Just a quick note to say that we’ve booked mastering for 18 August with “the Don” (Don Bartley) at Benchmark Mastering.

We’re excited to hear the finished product! Once that’s done we’ll post a sample track here for y’all to check out. We’re also progressing on the artwork, so hopefully we’ll have a finished, pressed and packed product shortly. Then, once Toby’s back in the country, we’ll get started on organising a launch gig – at this stage, probably late Sept-early October.

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…)

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…

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’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 just got a last minute call to do a show next Friday night (23 Feb) at The Harp (Tempe). It’s a Friday night, so a good chance to get out for a few drinks and bands after work if you’re up for it. We’re on at 9pm, and The Famous (who we played with at the Sando a few weeks ago) are also on the bill.