So it’s fresh material week – I’ve got three or four fresh tracks to drop, check in for some new jams if you’re into that sort of thing!
First up, fresh droplets of new school genre melding hardcore from local rocklers Neverender have been added to the streaming music player. Check them out, these guys came in and knocked it out like nobody’s business last weekend and burned out a nice opening slavo of an ep for the cities to rock out to. Keep an eye on them (and me) for new material later this year!
So, taxes. Time to finally do them, I guess? Everyone remember to look into certificates of rent paid, cause in this town you get money back for spending money on housing. If your landlord’s not giving you these, they’re ripping you right off – go get ‘em tax warriors!
-adam, commenting on things social in a web setting (does not a blogger make, just a man in a room with a computer)
In big news for all fans of good music played by weird people, Minneapolis’s's own prog/melodic/classical/tidal warriors Iron Thrones just won the big No Label Required contest over on metalinsider.net. Long story short, the band (featuring Signaturetone producer, collaborator, and beard-owner Steve Henningsgard) is gonna be swept away to beautiful New Jersey for a recording session with Machine (Lamb of God, tons of others), a complete image and promotional overhaul, and pretty much everything that a growing band needs – hit up the NLR page for more info. Congrats boys! A quick note, though: I think the good people at Scion don’t know what they’re getting themselves into letting you get in front of cameras…
-adam, stoked as all hell for good bands getting recognized
Look how pro my boyz look. Stop on over to their site for an aural glimpse (through the horrid Myspace-player-haze) at the second track off their upcoming Nuclear Blast release “Dreaming Saturn”. I did not have the honor of mixing this crazy circular piece of spazz grind jazzy metal goodness but Zack Ohren @ Castle Ultimate did a wonderful job translating my (as some of you know) interesting tracking ideas and tonal concepts into the finished goods.
In other news, just got back from the first meeting of…I have no idea what we’re called yet, but it’s a bunch of local audio geeks/pros/misc rad ladies and gents who want to talk and drink and generally talk trash about each others monitoring choices. Oooh the fun fun times ahead – I look forward to being schooled in ways I didn’t even know there was schoolin’ for.
Also we have a 1964 Fender Super Reverb incoming, apparently – buh?!!
Just a quick plug for my band The Sextons, who just released our self titled debut we tracked, mixed, and mastered at Signaturetone (der). I’d love it if you took a second to take a listen to our jamz and then, hopefully, bopped over to The Current’s website and requested us! It’s always a treat to hear something I worked on spun over the air, and frankly I like us and think you should too! Rrrrr!
My band The Sextons throws it down at Sauce for your listening pleasure. Come check us out with the excellent bands The Small Cities and These Modern Socks. Get your shoegaze on! For fans of My Bloody Valentine, Radiohead, men, delay pedals, walls of chords, and yours truly of course.
Oh god I love tracking to tape – no computer, that pleasant hiss of the reels revolving, that scent that only comes from heated iron oxide. Note the Full Canadian Needles (Full Canadian = everything cranked to the max – ie all buttons in on an 1176, pre’s clipping out, meters slamming the red. I think I got this from a Devin Townsend interview?) in picture 3. Mmmmm. More to come.
Ah The New Monarchs. I’ve played shows with these guys back when my band Nobot was still a functioning live unit and stalked them til they gave in and let me get my grubby little hands on a remix of their track “Electrocaching”. Then whaddaya know, they decided to drop on in to cut a single with me! The tease portion of this post’s title refers to how bad I want people to hear the remix I cut and the totally badass totally new track “Converter”, of which you can hear a snippet in this video:
Let’s just say more than a few compressors didn’t see the right side of the meter on this project (anyone? eh?). Baah – I love these guys, expect more material from them to appear soon on my player and more love to pour from my little hands into the interweb for them.
A few days ago we got to play host to a documentary crew shooting an early interview with local hiphop adventurers Tou SaiKo Lee, Maria Isa, andM.anifest. I’ll let director Justin Long summarize:
“The documentary, tentatively titled “Scattered Roots,” will follow three hip-hop artists, Maria Isa, M.anifest, and Tou SaiK Lee, who live in Minnesota but have roots in places far beyond the land of 10,000 lakes. The artists will travel to Ghana, Puerto Rico, and Thailand to explore how their music and their lives bridge generations and geography, and become part of the globally powerful movement of hip-hop.”
This interview was intense enough, I can only imagine dropping these three artists together and filming them ’round the world is going to spark some great cinematic/musical moments More info on it as the documentary progresses!
Hey kids, just a quickie – pretty much every Wednesday I trundle on over to The Artist’s Quarter in St. Paul to lay down some tunes with friends of mine from 7:00-8:30pm. We’re doing it tonight, so stop out if you’re feeling it and bring your ax to play if, again, you’re feeling it. My bandmates are some smoking players and I’m weird, so expect bass-face, upright-slaps, and low-end-domination as we kick out the jamz, spazz style.
The things I get to play with at work. Yasseah. New gear floating through Signaturetone this month:
Chandler TG-1 Abbey Roads Limiter – this baby is a squash machine straight out of the dudes behind The Beatles brains and right into my abusive hands. Plus ours is the fancy modded version (ooh, for the one or two geekers who care) with the fast attack option. Take that dynamics, you bastards!
Urei LA-3A w/Teletronix Badge (2) – hey look, it’s the compressor that Pro Tools has - WAIT, no, this is the real deal 70′s era gooey dynamic love. Stereo racked and rolling, this is a close cousin of the first compressor I ever used at the ripe old age of 18 (a silverface Urei LA-4), found in a crapped out recording studio I did my first ever album in. Oh nostalgia. Tear/sniffles.
Manley Enhanced Stereo Pultec – what can I say. It looks so nice next to the Massive Passive in that rack, does it even have to do anything? Answer: no, but it sure does.
Buhhhh gear. Enough.
I’ve been doing some tracking for a few new tunes with Marty Brueggermann, one of which he’s described as “retro 50′s malt shop music of the future” which I can’t really deny is a good way to put it. This week I’ll be firing up tracks with one of my favorite local electronic acts The New Monarchs – keep an eye peeled for a remix I did of their tune “Electrocaching” in the near future, I’m super stoked on it. Today I’ll be finishing up stem mastering on the first release by local hardcore/post rocker Mourner with producer/beard owner Steve Henningsgard (or has my hands just typed, Steve Henninsgsgesesgaaard). Expect the rock.
More to come soon, I have a few really exciting projects coming this month including a new disc from members of The Skullcranes and the new album from big big big sound purveyors Lungs. Keep it tuned here for me, saying things, about stuff. With words.
