huge honor to be featured in his blog. If you have a moment, I’d highly encourage you to check it out by clicking here. You could even leave him some love in the comment section. We like to share

Hope this finds you feeling healthy!-Mason

Can you help us?

Would you like for Reza’s music video for “Dark Lotus” to be on TV? If so, will you do two things for us?

• First, will you watch the video at theindieshow.com?
• Second, will you take a moment to register and vote for us by following the directions in the below clip?

If you could spare a couple of minutes to do this we’d really appreciate it. Voting is open through 5 April 2010 so you can vote for our music and videos as frequently and as often as you’d like

Hope this finds you feeling healthy,
-Mason

P.S. I just saw that we’re in the Top 10 Alternative Rock artists on Ourstage again this month. Thanks guys!

a’tris Loves You!

Last time I blogged I asked you guys if you’d like to help us get another tune of ours back on Fame Games by voting for your favorite song. Thanks for responding in a big way! “Black Bird’s Song” is now going to be receiving some major exposure as, thanks to you, it will be appearing on Monday’s Q show! I’m so glad to see that you like “Black Bird Song”; it’s a personal favorite of mine.

If you haven’t had a chance to vote or share your thoughts on the song with the Sid and the gang you can do so at meermusic.com. Your votes and reviews help to create future exposure opportunities for us.

For those of you who aren’t on Twitter, the guys and I have been tweeting about some really great news this week and I wanted to share some of that with you here. Currently “Automatic Doors” is #1 on Ourstage’s Alternative Channel for the second week in a row! There are all kinds of cool prizes to be had for monthly winners so thanks for helping us hold steady at the top Two more weeks to go, w00t!

In other cool news, a’tris is currently Globally ranked #71 on ReverbNation’s Alternative chart. Just to give you some perspective, over 250,000 bands use ReverbNation to promote their work so we feel really good about that

Thanks again for your support!

-Mason