FASTER! HARDER! LONGER! Is the aptly titled debut album of PistonFunkMachine! Its apt as the bulk of it was recorded over the last three days of 2012 barely weeks after the bands inception and before having played live together properly. Please give it a listen at http://pistonfunkmachine.bandcamp.com/ Ricky, chief PFM! song meister and I have played and recorded with various bands over the last 15 years and in Ricky's case this is the 22nd album he has recorded but it is the first album any of us have recorded entirely in a professional studio. We funded this ourselves so we're hoping we can sell a few copies and at least break even but we're selling it so cheap we're almost giving it away. I have been heavily involved with the Linux, and especially the Linux audio community for a number of years now so its with regret I have to confess we didn't make much use of Linux or free software in the recording of this album, although it still played a part. The studio we used was based around REAPER so to save myself any potential import/export headaches with the two tracks (most of 'Hard so hard' and all of 'When you're around') for which I had pre-programmed drums I created them using REAPER running under wine. REAPER is officially supported and runs very well under Linux/wine but I'm more interested in seeing the real, native Linux port get finished. Until then I'll continue to keenly follow MusE, qtractor and Ardour - projects which will surely get used in the recording of future PFM! tracks. The other, bigger Linux connection for this album is the artwork which originates from Hiroshi Seo's fantastic Ubunchu! manga that I modified and coloured using good ol' GIMP. We are very grateful to Seotch and Ubuntu Magazine Japan for letting us adapt and use his wonderful artwork. We hope you enjoy listening to FASTER! HARDER! LONGER! and we are especially grateful to those who support us or provide feedback! Dan http://pistonfunkmachine.com/