It’s here! No, not I Want To Believe! It’s the long-awaited release of the 4-CD box set of Mark Snow’s music for The X-Files by La La Land Records — the “X-BOX“! We’ve been waiting for this set since 2008 (though frankly I’ve been waiting since 1996 and The Truth and the Light!), and this is big news! More big news is that there will be another volume expected for 2012!

Full coverage of the release can be found here: The X-Files Volume One

The Massive Music Compilation has gone through a major re-working and now has more music, audio and video links to samples, ratings of cues, and thoughts on what Volume Two might/should include!

Speaking of Volume Two, we fans have a chance to weigh in on what cues will be included in there! If you want to contribute to making up a list of fan-favourites for La La Land’s consideration, please send me your 6 cues (say 4 absolute must-haves + 2 personal favourites) that you are craving for for a CD-quality, no sound effects- or dialogue-burdened release!

There are many other exciting things going on in the XF universe right now:

– The most important is of course the release of the LAX-Files book by Erica Fraga, a fully fan-led effort that benefits from a commercial release! I just received my copy and will cover that one later.

– A book signing event of LAX-Files took place on May 7, 2011, at the American Film Institute, Los Angeles; were present Erica Fraga, both Morgan brothers (!), James Wong, Mitch Pileggi and Jeff Gulka, and apparently several other 1013 alumni in the audience (Robert Mendel, Julia Vera). Coverage on all your major US West Coast-based sites.

– Another (unofficial) book was published: We Want to Believe: Faith and Gospel in The X-Files by Amy M. Donaldson! Donaldson previously published an article entitled “The Last Temptation of Mulder: Reading The X-Files through the Christological Lens of Nikos Kazantzakis” in the 2007 collection of essays The X-Files and Literature: Unweaving the Story, Unraveling the Lie to Find the Truth. Kazantzakis being one of my favourite authors, I’m interested to read more about
her and her views on XF!

– The Syndicate has launched and has already started recruiting members! Salome’s Musings of an X-Phile is the latest addition.

– Finally, as you can see right above, EatTheCorn has a Twitter account! Make sure to subscribe! It is updated much more frequently than the home page of EatTheCorn, which is updated only for special occasions. Twitter updates also include additions to the 1013 Interviews Database; since they are ordered chronologically by date of when they originally occurred, it’s not possible to track newly added interviews from the Database itself, so the best and only way to keep updated is via the Twitter account.

A joint vision from key X-Files fansites has resulted in the launch of “The Syndicate,” a networking page for all sites related to TenThirteen Productions. X-FilesLexicon, EatTheCorn and XFilesUniverse are the founding members of “The Syndicate” to help build, support and strengthen the fanbase of “The X-Files,” “MillenniuM,” and all TenThirteen-related projects. “The Syndicate” is a landing page that will allow anyone easy access to multiple websites.

This initiative is an interactive and proactive webring or platform targeting to create more cohesion among all efforts, on-line and off-line, that honor the work produced by TenThirteen Productions.

As explained by webmaster Matt Allair of X-Files Lexicon: “To the fans, I view ‘The Syndicate’ as one-stop shopping. If fans like what they see, bookmark it, keep visiting the Syndicate, and write to the webmasters of your favorite sites and encourage them to register… The fans will determine its success.”

“It’s been nearly 18 years,” further elaborates Kimon of EatTheCorn, “that The X-Files started broadcast and in that time fandom has grown, fragmented, and grown again many times over. It is time to think long-term and federate fandom presence in a spirit of cooperation. ‘The Syndicate’ plans to accompany this next evolution.”

“The thing I find most exciting about ‘The Syndicate,’” says Maurisa of XFilesUniverse, “is the opportunity for all of our sites to work together to promote TenThirteen Productions. There are so many sites, and we all have our own strengths and our own promotions. But with ‘The Syndicate,’ our sites can endorse each other and raise awareness across the fanbase. After all, we all want to see growth in the fandom.”

Membership in “The Syndicate” provides promotion for each website, complete with RSS feeds and links for each member site. In addition, special events for each site will be featured prominently. A forum for Syndicate members is provided to help member sites’ staff better communicate with each other and enable greater capability to work together to promote TenThirteen Productions projects, such as a third X-Files feature film or a new Frank Black movie.

Read our full Mission Statement that explains our vision and purpose!
Visit our Membership page to add your site to The Syndicate!

The Syndicate Members