"Recording" Session

We did a session on Sunday night where I mic'd everyone up as well as I could with what equipment we have. That means:

Drums -
For the kick: A vocal mic dangling through the tom-tom mounting hole
For everything else: A second vocal mic (I ran out of XLR cables) dangling from the radiant heater

Bass - Amp output to DI

Guitar - SM-57 dangling between two cones

Keys - Direct line-in

Vocals - Direct in to the mixer.

And then from the mixer out to a mini-disc and also to our PA. I also had headphones on.

The result? Nobody could hear the keys except me via headphones, neither Mike nor myself could hear the vocals as they were down in the mix intentionally and hardly came through the headphones at all. And, sadly, a pretty poor session, though neither Mike nor I were up to it that particular evening so that's probably responsible. Plus, it had been some time since we recorded, so that might be part of it.

However, be not dissuaded, gentle reader. For I reviewed the tapes and actually found that although rife with vocal comedy and instrumental parody, they actually sound pretty good. Particularly, it was nice to get full band demos of some of our newer ones, like Gravity Is A Push, an as yet untitled punkish number, Lotus Shoes, Sea of Moira, Robots in the Blood, Serenade, and Regions & Markers. As well, some of our older new ones like This Is The Way Life Grows, A Scattershot Genius, and just an all out old one (Silver City Surf) finally got demos.

Admittedly, it's doubtful we'll put anything up on the website from this session, but I think we may start recording a little more often just so we get used to it. It also helps to be able to review after and listen instead of play. For example, I didn't realize this until now, but it seems we've been on a long-song kick. Serenade clocks in at over 7 mins, Sea of Moira at 6, Regions & Markers at 4.5, and the newish punk one will probably be near 5.

Prolong the agony!

Tour de Studio

The band swung by Darcy Beck's studio yesterday - turns out he is the soundman at Lydia's Open Stage, or at least he was when we played there in May. Anyway, a very cool space in the Rumley Building, with a nice setup, some great gear, and a really great sounding acoustic piano (from what I heard on the recordings). Speaking of recordings (albeit in parenthesis), he played us some of his work with the Pinch, Escape Goats, and a few other people he'd worked with. The Pinch covered an Elton John song and the recording - no word of a lie - sounded spot on. The piano sound, the mix levels, it's like the track was lifted right off one of his records. The Anderson Council/Escape Goats/Whatever they're calling themselves these days had some really great sounding stuff, too.

The point of this rambling was that the recordings sounded really good and we would be quite delighted to record with Darcy. Hopefully it'll be sooner rather than later, it would be nice to at least have enough for an EP to bring out with us. But at the same time, we have to make sure we have the songs solid before we go in the studio, so it probably won't be until January since December is a right-off with Christmas and me going to New York and so on.

The consensus (so far, this is nowhere near decided) has been to record This Is The Way Life Grows, Regions & Markers, A Scattershot Genius, Serenade, Overtly Dramatic. If there's time (and doubtless there will be), we'll try and record other tracks we don't have demos for, like Silver City Surf, Death of the Glorious Future, and Sincerest Element. The rest will depend on where the songs are in January and so on. Eventually, we'll rerecord our demos too (like Pinstripe Gin).

That's all for now. Keep watching the skies.

What are we doing?

Well, sure, nobody has asked what we're up to. People have even gone to great lengths to NOT find out what we're up to. But they've failed. Miserably.

So, what's going on then. Well, first off, we're talking with producer Darcy Beck who recorded Saskatoon-turned-Victorian band The Fine Options, as well as other notables like The Escape Goats, Butthole Surfers, and The Pinch. He seems like a really good guy and we really are quite excited to possibly work with him.

Meanwhile, we're adding new stuff to our repetoire, for the live shows and for the studio session we're working towards. What live shows, you ask? Well, The Dutch is looking into a Nov 25 or possibly later show at the Bassment. More on this when we have something that's actually for sure and not just tentative, but it could be a pretty interesting line up.

We're also more-or-less booked to play Seedy's in Edmonton Jan 22, and are still working at a Calgary and Regina date. Again, more on this as we confirm stuff. Hopefully we can get some sort of pre-tour show at Amigos or something to get us warmed up for our tour which the critics are already describing as "mini".

Re-reading this, I now see that what it generalizes down to, in one sentence, is "We don't know for sure yet". So there you have it. Nobody knows!

Lotus Robots in the Sea of Moira

After a jam session that none of us seemed to be feeling on Wednesday, Mike & I worked for three or four hours on Saturday on solidifying some of the new material we're working on. I think it helped quite a bit to have some general idea of where the songs are going when we got together to work on music again with Brett and Dutch on Sunday. We worked out three new tracks with them: Lotus Shoes (which has a jazz/blues sound mixed with a little Velvet Underground), Robots in the Blood (with a whole lot of soul), and Sea of Moira (which we actually jammed on as a soundcheck for our Amigo's show and has a bit of a Joy Division/Interpol influence).

We'll get those ones tight and then perhaps go to work on a few more from our old catalogue, like Brigantine and Arrows Forward, and another new track with a tentative name A Dip in the Light.

Finally, while we found out that three weeks isn't enough time to book a tour, we're getting set to do a Saskatoon-Winnipeg-Regina-Calgary-Edmonton tour in January. No new shows for November/December, but we're looking.