Oh boy. I could write a novel on this one alone. Writing it saved my life, releasing changed my life. I don't think I can overstate that. 

Let's go back to 2010. This is where it all started. We first released the album to the internet. Somehow, we got hundreds of hits from all over the world. Suddenly we had fanbases in the UK, Europe and America. Eventually, Adelaide followed suit. We played a Battle of the Bands in front of hundreds of people. We won. We released the album on CD. It sold out instantly - I don't even have a copy. We eventually printed more copies - those sold out pretty quickly as well. The City ended up getting to #1 on Triple J Unearthed in 2011, which is pretty impressive for a lo-fi dirge that runs for 6 minutes and has no chorus (for my non-Australian listeners, Triple J Unearthed is a BIG DEAL). It struck a chord. 

Our popularity continued to grow. We played big venues to big audiences, sometimes supporting big bands and sometimes headlining in our own right. Crowds would demand signatures and shout our lyrics back at us. This would make Oscar cry. I would walk down the streets and run into complete strangers wearing our shirts. This happened many, many times. I would get recognised by strangers on the bus, all because of my music. It was a dream. 

In the end, we were offered a deal by some big shots. Legally I can't say who, but it doesn't matter. We ended up re-recording this under the name "The Best Night of My Life" for a record label we never ended up signing with. To be honest I felt like the songs lost something when we did that. The passion was gone, and I felt like it was a complete waste of great songwriting. We ended up rejecting the deal, then promptly split up. It wasn't to be. 

I was talking to Tom in the car the other day. We agreed that it's a shame the album never reached its full potential. I decided to finally do something about it. These are the original recordings, remixed and remastered. More raw, more fresh, more passionate. Named "Casino", like it was always meant to be.

Richard Sallis - vocals, guitars, percussion 
Tom de Prinse - piano, keyboards, saxophone 
Oscar Hose - bass, saxophone, backing vocals, percussion 
Mitchell Skinner - drums, percussion 
Aaron Williams - guitar, bass, backing vocals 

Produced and mixed by Richard Sallis. 
All songs written by Richard Sallis except Feels, co-written with Oscar Hose.

Casino

Perfect Light

If you liked Casino - here's more! The first nine songs were in contention for the album at one point, the last two are fun things we did. It's not really an Amnesiac type deal, more a 10 year deluxe bonus disc type thing, but I tried to structure it like an album anyway. 

The Casino sessions were prolific. Some of my favourite songs I've written were left by the wayside with no real way to put them out. Until now. 

I only wrote the lyrics to Enter New Year, the rest was penned by our bassist Oscar - one of our only songs to be so. I like it! We ditched it pretty early on as the band felt focusing on my songwriting made Casino more cohesive experience. All Star Cast is the most controversial omission among my bandmates; everyone else wanted it on Casino and I nixed it because I felt it didn't fit. Sometimes I wonder what might have happened had I went with democracy and not my gut.

Mr. Hollywood was (unfortunately) a live staple. It consisted of Oscar and Tom duelling on the saxophone for almost 10 minutes whilst I played the same three chords over and over whilst ruining my voice trying to be heard over the top of it. It's probably a good song, audiences loved it, but I grew to really hate it after a while. Nobody Loves You was another song we played live a lot. I think we debuted it on Valentine's Day. We could never agree about whether the chorus was kinda clever or unbearably cheesy. 

Lobethal Lights was our Christmas song. I was dared by my band to do it, so I made the most depressing Christmas tune possible as a "fuck you". Get Crunk was recorded for the 2010 BrokeNCYDE Challenge. The idea was to take a BrokeNCYDE song (who were ranked as the worst band of all time on RYM at the time) and try to make it listenable. Needless to say we won. The grand prize was $25 dollars. We never received it. 
credits
released January 5, 2019 

Richard Sallis - vocals, guitars, percussion 
Tom de Prinse - piano, keyboards, saxophone 
Oscar Hose - bass, saxophone, backing vocals, percussion 
Mitchell Skinner - drums, percussion 
Aaron Williams - guitar, bass, backing vocals 

All songs written by Richard Sallis except Enter New Year written by Oscar Hose and Richard Sallis, Mr. Hollywood written by Oscar Hose, Richard Sallis, Mitchell Skinner and Aaron Williams, and Get Crunk written by Steven Gallegos, Julian McClellan, Michael Shea and Anthony Trujillo.

Richard!