Wired: White Stripes’ New Album on Jack’n'Meg USB Sticks.

As someone who is very keen on living sustainably (more here and here) I’ve actually been thinking about how we can make our EP release more environmentally friendly.

Although the tides are changing towards a download model, I don’t think we’re quite there yet. I keep imagining someone at one of our gigs wanting to buy our EP and being disappointed with not being able to take away a physical product - preferably that plays on their CD player in the car or at home.

One of the ideas that I came up with was using cheap USB drives to release the album. Then the purchaser would get a re-usable drive that had utility outside getting the music home (which would nowadays usually be ripped to iTunes/iPod anyway).

It’s interesting to see the White Stripes do this, albeit with a clever twist - making the USB drive design a premium option.

(PS. I’d be interested to hear from anyone with ideas for making the whole CD thing more sustainable - leave a comment if you have any ideas…)

So on Tuesday night at around 8pm Genevieve handed over a finished set of mixes to us. So we’re now the proud owners of a pre-production master

We’re getting good responses to the mixes so far, which is a good sign. As with any recording project there’s things we’d like to tweak and fix, but thanks to a lot of long hours from Gen we’ve ended up with a great result. We’re looking forward to see what you think.

Some of the songs sound quite different to what we anticipated - but the sound of the drums and bass in particular is very alive - some great room sounds which work well against the more electronic sounds. The middle section of Darker Days in particular is sounding quite a bit different - with a really cool interplay between the electronic and live sounds.

For those of you that have heard us live the songs will still be familiar - but I think some of the arrangements will change to reflect the recorded versions. Should bring a bit of extra life into our rehearsals and gigs in the coming months.

We’ve got one step left to go before pressing the CD and printing the artwork and that’s mastering. We’re expecting to have that completed around mid-July, and we’ll hopefully have samples up on our MySpace profile shortly after that.

After much too-ing and fro-ing we’ve also decided on a name for the EP - Between your lines. And there’s a strong chance we’ll be using a different cover shot than the one I mentioned previously - one of Toby’s shots in fact. But more on that once we have some artwork to show

Anyways - hopefully we’ll have more stuff to put up soon - and then some gigs to announce shortly after that. Can’t wait to get out and playing again…

Over the weekend we completed 98% of the recording for the new EP at Revolution Studios. We’ve tracked pretty much everything except a few backing vocal tracks, which we’re going to record at home (thanks to Jai who’s lending us his NT1000 - thanks dude!)

Despite a setback of a few hours on Saturday morning (thanks to a system hard-drive crash) we were able to do everything we wanted to. Guitars, bass, drums live with extra guitar, vocals, piano overdubbed. There’s a few minor edits needed (to get electronic parts sounding more natural), but a vast majority is down.

Working with Genevieve has been awesome so far. She got some huge drum sounds (thanks in part to a mic stuffed in the underbelly of an upright piano!) and really found a much more live sound, which we really wanted.

The guitar sounds are great too - props to Baz for lending us his Rickenbacker, Tele and Twin (which made a huge difference to the recorded guitar sounds). We’ve even got a touch of Genevieve’s Les Paul in there, which just fit the part beautifully. (The Les Paul weighed a tonne compared to the Fenders…)

Genevieve also played with a really aggressive vocal compression on one track that not only sounds great, but really changed the way I sang the part - and all for the better.

All in all we’re really stoked with how it’s going so far - can’t wait to hear the mixes!

We’re booked in over next weekend to do the mix, though we’re trying to squeeze in an extra day to make the most of Genevieve’s expertise (budget is getting tight though, so we’ll see).

P.S. Toby’s already posted some pics from the weekend to Flickr.

P.P.S. Somewhere in amongst Thomas Hawk’s Flickr stream is the cover artwork (just confirmed today). More to come on that front soon…

I wanted to write just a little bit about the process we’re going through recording. There’s more “over the jump” if you’re interested in the nitty-gritty details of the process.

Read the rest of this entry »

A friend of mine (really - I wasn’t ego-surfing - thanks Kim) sent me this Google search for “fuzu”. Seems we’re competing with a product that promises increase[d] natural testosterone production and increased anabolicity.

LOL!

We’ve just locked in dates in the studio to start recording. After much looking around and chatting to folks and checking out studios and doing spreadsheets, we’ve decided to go with Revolution Studios, run by Genevieve Maynard.

Genevieve will also be producer of the EP, which will bring a set of fresh ears to the material, and some good outside judgment to the process.

We’ll hit the studio in the last weekend of May, and mix the first weekend of June - so if all goes to plan, and we can sort out mastering fairly soon after that we’ll have the EP ready for release online by mid-June.

It’s all very exciting for us… I’ve forgotten how much of a buzz recording is. So after our gig tonight at the Hopetoun we’ll be getting into rehearsal mode for the recording - at this stage we’re planning 5 tracks.

Dom did a brief interview for Drum Media’s Have you heard…? segment - here ’tis for those of you that don’t have a copy of Drum lying around:

Your music is…?

Rock-slash-electronica.

Which acts inspired you to produce your own music and why?

For inspiration it’s hard to go past bands like Bluebottle Kiss - the local warriors that stay true despite current trends and fads, and are still around at the end of the day when the dust settles, better than ever.

What’s our wildest ambition for your music?

To get remixed by Aphex Twin for a Christmas album. Actually, I’d be stoked if he even threw a backwards sample in there somewhere for his adaptation of Deck the halls.

How do you find the local live scene?

Love it. Of course there could always b more venues, but on the whole, if you get off your arse there are some really great acts out there you can catch for 10 bucks.

What’s your greatest rock’n'roll moment?

Being asked to take part in this year’s FBi fundraiser gig in January. Over 40 musos from a bunch of great local bands playing Neil Young covers over two nights. Magic: especially Jamie Hutchings’ 23 minute solo in Cortez the killer.

We’re starting the process of producing an EP. We’re currently deciding on songs, studios, engineers etc. If all goes to plan we’ll be recording 5 tracks, but that depends a bit on budget…

Nothing firm yet, but we’ll hopefully be finished tracking early June, with something to show for it around September. I’ll post more details as they come to hand.

As I mentioned earlier, we’re playing at the Hopetoun on 23 April. We’ve just got the details of times and the other bands we’re playing with.

• 10:30-11:00pm - Swimming underground
• 9:45-10:15pm - The relapse
• 9:00-9:30pm - Fuzu
• 8:15-9:45pm - Goats Lullaby

So we’re on second - pretty early in the night - not too late given it’s a “school night”

Hope to see you there…

We’ve just got word that we have a gig at the Hopetoun Hotel on 23 April.

We’re not sure on who else we’re playing with just yet, but there’ll be four bands on the night. The gig is part of the Hopetoun Incentive Program - and we’d really like to make a good impression so that hopefully we will get asked back, perhaps on a night later in the week.

To any of our friends that are reading this, if you can make this gig, we’d really appreciate it if you can make it to this one. Getting a decent number of people to the show will make a big difference in our chances of getting asked back.

We’ll post more details once we know more…