Been pretty busy out here. Hell’s Own Drag is out the door and making its way in the world. We’ve managed to get Amputize couple terrestrial radio stations here in Chicago and over in Iowa where Doug lives. I’m particularly happy with Rock 108 as I have a soft spot for that station..it’s where I grew up and back in the day it was sort of the pinnacle of local band success to get a song in rotation there. So all these years later– better late than never right?
No Esteemed Deeds has been getting some plays at http://hardrockhellradio.com/ which is pretty cool. They’re really going to like the next one over there because I set my sights on full on thrash for the next one.
Speaking of which- work has progressed pretty quickly on the next Derision Cult release. Sometimes you just hit a vein you know? I don’t even remember working on this one a lot but nevertheless, a pretty cohesize set of a dozen tracks is sitting there on my workstation. I just loaded up samples and various noises against a bunch of them. I’m really happy with how it’s sounding right now. I went back to using straight up drum samples and am focusing on huge drum sounds this time. I mentioned earlier one production practice I’m wholly embracing is a single source of reverb for the whole track. I did this on the last Jefferson Dust album and it just felt, I dunno? Tighter? There’s the odd plate here or there on things like snares and kicks but by and large, it sounds more like one cohesive room the song takes place in. I also triple tracked the guitars all over the place as opposed to my usual stereo pair. It comes in and out but all in all, I think the guitars will sound the best they’ve ever sounded on this one. I need to do a few solos and then vocals before I properly mix it so it’s still a ways off but I am pretty sure this will be ready around October/November. I haven’t really done any lyrics yet but I already know the over-arching theme of the album..it’ll be about sins of the father being revisted on the sons (not me personally– more just society in general). I see it happening with the rise of the far right neo nazi stuff in the US, religious fervor etc. To me it’s all about prior generations setting the stage for where we’re at. Trump and the populist bend he represents was something bubbling under the surface for years before it finally blew up and he came on the scene. I’ll be exploring that whole idea across a range of things going on right now. So that’ll take a think or two to figure out.
I’ve done a few open mics and acoustic shows with my Jefferson Dust material and I really enjoy it. I’m having more fun playing covers than my own stuff (although a few of the tracks of Migration East are great acoustic). I decided I’d like to capture that vibe as raw as possible. After some back and forth, and ideas I’ve thankfully abandoned, I think the way I’m going to do this is just set up in the den in my house (we have one that’s carpeted, has window treatments etc– reasonably dead for what it is), set up my Zoom H5 in a well-placed spot in the room and let ‘r rip. Just me and a couple acoustics. I was really inspired by Patterson Hood’s Killers and Stars album. You can just hear the house on it. I’ve tested a few spots but I just need a free night or day where I can keep the family at bay while I sit there and jam a few tracks out. I’ll put it out on bandcamp. I’m hoping I can do that either this weekend or grab a free night this week.
Doug and I have one track we tried doing for the next Delta Shines project. Honestly it’s not turning out how I hoped so there’s a good chance it’ll end up in the scrap yard. That may be a ways off because Doug is currently offline moving and stuff. Maybe next year sometime the next chapter in that saga will see the light of day.
I have around a dozen Sys Machine instrumental tracks recorded. I’m taking a bit of a concept album approach to this. I want to blend things like Imminent Domains with vocals etc and the instrumental ambient stuff like on the prior 3 Sys Machine albums. So far I’m really happy with what I have. I’m tracking them in the order I want them to appear on the album and they should all run together (that is to say, you could listen to it as one giant song- which I’ll probably put a version of up on Soundcloud). I am using the same setup more or less from Imminent Domains– Parker guitars, Audio Damage Basic Synths etc. I have this magic number of 19 tracks in my head (yes it’ll be big). My plan is to hit that number, then start going back and refining things, putting vocals where they need to be etc. I think this could see the light of day by the end of the year.
Finally- I haven’t done anything towards this yet, but I DO want to revamp thsi site. Right now it’s sort of a lame blog but I want to create a proper repository for all my projects. I started http://www.musicalinstrumentkits.com as a place for all my instrument building projects. South Street Dungeon has a sprawl of projects now and it’d be really nice to just to have a one-stop spot where all the social media outlets, CDbaby links and streaming can live. Plus I can continue this blog. Sometime this fall I’d like to commit some energy to that. It’s looking like I’ll need to go to Europe here in a week so there’s 14 hours of flights in my near future where some web design would be time well spent.
So yeah– lot going on. It’s odd too because on the workfront things are heating up too. In addition to the aforementioned Europe stuff, I’ve got a few side projects that I have an equity stake in going right now too. I guess if you don’t watch sportsball, you end up wiht a lot of time on your hands.