We’ve finally got some stuff happening again……..
I don’t know what happened! Everything just ground to a friggin’ halt! Dead stop! Well now we have 12 more tracks getting mixed over at K-Rasta studios. This may eventuate into an album or 3 EP’s. Time will tell. I’ll keep you posted. It is expected tracks will start filtering out within the next 3 weeks or so.
New track available online
A few weeks ago we did a show at the Port Office Hotel in Brisbane. It was alright. However, we did get to play with Aled Humphrys who is a bit wicked. As a record of what we sound like when we play a tune for the first time, on CD Baby you can now get hold of a live jam of ‘Groove is in The Heart’, originally by Deee-Lite. The track is also meant to be available on iTunes but it seems to be stuck in the system somewhere so we’ll chase that up soon.
First Show at Port Office Hotel pretty good
The first show we played at the Port Office Hotel was a ‘success by serendipity’. Linus turned up with a full drum kit ‘cos he’d decided that this was the true way forwards for him to add more groove to the sound. When Brendan first found out he went a slightly pale colour and emitted all manner of oaths but then he immediately got his head around it, micd the kit and it was great. A very good job Linus did bring the kit as well, more about that in a couple of paragraphs.
The Port Office Hotel is a very nice venue: Comfortable, spacious enough but not a warehouse, and a really good sound-system. The place was pumping with a lot of fat bass but clear tops. Nice.
This week we were joined by the exceptionally talented Aled Humphrys on keyboards. We’d never met before and he’d only heard our stuff online. He played really well and did himself proud. He’s a very fine musician indeed. It was great playing with him.
Maximum respect to Kayla for turning up and bringing the voice even thought she was very, very poorly. Even with a cold Kayla sang over most of our set and improvised over at least 40 minutes of improv that we all played. Very well I might add.
We suffered about a 60% tech failure throughout this show: The Soft-step and Abelton stopped talking to each other in the first minute of the show so that meant I couldn’t record any real-time loops to play over. Then the ‘key locate’ function on Abelton failed so I couldn’t find any tracks throughout the set without first playing the intro. Because of this about 7 new tracks didn’t get played for this show. On top of all this the new ‘Push’ controller started spasming about an hour into the show so that I lost all visual feedback as to our position in a given track which meant I spent most of the show flying by braille. The result being I couldn’t really match the next track to the current mood of the audience so that the overall narrative of the 4 hours was a bit disjointed. However, because there were actual musicians on the band-stand, whenever the tech failed we just started jamming. Linus having a full kit instead of percussion really saved our arses here. With drums, keys and a bass player you can play most things. Not so with only bongos and congas instead of a kit.
A lot of the jamming was freeform but we also squeezed in a couple of covers. One such jam was the Dee-Lite classic ‘Groove is in the Heart’ as a Rhodes driven Jazz-Funk number. It was the first time Kayla sang this song and she did a first class job. Actually we’ll be releasing this on CD Baby / iTunes in the next 7 days so we can all have a listen.
All the above notwithstanding though people were grooving and various little groups came and went throughout the evening: everyone was bobbing their heads. It was good.
Every show will get more efficient: ‘Mission control’ is at the computer doctor right now getting all moving parts replaced with solid state. This should add an amount of stability. We’ve also come up with a sound-file loading fix which should smooth things out.
Another show at the Port Office Hotel to come next week only this time we’ll be joined on keys by Sarah Gall. From what we gather she is an excellent keyboard player. Can’t wait to hear what we sound like with her playing. 
- Kayla, Aled and Linus working it well.
The residency at the Port Office Hotel means Luke gets to play guitar more
Working on ‘Sudden Bolt…”
So it transpires that the new batch of shows we’re scheduled for at the Port Office Hotel means I (Luke) have to come up with a lot more music in a short time. Luckily the new show requires a bit of ‘Lounge’. No problem, bring out the guitar. Here’s a snap of Luke and Kayla working through a new tune which will be debuting 1st November. See the guitar in the background? This week I’ll re-string it with round-wound strings because she’s currently rocking flat-wounds for that jazzy sound which I don’t think will fit in with the required vibe for ‘Porto’ shows. The current working title of the song we’re working on is ‘Sudden Bolt of Clarity’ but we’ve no idea what’ll it’ll end up being called. This track’ll be finished before the end of the week. We should have 5 new tracks for the first show at the Port Office.
Scored a residency at the Port Office Hotel, Brisbane for Friday nights.
That’s pretty good news I reckon.
It’s a pretty smick establishment so we’ll have a laugh playing there and we should enjoy a progressive audience given the location and the clientelle. The venue is just great all-round really, I can’t say much more. It’s a great time of the week to play in the City. Starting at 17:00 the set will start off pretty smooth with a bunch of Lounge and Dub grooves (peppered with some low-key Jazz / Fusion improvising) then progressively get more Housey as the evening progresses, ending with some hard-arse tech house before the punters move out at midnight. Should be a hoot.
I have two weeks to produce a lot more music……………………………Set the machine in motion once again.
Did some photos to put faces to the voices
So we went out on Saturday 12th October and took some snaps around Stones Corner, where we’ve all hung out quite extensively at some point or other. We thought we’d need some visuals to accompany the release of the ‘Slinky / Flying Free’ EP which has now made it to the distributor and will be available for purchase laster this week. You can bet everything you have that we’ll tell you aaaaaaaallllllllllllll about it.
Standing around
K-Rasta Studio is Wicked!
Spent the day mastering with Khesrow Rasta and Caddy Cee over at K-Rasta Studios in Nudgee. What a team! Knowledgable and able with serious gear. And they are very fun to hang out with whilst they’re working. Normally I spend as little time as possible hanging around studios whilst the engineers and Master-er-er-er-ers do their thing, but yesterday I had the foresight to take Hef with me so I got in about 3 hours of practice whilst the chaps weaved their arcane magic. We’re really please with the end result. Yesterday we knocked over the following Mastered mixes ready for release this weekend:
‘Slinky’ (Radio edit)
‘Slinky’ (Dance-floor mix: Desperate House-Wives mix)
‘Sweet Curves’
‘Soul Power’ (Radio Edit)
‘Soul Power’ (Jazzy Droid Dance floor mix)
I am told two mixes of ‘Flying Free’ will be finished today.
We wrapped up at about 01:30 ‘cos the boys had been up ’till 03:00 the following morning mixing some bad-ass trance which you will be hearing on the radio today I’m told. No flys on this team.
The Boys at ‘K-Rasta’ Studios: 02:00. Wizards.
Caffeine-free living is delivering some strange results…….
So it’s been 5 weeks since I had any caffeine: Feeling really healthy, training hard, both Martial Arts and Surfing are improving massively. But there seems to be a creative draw-back: every-time I get near the recording equipment the tracks all end up really jazzy. During the last week I’ve had to put two tracks on the back burner because they’re too jazz-funky and not very housey. I’ll have to take steps to adjust my consciousness some other way.
Last night I started work on a 137bpm tech-house track with the working title ‘Waiting’. I’ll keep it minimal and hard.
Happenings in the Studio Over the Weekend
First weekend of October:
I got an industrial Dub/ Breakbeat thing finished to the point where it’s ready for vocal flavours, then I’ll do the proper arrangement and send it through to the rest of the team. I expect we’ll get some vocal takes next week some time. We’ll probably go with vocal textures (Kayla) rather than a linear narrative as such. The working title for this track is ‘Smog Monster’. It is big.
I got to the same point with another track which is pretty tech-house with a big trancey break in the middle. The working title for this track is ‘Sudden Bolt of Clarity’. I’m hoping to get both Kayla and Jonny to drive this track. At the moment it’s a bit disjointed but I’m pretty sure a strong vocal narrative will hold it together nicely. The two voices should work well together as well.