Week of Mayhem, Night 5: Nothing, At Home, 06/01/10

...because we all need a night off once in a while. Plus, I have some stuff to do...

If you're in the mood for going out tonight and don't mind being aurally assaulted, check out Aktion Unit + Hoops + Duns at The Old Bar. See you tomorrow night!

Week of Mayhem, Night 4: Grizzly Bear, The Corner Hotel, 05/01/10 (+ Gear Talk)

Tonight's Grizzly Bear show perhaps wasn't totally mindblowing, but it was pretty damn impressive. Perhaps it's just how casual they are about being a great band. They opened with Southern Point, and it was probably the highlight for me; the part where it kicks in felt like reaching the top of a hill and looking out across a great expanse that was far more breathtaking than you'd anticipated. It's very cinematic music.





Okay, so, here's the important bit. Grizzly Bear are total gear-whores. Here's what I could decipher from their setup.

Chris Taylor had the most pedals of all the Bears. He had a couple of microphones set-up that went through his pedals; the one up top was for vocals (and might have not gone thorough his pedalboard, but often had a big wash of reverb, as well as tremolo for Knife). The bottom one was used regularly for his trio of wind instruments (flute, clarinet and tenor sax), which he ran through an Electro Harmonix POG (version 1) to transform his clarinet to bassoon to killer whale. It seriously pumps out a lot of bass. Other pedals were a Moogerfooger (Bass?) MuRF, an Akai Headrush 2 looper, a Boss Digital Delay, a Boss OC-3 Octave and a Boss PS-5 Super Shifter. He played both a Rickenbacker and a Hagstrom bass, and all of this was going through to a Musicman Head + Ampeg Classic 4x10 cab. He also had a radio which he used to feed static through his pedals, often looking very frustrated at not getting the static just right, which reminded me a bit of this for some reason.

Ed Droste has a pretty simple setup with nothing too fancy; he has a little keyboard and an omnichord up top, and played a Fender Telecaster through a Fender Twin. Pedals were a Sansamp (Bass Driver?), an MXR Carbon Copy delay, a Electro Harmonix Big Muff Pi NYC and a Boss Tuner. He also had a Boss Digital Delay and a Boss Reverb which I think he ran vocals through. There's also an older EHX Holy Grail and a Small Clone on his board.

Daniel didn't have all that gear as well; he played a few different hollowbodies (a Guild and a Gibson ES series with the one P90 in the neck), as well as a 70s Gibson SG through a bigger Fender combo. He also has a Wurlitzer electric piano (which I like more than the Fender Rhodes). Pedals were an Electro Harmonix POG, a Boss Digital Delay, an older orange Ibanez Compressor, a ZVEX Distortron and a wah of some description, plus a couple of others.

The coolest thing about this band is their ability to sound so full when there's not much going on at all; even when it's just a guitar and a couple of voices, it doesn't feel there should be more going on, or it's a quite part in-between loud parts.

Setlist: Southern Point/Cheerleader/Lullabye/Knife/Deep Blue Sea/Fine For Now/Two Weeks/Colorado/Shift/Ready, Able/I Live With You/Foreground/While You Wait For The Others/On A Neck, On A Spit//Fix It

Tomorrow night... a night off? My ears need it, and I've got some stuff to prepare for the show on Thursday. And the Future of the Left on Friday and the Week of Mayhem will be OVER...

Week of Mayhem, Night 3: King Khan & The Shrines, Ding Dong Lounge, 04/01/10

It doesn't get much more intense than that. Not much I can say, really. This gig had it ALL. If you miss this in Sydney, you are a stone (soup) cold fool.

Okay, well, maybe there is something to say about this gig. Highlights were Khan's "gospel" tale of rebirth (basically involving getting his entire body inside his woman's vagina and coming back out again reborn) and a ripping version of The Saints' "Know Your Product" (performed mostly on-top of the crowd). Lowlights were inconsiderate dicks in the crowd getting all pushy-pushy when people just wanted to dance. A shame. Oh, and I got to do a little organ freakout solo when the keyboard was thrust into the front-row. I was pretty chuffed.


Tomorrow: band practice and Grizzly Bear at The Corner. Brother Matthew just returned from this one and he had content smile on his face and said "It was really good. Look forward to it." I will.

New Song: "Trevor Block Rockin' Beats" (Rough Mix/Vocal)

Okay, so, couldn't resist. Here's the rough mix with the rough vocal. Final version will be on the single along with "Call The Jury (When He's Hungry)".

Recording Jury/Block single, Day 2, 04/01/10

So, we're done! Apart from maybe re-doing the vocals (which I'm not 100% happy with, but might never be) and mixing, the whole thing got finished today. I'd put up the rough mix now but it's probably best to sleep on it and listen with fresh ears tomorrow. "Jury" sounds pretty good, but "Block" sounds better. I'm gonna make up 25 of these bad-boys to give out at the Birmy show, so, get there! Otherwise it'll be up here in the next few days. Drinks at Off The Hip records tonight for those of you heading to King Khan. If so, see you there...

Week of Mayhem, Night 2: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Forum, 03/01/10

Well, that was short. Onstage at 9:40, off-stage at 10:50. In-between was everything you expect from a Yeah Yeah Yeahs show; costume changes, spitting water, deep-throating the microphone... all entertaining. Even if the setlist did slip into ballad-town in the middle (one of the few times I've been at a show and thought "well, I might go get a drink now"), there were plenty of highlights. All the old stuff sounded great; Black Tongue, Pin and Y-Control in the main set and an encore of Maps and Date With The Night were the Fever To Tell choices and they pulled Miles Away from the EP. They even chucked in a Cramps cover and Rockers To Swallow from the Is Is EP. The rest was pretty good; the one-two punch of Gold Lion and Zero about five songs in was where the set peaked, and Heads Will Roll towards the end got toes tapping. Even if the mix was a little muddy and things didn't hit really hard where they should have at some points, you can't really have a bad time in the company of these guys. And David-fucking-Pajo on the keys/bass/guitar!

Setlist: Runaway/Rockers To Swallow/Black Tongue/Miles Away/Human Fly (The Cramps)/Gold Lion/Zero/Pin/Skeletons/Cheated Hearts/Heads Will Roll/Y-Control Encore: Maps>Date With The Night

Recording Jury/Block single, Day 1, 03/01/10

Nothing much got done today apart from setting up the mics and unpacking some new cables, but it's all ready to go for tomorrow. I got bored in the afternoon and made a start on a song called "Call The Jury (When He's Hungry)". The inspiration behind the song is a dream I had:

"Had a dream last night where me and three of our friends (Stu, Sarah and Kris) were going to another city... I got stuck with about six shopping bags to carry in the airport going through the metal detectors (thanks guys). I was driving around when we got there, figuring out where to go. There was a big ringroad around the airport that got us close to where we were supposed to be, but we couldn't get through a certain bit. GPS said we were only about a kilometer away, but still couldn't get there in the twenty minutes after that. We then met a couple of asian girls, who gave Kris of ours a present: a t-shirt saying ''CALL THE JURY... WHEN HE IS HUNGRY'', with a picture of him with one eye bigger than the other, and fangs looking very hungry."

Andre had an idea to have a pulsating synth bit going along with the main song. Anyway, I recorded that intro part today with my Korg MS2000 synth through a Retroman Wolf Tone Machine fuzz pedal (which is reproduction of a vintage FOXX Tone Machine octave fuzz with a few improvements). Sounds like this:

YIS - Call The Jury Pulsating Synth (sample)

Don't know if it's going to work in the context of the song, but we'll see when the drums and other things are added. We'll have to be careful not to throw too much noise in there... Anyway, more samples/photos/thoughts tomorrow. Off to see Yeah Yeah Yeahs now...

YIS News #4

Phew! So, I did something I rarely ever do: initiate a cleaning up of something. I've wanted to record for the last month or so, but keep putting it off, but never knew why... So, maybe as a last act of procrastination, or to erase one of the reasons why recording at home is so painful, we decided to clean the bandroom up. Anyway, it feels a lot nicer to be in now, and there's no risk of tripping over cords that don't work or standing on drawing pins.

So, hopefully that means some recording tomorrow... Probably the Call The Jury/Trevor Block double A-side that we've been threatening to do for a while. Anyway, if that somehow gets done, we'll have some freebies at the Birmy show.

Other things on the horizon: our next gig is this Thursday at The Birmingham with The Strange Attractions, Nightmaster and Spitfire Parade. All these bands are really good. After that, we've got Australia Day Eve (25th of Jan) at Pony with Bad Orchestra, Baptism of Uzi and one other band. We're looking for a venue for Saturday Feb 14th as Where's Jerome are coming to town. Hopefully The Tote will have us. Then after that it's Spitfire Parade's CD launch at Pony on Saturday Feb 19th (or maybe the week after?).

The exciting news is that we've just started to put together an NSW/ACT tour for Easter Weekend. We just started thinking about it today, but it'll be from April 1st to 4th or 5th (smack bang in the middle of my school holidays), with Canberra on the Thursday night (before Good Friday), and Friday and Saturday in Sydney and The Gong, depending on where's open. Let us know if you want to help out or play with us while we're up there, especially for the Sunday or Monday in Regional Victoria between Melbourne and Canberra on the way back home.

We're also thinking about (in a very pie in the sky way) trying to get Drummer out here, maybe in June/July, but we have no idea about how we'd go about putting on a tour or anything...

Oh, and I guess we'll probably make a proper album sometime soon.

"The Child" by Andre Fazio

Week of Mayhem, Night 1: Andrew Bird, The Hi-Fi, 01/01/10

There's no shame in stating the following: I will never be as talented as Andrew Bird... and I'm okay with that. This is the second time I've seen him; the last time was on the back of "Armchair Apocrypha" (not my favourite A.B. album) and it was stil pretty damn magical. This was just as good, possibly better because of the material from his new album "Noble Beast", which is an amazing album (and a grower, so, stick with it if it didn't click first time).

Oh, yeah, and this was all the more amazing because he did the whole set from a chair with a busted foot. The magnitude of his achievement tonight can only be fully appreciated after you've seen how much tap-dancing on loop pedals he has to do on stage. Apart from being a master on several instruments, he also is one of the only artists I've seen who is able to use a loop pedal in a musical fashion without sounding like... well, a song sounding like it's built around a loop drifting in and out of sync. Even guys like Mick Turner can't get this quite right sometimes, and Mick Turner is one of my favourite guitarists ever. It's hard enough to get a guitarist and a drummer playing to a loop, but to have four guys doing just blows your mind. The rest of the band are quite a nifty set of players; a new guitarist, the same bassist from last time (I think) and Martin Dosh (a.k.a. Dosh who supported him last tour) on drums, drum machines and electric piano.



The setlist had some great rarities and nuggets in the set tonight. I'm the kind of person who loves hearing the embryonic song material just as much as the finished product (stuff like Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot demos, engineer's demos and studio sessions is my favourite shit ever), and tonight's setlist contained a bunch of this kind of stuff. After doing an amazing version of the regular opener "Why?", he prefaced the main set by saying that he was currently interested in doing new songs and old songs the way he originally concieved them, well before they were done the way they are on the album. So, next up was what he called a "kinda mashup" of "Sweet Breads" and "Dark Matter" which was great, and later in the set we got the original version of "Imitosis" (containing lyrics scratched because Walt Disney wouldn't let him borrow a chorus from a Sesame Street song about the letter I).

The setlist below was chopped and changed a little bit; for instance, we got "Headsoak" off the Bowl of Fire album instead of the Dylan cover "Oh Sister" and maybe a few songs swapped around...

The undisputed highlight for me was my favourite track from the new album, "Anonanimal"; just a brilliant rendition that extended beyond the recorded version and shot off into the stratosphere. I can't really describe it. Just gave me chills.

(and, on the "embryonic" tangent, here's a pro-shot live version of a "not quite finished" (but still brilliant) version of "Anonanimal".)

It's going to be very hard to top this this week, or even this year, but there's some good competition... next gig to be reported on will be Yeah Yeah Yeahs at The Forum on Sunday. Should be good. Also coming up this week: King Khan on Monday, Grizzly Bear on Tuesday, (maybe) Aktion Unit on Wednesday at The Old Bar (but we might have band practice), and Future of the Left on Friday... and maybe the DFA crew spinning records after that if we've got the energy. Oh, and wait, our gig at The Birmingham on Thursday! How can we possibly compete??