Sydney Tonight

Leaving in an hour and a half to drive up to our free gig at the Oxford Art Factory tonight. Follow the action on the twitters.

An Exhausting Weekend Of Pain

Originally titled "YISCRAWL 2010", but shouted down by several people, "An Exhausting Weekend Of Pain" is basically a series of gigs over the weekend that we're playing. I've gotten to the point where I'm just bored if I'm not actually playing a gig on the weekend, so this weekend will be the opposite of painful for me. However, if you are if you are, say, a very enthusiastic drummer (or audience member), then you will be needing a hot bath with epsom salts by the end of it all. Here's a guided tour through what's happening this coming weekend.

"Dreamland Recordings Presents: SONIC ARRAY. Saturday Nov 20th @ Irene’s Warehouse. 5 Pitt St. Brunswick East. $10.00. From 3pm – 10:30pm. First act performs 3:15pm SHARP. Sonic Array is the epic warehouse show we have always wanted to host, with a truly diverse mix of local music and experimental sound that has something for everyone."

Bronwyn has been invited to slap the bass with our pals Constant Light for at least one show. So, this is her debut, along with another dude named Peter who seems nice. He has a beard, I think. Fueled by cider and powered by the psychic powers of Linus the Cat (possibly the only cat on the planet that I get along with), they wrote a 30 minute "song" on Saturday which they will perform live on Saturday afternoon. Sounds impressive, but then again, it only has two bass riffs in it. So, I suggest coming, bringing vuvuzelas, and invading the stage while this happens. They should be on at 4pm. After that, there'll be a few bands worth hanging around for.

Then I suggest that you take a 2 minute walk around the corner to Mankoushe on Lygon Street for lunch/dinner. It is probably the best falafel in Melbourne, if not Australia, but that's not even their specialty (which is the Lebanese pizza-type thing that they're named after). Some very nice dudes run the joint, and play music very, very loudly inside (last time we went it was B.B. King, before that it was Pink Floyd), where they make falafel to order, and all the bread is woodfired. Really, really awesome. I think they're open until 9. After that....

"'Born from the fire pits of hell' (but Melbourne raised) Barbariön have emerged from the depths to bring forth a new age of fur clad metal and sweaty devastation. With a live show of gargantuan proportions, pyrotechnic excess and hazardous camp theatrics, Barbariön roam far and wide, ever seeking global domination. AND THEY SHALL HAVE IT!"

We've been working hard under the house for a couple of months now on something new; as previously mentioned, Andre and I have been chugging away as the rhythm section for the new solo project for Sam Agostino (who also plays in Digger & The Pussycats, Russian Roulettes, Kamikaze Trio, etc, etc). It's called Brat Farrar; this is our first show, and it'll be a pretty big one. We're on at 9pm. Been hanging out to see Barbarion for ages... alas, we will not get to see them this weekend. You might want to, but we have to go elsewhere...

Okay, there's no poster for this event, but it's a warehouse party at 38 Stafford Street, Abbotsford, which is apparently the address for Minh-Chi Pressing, which does ironing. Anyway, YIS are playing this one. It's a "Good Riddance Party" for a girl named Amy who books/manages a few bands around town. Also playing is HUF at 7pm, The Postures from NZ at 8pm, Damn Terran at 9pm, Bone at 10pm, then are YIS on around 11pm, Ouch My Face at 12pm and Mesa Cosa at 1am... It's about 30 seconds from Victoria Park Station. Free entry, BYO (obv).

Then you'll probably have to go home and get some rest for...

Brat Farrar's second show. Also playing are the wonderful Nightmaster. These Rock'n'Bowls things are awesome fun, and there's a cheap BBQ, cheap drinks (something like $3.50 for a bottle of Coopers), and good music. And bowls, of course.

Then we'll probably all go to Kim Salmon at The Old Bar, which is also free.

And that's pretty much it.

New Plans, New Bands

Hachiko the Akita Inu, greatest dog of all time.

So, as of Wednesday morning (AEST), we've had a mastered album. We've been sitting with it for a few days and we're pretty happy with it. Mum and Dad like it a lot, so we have that over-50s cyclist demographic locked down, so it seems. We're just waiting on Obits to finish up their European tour so Rick Froberg can get started on the artwork. We're pretty thrilled to have Rick doing the cover; his artwork and album covers both rule. In the meantime, we're shopping around to get the wax pressed overseas (just working on the best way to ship and also the amount we're going to press). Looks like we're going with Rainbo but if you have any better advice, let us know. Should be a launch in the New Year, but we might sneak few copies out the door before then if we get it all together in time. We're also working out putting together a full album you'll get digitally when you buy the actual album with some old stuff (Happy Bears Forever, Electronic Love, M.A.R.C.H., Progress), some stuff we didn't put on the album but recorded (Hiboux, Ungreatful Motherfucker, our cover of Fire), and some live stuff (Going To Explode), and a couple of tracks that we didn't end up playing live much or recording (It's Not Enough). Might be even better than the actual album.

We played our first gig for a month the other night for the G-g-g-ghost Records benefit (new record label run by the dudes from The Toots). The night sold out around 10:30, so that was awesome for the guys (and our friend Lauren who was doorbitching that evening) and hopefully we raised enough cash to get their first release off the ground. I tried (and failed) at DJing around 1am (selecting songs off two burned CDs being a more accurate description); awesome selection of songs marred by inept crossfading. D'oh.

Our next gig is this Saturday (Andre's 22nd birthday!) at The Birmingham in Fitzroy for our pal Kieran P. West's album launch. Also from Eltham College's graduating class of 2006 is The Thod, who launch their new album "There Is Still Time, Brother" at Cherry on Friday, November 12th, with us in support. In between we're playing a Yah Yah's show with High Fangs and Sole Stickers (from Tassie) on Saturday, November 6th.

Andre and I are also doing a couple of new musical things; Andre has had a couple of jams with the guys from Chigwell Sharp, and we're providing the rhythm section in Sam from Digger's new band Brat Farrar. We've got a couple of gigs coming up already; Saturday the 27th of November for the Dunhill Blues album launch at The Retreat, and Meredith weekend back in Melbourne on Saturday 11th of December at The Tote, where Digger are launching the re-pressing of their first album "Young, Tight and Alright" with Legends and another band that's TBC.

If you're not busy on Friday, I suggest coming down to The Empress on Brunswick St, where our pal Ross is playing a gig with his band May, with Jim and Sasha from Constant Light providing bass and keys. Also, Thursday should be awesome too; Low are playing The Forum for $20. You'd be crazy to miss that one. Plus, the week after, The (amazing) Molting Vultures from Radelaide are coming down for a pair of shows; Off The Hip party on Friday 29th and Great Britain with Wrong Turn on the 30th.

Kingdom of Fuzz: Amazing Complete Lyrics by Simon Fazio

self-portait of Simon Fazio by Simon Fazio

Message: I got a message for you/I got a message for you/I got a message for you/I got a message for you/Wow-wah-wa-wow-wah-wah/I wrote a letter to you/I wrote a letter to you/Cos I’ve got a message for you/I got a message for you

Stop/Go: I say stop/You say go/And you won’t ever let it go/I say go/You say stop/I’m i’m-a shout it to the top/Yeah

Lizardman: I/Lizardman/Slip inside/Creep in where I can/Sweet caress/Heavy load/Lay back watch me go/Wow-wow-wow-wow-wow-wow-wow-wow-ah/I/Slip inside/Shed my skin/Teeth, toe, tongue and tail/Don’t resist/Sweet and low/Ready to explode

Trevor Block Rockin’ Beats: Out on the street today/A man is on his way/With many secrets to reveal/Black coat and silver hair/Ear bling and underwear/A professional without peer/It takes so much just to get through the day/But it gets easier singing Old Bar blues to Trevor Block rockin’ beats/Out on the street tonight/Different than in broad daylight/Not the same man that we once knew/A man of mystery/With a chequered history/but now his grey skies they ain’t so blue

(I Feel) Repulsed: Looking at you/Talking to you/I feel repulsed/Staring at you/Talking to you/I feel repulsed/I’m a candle and you’re my wick/I love you so much it makes me sick/I feel repulsed/Hugging with you/Kissing with you/I feel repulsed/Sharing with you/I don’t know what to do/I feel repulsed

Baby Come On: I take you on a holiday/Not just to a cheap motel/Tell me what the Hell’s wrong with me, babe/Is it the way that I smell?/I bought you fancy jewellery/Made of silver and gold/And all of this tomfoolery/Is fuckin’ with my soul/My baby, come on/You know we can talk for hours, girl/Making love by the beach/But there’s a cold dead look in your eye that says/Says your way out of reach/My baby, come on/And now I feel so lonely baby/Feel so messed up inside/Low down and all shook up since/Since 1985/My baby, come on/Ahh

Burning Well: I fell into a burning well/Lost myself in a deep dark hole/I never saw myself again/And then I lost my self control-a-woahl/Burned my eye on a cold grey sun/Burned my hand on a flaming fire/And then I lost my self control-a-woahl/and I gave in to a strange desire-eh/Oh no/I got no place to go/Oh no/I can’t find my way home

Infin: Isolation/Oscillation/My elation

I Wanna Go Home: I wanna go home/I cannot go home/Get away/Away from here/I wanna get high/I cannot come down/Get away/Away from here/Alright/I wanna go home/I cannot go home/Get away/Away from here/I wanna calm down/I cannot go down/Get away/Away from here/Oh no

Deep.

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.