Mighty Joe Lambert

...and so our album is off to be mastered! And thanks to the awesome Australian-US exchange rate, we were able to afford the services of Mr. Joe Lambert of Joe Lambert Mastering (we are yet to confirm if there is any relationship between the dude and the company). Joe was responsible for the mastering on the last two Deerhunter records; "Microcastle/Weird Era Cont" and "Halycon Digest", the awesome Obits album "I Blame You"(featuring Rick Froberg from Jehu/Hot Snakes/etc.), the Dirty Projectors album "Bitte Orca", Animal Collective's "Merriweather Post Pavillion", and heaps more... DIO, Cheap Trick, Judas Priest and a bunch of other cool stuff you can see on his discography. Should be finished by this time next week, so now we just have to finish the artwork and (provided that nobody cool ends up wanting to put it out for us) we'll be putting out the album ourselves ASAP.

...announcing the new album, "Kingdom of Fuzz".

YIS have made an album. We can tell you these things: it's 10 tracks long. It runs for roughly 35 minutes. It's called KINGDOM OF FUZZ.

It was produced by Paul Maybury; guitarist/producer for the Melbourne band Rocket Science. It was recorded at A Secret Location in Fairfield, Victoria on the 19th, 20th and 21st of September and mixed at the same location on the 23rd, 24th and 25th. (We rested on the 22nd.)

The band on the album is Simon Fazio (vocals, guitars and keyboards), Andre Fazio (drums and a little bit of sonic manipulation on "Baby Come On") and Bronwyn Liroudia Rands (bass and a little bit of backup vocals on "Trevor Block Rockin' Beats"). Paul Maybury rips in with a guitar solo on one track that was recorded straight to the board on the last night of mixing. The album was recorded (mostly) live, with all instruments and band members playing in the same room, with the vocals, wooshes and a few extra guitars put in later.

The tracklisting, release date and launch details will be put up in the next couple of weeks, with cover art still in the works. We're looking to put it out at the end of November or start of December (so you can crank it in your cars/vans/buses for the drive up to Meredith), with the Melbourne launch show hopefully taking place the weekend before Christmas, as well as some interstate launches in January 2011.

Until then, we've got a pair of shows lined up; a fundraiser for new record label G-G-G-G-Ghost Records on Friday the 15th of October with The Toot Toot Toots, The Orphanage and The Harlots, and then Saturday the 23rd of October for Kieran P. West's Album Launch (you may know him from The Strange Attractions) with Merrygorounds, which is also Andre's birthday! Hope to see you there.

Recording Snaps Day 1&2

Recording Blog Part 1: Prologue

Three weary musicians, one weary producer and one hungover pal who just wanted food drag themselves to the East Brunswick Club for a Sunday parma and to plan out the sessions for what is to be the debut YIS album. We talk about exciting special guests. Smoke starts pouring into the room from somewhere but nobody looks too alarmed. A Bruce Springsteen mix CD plays over the speakers. Glory Days - tick. Hungry Heart - tick. Secret Garden - CROSS. We have a chat about what gear we're going to bring along. Andre says he is excited about using his vibraslap. Bronwyn says that she prefers the Brown Rabbit pedal to the Sitori Bass Fuzz but I disagree. I try to work out a way to make Beatmaker on my iPhone pan different drums to the left and right channels. Paul says that he's looking forward to really mucking around with the drum sounds on the album. We all get excited by this. We talk about fuzz pedals; Foxx Tone Machine vs Octavia, the best place that sells DIY kits. Also about how one particular Superfuzz kit is crap. I get excited about using my fuzz arsenal on the album. Bronwyn angers me by telling me that she bought a Earthquaker Hoof fuzz and neglected to tell me or bring it over for me to steal. I try to work out in my head the best way to pull off the synth arpeggiator song. We eat.

We go back to a semi-trashed house on Lego Lane opposite the Brickworks, still heated from the Housewarming party the night before. I pretend to put on the CD of the nine demos I think will make up the album but instead put on Kelis' "Milkshake". This amuses me alone. We listen to the actual demos; some songs go over better than others, but the majority is pretty good. We talk about what else we might have a crack at. I crap on about the album's "emotional arc". I get harassed about my new Bonds tee (that makes me "look like Ross Kemp in Extras") and the pattern on my new briefs (which is kinda like The Phantom meets Spiderman) which are visible because the Bonds t-shirt is way too short. I mention that the colour of the briefs match the inside of my peacoat. Our hungover friend says that she reckons Trinny and Suzannah would never suggest this. I collect my copy of King of New York and The Dead Zone (Walken/Cronenberg film, not Anthony Michael Hall series) and put on the aforementioned coat. Paul races off on his bike (he is quite fast) and Andre and I head home but stop at JB to buy some DVDs on the way. We listen to the first three tracks of the new Grinderman and he says "It's like the first album. But not as catchy". I say that it's probably a grower. I think to myself whether our album will be a grower or not.

YIS vs Mother and Son Blood Battle

Our guest guitarist Josh Sankey and Bodie from Mother & Son both ended up with bloody guitars after the gig at The Tote on Saturday...

However, my guitar was still shiny and clean.

Great night. Sold out!

Gear: New Toys!

Got some new toys in the mail this week: a Foxrox Octron, Lovepedal Eternity and Death By Audio Fuzz War all came in the mail, whilst a Earthquaker Devices Disaster Transport Delay pedal came as a belated birthday present from Bron (aww). In addition, I'm using my Sitori Sonics Sitori Drive pedal which I got a while back but haven't had on my board, partly due to the fact that I'm using my Firebird a bit more now (due to the fact that I've broken pretty much all my other guitars in some small way that I'm too lazy to fix right now) and it needs the extra controls that the Lovepedal COT50 didn't have. Still using the Holy Grail Plus reverb (which I don't love but it's not a bad pedal), as well as the Cusack Tap-a-Whirl trem pedal, the Peterson Strobostomp tuner and the Moog Freqbox. Also changed my vocal delay pedal from the Line 6 DL-4 to my Moog Delay just because I can adjust the levels on it.

A bit about the new stuff: the Octron is pretty cool. It has internal trimpots for the tone and gain of both the octave up and down functions which I haven't fiddled with yet. At the moment, the tone of octave down is rolled off so it's a very warm sound with not much attack. It works pretty well and tracks fantastically (only does single notes though). It feels a lot better to play than the Electro-Harmonix POG2 that I sold, which tracked pretty good but it felt like there was a slight delay when it was coming out the other end, and I didn't really love the sound (I think that distorted POG guitar sound is one of the worst tones in history). However, our friend James Gilligan bought mine and uses it now with bass and he makes it sound very nice. The Octron isn't digital or polyphonic like the POG, but it is all analog and good. Octave up is more like a fuzztone, and you can get some really cool fuzzy sounds just from this box alone. When you kick it on feeding a Muff or the Fuzz War it goes bananas, and when you add the Freqbox as well it's demonic. Anyway, cool pedal.

The Death By Audio Fuzz War is insane; massive sized and massive sounding box, especially in conjunction with the Octron or Freqbox. I bought it partly because Jon Dwyer from Thee Oh Sees uses one and I was a bit obsessed last week. Don't think it's going to replace my Muff (just different sounds) but it'll get some good use. I think I played the main riff to Electric Wizard's Funeralopolis for about half an hour whilst trying it out this afternoon. It's got some cool useable sounds at any point on your guitar's volume knob.

Lovepedal Eternity is also a pretty cool box. I picked it up for $100 on sale off Lovepedal's mailing list (get on it, some great deals for great pedals). Usually more compressed than I like my overdrive sound, but it sounds pretty cool lead stuff and I'm using it for more of an in-between, sustained sound than I get with the Sitori Drive, which has more top end but doesn't really have a lot of the sustain. It'll hang around for a little while. I am also a big fan of Lovepedal's COT50 and BBB07 fuzz pedals.

The Earthquaker delay is also a fantastic pedal. I was using a Freakshow Digilog for a while, which sounds great but has a few shortcomings; for some reason the freak-out button on it doesn't really activate fully until you push back the delay time or up the mix knob, so it's kinda hard to us practically on some settings. This doesn't really automatically go towards the bright, biting slapback tone which I usually use (but I'm sure it's in there, and there's a tone knob for the repeats), but the default sound is more of a bubbling, tape-echo-esque ambient sound that sits underneath. It also has footswitchable modulation for the repeats, which kicks on the analog chorus/vibrato sounds on the repeats. Sounds awesome.

Not sure if I'm going to keep it this massive; even though everything is true bypass and I have good cables, it does knock a bit of your high end and gain from your signal. The A/DA Final Phase might make a return as well as the other Lovepedals, but I'm content with this right now.

Amazing Dong Video

Amazing looking video of our song Infin (Live at Ding Dong) shot by Matthew Ellery. We on TV!

Next gig: Saturday 4th at The Tote with The Toot Toot Toots, Digger and the Pussycats, Mother and Son and Jack on Fire.

YIS Recommends: Dan Kelly's Dream

There was a time in my life that I probably listened to no Australia music, because, well, a lot of Australian music is utter crap (not that other countries don't produce crap music, it either just doesn't make it out of the country or ends up of MMM where nobody listens to it anyway). The few instances that I did listen to Australian music, it was always the type of music that didn't sound particularly Australian (I think my first favourite Australian band after my Skyhooks obsession at age 4 was probably Rocket Science). To my teenage ears, the problem was that most Australian recordings sounded pretty awful (the same way that Australian films tend look dull and have this absence of vibrance in the colours of the picture that's just uninspiring), and bands from overseas just sounded better and more interesting. There was one instance on my first day of Year 7 in a new school where I was asked if I listened to Triple J (I had never heard of it) to which I replied that I listened to "gangsta rap like N.W.A." (for which I was ridiculed until they all got into rap in Year 10, after which it reverted back just to fat jokes). I turned on JJJ one night for a half hour, ended up buying Regurgitator's Unit and chucked out the rest.

Anyway, as you would have realised from the last post, there are more and more Australian bands that I'm growing to love; The Drones being one of the more recent bands that can stand tall against the bombast of the best internationals while sounding distinctly Australian, as well as Eddy Current being one of the best things ever who never even think about apologising about where they're from or who they are. And, yeah, the new Dan Kelly album.

I wasn't really a massive fan of Dan up until this point; a few live performances with the Alpha Males and an enjoyable yet largely uninspiring slot with The Ukelaides at Meredith didn't really make me want to rush out and grab anything (and in addition, the "Drowning In The Fountain Of Youth" came out when I was toiling away in a Country Road stockroom, and it's twee-as-fuck bubbliness in contrast to my no-natural-light box of pain made me want to murder, but anyway...). After seeing a pretty great set with The Dream Band at the "last ever" Tote show started to change my mind ever so slightly (despite the fact that Dan allegedly drooled on Bronwyn), and then I found a copy of Dan Kelly's Dream on the coffee table on Saturday morning.

Why this album is not shit:

It sounds amazing. As in, it doesn't sound like shit that was made in a day on a shoestring budget. The mix is great. The instrumentation is really lush and bold. Whoever mastered it did a great job. The instruments all sit in the right spot, or pop out at the right moment. It's not a boring listen.

It's inviting. The lyrics can sound a bit obtuse or sometimes self-aware, but it in contrast to something like, say, Beach House (which tends to evoke similar warm, often aquatic feelings), it feels a lot more welcoming and personable and just plain fun. It's cool, but it doesn't feel too exclusive.

It flows. The song order is spot on, and it flows in a way that works so well; yes, it's very, er, dreamlike in the way that it runs, with a lot of the songs segueing into each one another. Often this can lead to skippable filler or drone that, well, drones on for too long, and often means that some songs feel incomplete outside the context of the album due to an abrupt start and end. Not here.

The songs are great. The songs are great.

And there's more reasons, but you'll figure that out when you hear the album. I'm really enjoying it, and it's been one of the few experiences (along with the first time I watched Office Space) where I felt like putting it straight back after the first time round and actually did.

Kudos, Dan Kelly.

One Year On

Sitting in bed on a Sunday morning (which is drifting into Sunday afternoon), listening to the new Dan Kelly album that Andre left on the coffee table and waiting around for Eels to play in around 10 hours or so. It's been roughly a year since we started the band, and it's weird to look around now and see posters that say we're playing at East Brunswick Club or The Tote and think that whatever stupid name we settled on all that time ago would be whatever would be on those posters. Or maybe they wouldn't. Or that it'd be what schoolkids shout out at me across the yard during my two weekly yard duties at school (although they seem to be obsessed with The Screaming Pigeons for some strange reason). The event was marked with a couple of gigs over the last week at Weekender at Ding Dong and a last minute job at Yah Yahs, and thanks to everyone who made the effort to come out and see us. Sometimes twice!

So, as I've mentioned, in about a month's time, we will will be laying down what we anticipate will be our debut album. I thought I had a pretty good handle on what it's actually going to be about a week ago when I burst into Andre's room with a piece of lined paper with ridiculous tracklists and album titles and how was going on and on about how awesome it was going to be, but after reassessing the situation I realise that I still have NO CLUE AT ALL. So, we'll just have to wait and see. I really don't want to do an EP; don't get me wrong, I have many, many favourite EPs but I have a big problem when I read bands talk about how they're putting out an EP to "raise their profile" or have it lead up to make this big grand statement that may never happen. But then again, we only have a few days of recording and too many ideas (or not enough ideas), and it'll end up being an EP. Or maybe a double album. I don't know. It's probably not going to be called "Qi" or "Hound's Brunch" or "Progress". This morning it sounds like it might be called "The Story of YIS".

By the way, this Dan Kelly album is pretty great. There's actually some pretty amazing Australian music that's being made lately; the last Love of Diagrams album was pretty great, and I'm still in love with the Mum Smokes double album that they put out a couple of years ago. It's amazing, and I don't say that a lot. It's a shame that sometimes the best bands can't stay together and will go off and do other things for whatever reason. Stay together for the kids, Mum Smokes.

Which brings me to something else that's pretty awesome about playing in this band; starting to play all the places that I've seen some of my favourite bands. Even though Fall Tribute Night at The Workers Club (formerly the Rob Roy) ended in a massive row, it was still pretty awesome to play there after going to see some of my first gigs as an eighteen year old there; seeing Love of Diagrams every couple of weeks (sometimes with a three-piece Mum Smokes). And, yes, we get to play East Brunswick Club next weekend, which is pretty awesome. Although I haven't seen as many amazing gigs amazing shows there as The Corner, I remember seeing Low play an amazing set there a few years back, so, it'll be pretty good to play there. We also get to play at The Toots' album launch in a couple of weeks and getting to play the main bandroom at The Tote (after playing the Front Bar and upstairs at Cobra before it shut) on a Saturday night. It's these small things that make me pretty happy.

So, I'm looking forward to at least a few more years of these kinds of cool things. Every time I feel my phone buzz in my pocket and see it's a new email on the YIS account, I hold my breath to see if it's another great gig offer (still holding out for Meredith or Golden Plains and then I can probably die happy) or somebody saying that they dug our band and want a CD (which sometimes happens!), but usually it's just something about staying harder for longer. Ah well.

Wet and Anxious

Good weekend, overall. YIS played a pretty decent show on Friday night for Trevor Block's Last Tram Home. I kinda forgot how hard it is to open up a show. I think we've been spoiled in this band with all the cushy middle spots on weekends. Anyway, it wasn't a horrible show for us by any means, just a combination of still getting my voice back up to scratch after losing it last week and a late start due to some missing backline (along with Andre being totally in awe of the vintage Ludwig he borrowed from Myles from Wrong Turn) meant that we had the shakes a little bit, but it was fine. The highlight was probably the destruction of Sasha's vuvuzela. Sorry Sasha.

Last night was pretty awesome though. Despite some horrible technical problems (mostly with Matt's JCM800 dying then working then dying again), The Screaming Pigeons played to our most enthusiastic crowd ever (save for maybe Callum's backyard 18th party three years ago) and it was a lot of fun when we settled down after thinking that we might not be able to play the show. We played all the "hits" and a few choice MC5 and Black Flag covers. Sleepy Bear Parade played for an hour and were pretty awesome. Al (who usually plays guitar in The Thod) was a monster behind the drums, and it was good seeing Andre up and singing. (I need to make sure he has a microphone for the next YIS show and not because his taunts directed at me need amplification). So, yes, last show ever, and we made it count.

Sitting around at home today listening to a few CDs that I got off the Mistletone sale for cheap and freaking out a little bit about recording the album. Not sure what it's going to be. I think it'll be good to get it out of the way so I'm not freaking out about what the first release is going to sound like. I suppose we could do an EP, but I feel like that'd be a bit of a cop-out. After all, this might be the only album that I ever get to record properly, so I really don't want to look back and regret it. I'm just not sure where it's going to go... whether it's going to be a kitchen sink approach with everything that we want to do on it with all the electronic stuff and the ridiculous shit (which could end up sounding like filler or be the most interesting stuff on there), or just to make it a good psych-rock record... I guess we'll have to wait and see on that one. Bah, freaking out.