97-shiki

Patrick fiddling with mics

It’s been quiet here for the last couple of weeks. It’s all because we’ve been very busy putting together our first recording. Here’s what’s been happening…

We started on Sunday the 10th, when we rented the studio space at Mike Lust’s Phantom Manor on Chicago’s north west side, near where we all live. Mike helped us set up, and we took it from there, using a mix our our equipment and his to track guitar, bass and drums into Logic on a Mac. The session went all day, and just as we were wrapping things up, we discovered a technical error that rendered all our overhead drum mics mute. THAT sucked. Time to start again. Mike let us keep our stuff set up, and we went at it again starting early the next morning. Although we were getting pretty tired, we got through all seven tracks again, and frankly, I think we performed them better due to all the extra practice.

Douglas at Phantom Manor

We took the tracks back to our home to do all the vocals and miscellaneous overdubs, and we’ve been chipping away at it over the last several days. Patrick is a professional sound engineer, and I’ve been doing mastering for about 10 years, so between the two of us we have enough audio nerd power to do a reasonable job. We’re about 95% done, and things are coming out great. So far, we’ve done six 97-shiki tunes, plus a cover of Malaysian punk legends Carburetor Dung’s “Oppression”. That one is for our upcoming Malaysian release.

Our plan is to release 4 or 5 songs as a split label (staticstation) / Hewhocorrupts 7″ vinyl + digital download before we leave for our upcoming tour. We feel pretty good we’ll hit that mark, but likely we’ll be doing a record release event sometime after we get back, in late November.

As always, check back here for news of the release and other info.

We are going to be self-recording at least four songs for a 7″ vinyl + digital downloads release. Yay. Also, Revulsion Records (here or here) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, are releasing a Malaysian version cassette release. The Malaysia release will be in support of our upcoming tour there in November.

map

It looks like we’re already planning our first tour. To Asia. Yes, Asia. A friend of Ryan’s in Malaysia (Arwith, of Utarid Booking , has asked if we’d be up for touring in November. “Hell yes” said we. So, here are the dates so far…

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Our friend Brian Louis just posted some cool pics from our last gig at Ronny’s. He let us repost them on our photos page, so, enjoy. Thanks Brian.

Out of the blue, we got a message on our MySpace page from “Amy”… “im booking a show in chicago”. OK, so what’s the deal? It turns out, that “Amy” works for BigTime Entertainment, and she “loves our music” and wants us to play on a show she’s putting together…

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If you haven’t heard, there’s been a lot of action in the last weeks surrounding a proposal for an ordinance in the City of Chicago that would seem to require licenses and insurance for small show promoters/events. There’s a lot of info, and MIS-info, out there about it. But you can take a few minutes and learn about it yourself.  Depending on who you talk to, it could have the effect of further criminalizing the DIY shows/events that are so important to our music scene.

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So last week, I went to check out a show at the Lucky Gator Loft — a place I’d been trying to get around to checking out for a while now. It was a great time: the show was full, the bands were great, a touring band was being supported, it was all-ages, laid back, and filled with friends young and old. What was really so great about it was the fact that the mood was awesome.

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So, the four of us have this new band going. We’ve been practicing since September 2007, settled on our name in February 2008, and booked our first show for May 2008. This is our fledgling site that we hope to fill up with music and pictures and thoughts.

We encourage you to come by, say “hi” and leave your comments and feedback. More soon…