29/04/2011

fbi social

i just got an e-mail from justin zeltzer from fbi (blake and i were on his monday night show about a year ago) and he's asked us if we'd like to headline at fbi social on thursday, may 12 (http://www.fbiradio.com/events/parentdetail/fbi-social). i said a tentative 'yes' and told him i'd confirm this afternoon. can everyone let me know their availability/desire?

21/04/2011

20th april, 2011

it's been a few months since we posted our 20th tracks on the blog (which reminds me, there's a small backlog of them which i'll gradually post up). being a school holiday, bec and i had a little more time than normal to work on things, so there's two tracks. the first is one i did inspired by a book i'm reading at the moment called 'haunted weather' by david toop. it's about sound as music and music and sound as memory and lots of interesting offshoots of those kinds of things. this track is called 'fourthirtythree in a suburban backyard'. it's a decumulation of recordings of nothing, inpired by john cage, made by sticking two microphones just outside the studio door. of course, 'nothing' is very relative. the piece starts out with 9 recordings of 'nothing', working down to one recording of 'nothing'.


second up is the more regular song thing. musically, i've been listening to animal collective lots over the past few days, which is the most obvious inspiration. the drums are a sample ripped from a track called 'down' by p major from a great sydney free download compilation i got recently called 'free the beats vol 3'. very worth downloading (featuring our friend m.o.r.). i made a very skeletal piece of music with just the straight drum loop, the chopped up electric guitars and a bit of glockenspiel. bec wrote the lyrics. for one of the first times ever, ellie contributed as she was over for dinner, so she made up the melody to sing the words over the music. you'll have to ask bec and ellie where their inspirations came from.

here are the lyrics...

to me

go, go
get up on your feet
you stayed too long
you've been asleep
put on your shoes
and open the door
get into the seat
put your foot to the floor

you've been sleeping in dust
you've got dirt in your brain
if you don't get out now
you'll be sleeping again

get out of this suburb
it's making you cold
get out of this city
before it takes hold
lift your thoughts from a whisper
get your heart up to speed
set your face to the headlights
you know there's nothing you need

so go!
push out into the road
travel on 'til the outside
go on out into the known

17/04/2011

that other band

a couple more videos from lessons in time's set at the gate late last year, this time in full electric band mode...





there's also a few videos up online that tim englebrecht recorded at the recent dodgefest. but the sound mix is not very good and the only thing you can see is the top of tim's head and the drumkit. but you can see them if you go to tim's youtube channel - http://www.youtube.com/user/timothyengelbrecht.

06/04/2011

voicelive touch

the next time i have a spare couple of thousand dollars, i will be buying one of these each for everyone. until then, maybe we could save up and buy one at a time. they're exactly what i've been looking for for a few years now - they were released late last year. don't worry so much about the autotune function, but all the other bits are perfect - reverbs, delays, flangers/choruses, overdrives, filtering, de-essing, compressing, looping etc etc etc.

here's the website... the video is very informative.

and here's a video from everyone's favourite stylophonist giving a very quick rundown...

04/04/2011

expanding on the idea

i've been thinking a little more about the album/remixes/film clips ideas. i've also been watching the movie embedded below with my year 10 photography and digital media class - we're studying appropriation at the moment. it's very well worth watching (i'd even demand that everyone watch it, but you all know i'm not really a tyrannical dictator).

in line with bunches of those ideas, i was wondering what everyone might think of releasing the master stems of each track along with each of the remix eps, so that anybody can make their own remix and then upload it? or, a step further again, release the master stems the month before and include one or two of the other people's remixes in the upcoming ep?

01/04/2011

kill the page

got a message on our facebook page from a guy in melbourne today who has included 'need you tonight' in a downloadable mixtape he's posted on his blog - kill the page. click on the picture...