We had a great recording session yesterday, thanks to the fine folks at McNally Smith. Except for the trombone player who was a real bitch about his solo in the tune Progression, everything went off without a hitch! hahaha For those of you who know anything about music theory and such, you will understand that no trombone player feels relaxed when he has to play a solo in the key of F# while under the musical microscope that is the studio. Alas, on the second take, he felt okay enough to let it ride, plus the rest of the band on that 9 minute track kicked some serious ass.
Overall, the whole band sounded amazing, and Brihanu laid down some truly versatile vocals. In the space of four songs, he got into spoken word, hard street rap, and straight up punk singing ala Saul Williams. You simply won't believe your ears when you hear what we recorded. Our influences that come from outside of jazz and hip-hop, like indie rock, punk, and more jam band type stuff all worked their way into this recording.
Our goal is to get this EP out before the Republican National Convention, so wish us luck.
-Christopher
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Recording our New EP this Morning
That right, today is the day. Well, not "the" day, but "a" day that happens to be something to look forward to. We are getting a free day of recording at McNally Smith College of Music today, from 8:30-5pm, and what we are hoping to do with it is record four new tracks - three new songs that have yet to be recorded plus a brand new arrangement of Brihanu's Complex Crooks, which we recorded on the Reclaim Freedom album.
If all goes well, we will get four great tracks out of this. Then, we are going to try and make our little plan a reality. What's the little plan you say? Well, pretty simple: we want to record, mix, master, press, package and distribute this little EP all in house. In other words, nobody but the boys in Junkyard Empire and the person we hire to do the mix down will have a hand in putting this thing together. We might even design the cover of the EP all ourselves, individually screen printing the first 100 or so. We'll see what happens, but the point is we are going grassroots mafia on this one.
By the way, Graham O'Brien sounds fantastic playing our music so far. After only three rehearsals, he's got the material nailed and we are feeling really good about the session. Hear me when I say YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW GREAT THIS EP IS GOING TO BE. Unless you've seen us live this year, you haven't heard the amazing evolvement of our sound over the past year. Add to that the deep pocket Graham brings to the stage and the new sound is just bangin'.
This will be in effect, the reintroduction of Junkyard Empire to the world. You can definitely expect to hear some tracks on the radio, because they will not be able to resist playing them. We have especially high hopes for one of our tunes called Progression.
We're at a whole new level baby.
-Christopher
If all goes well, we will get four great tracks out of this. Then, we are going to try and make our little plan a reality. What's the little plan you say? Well, pretty simple: we want to record, mix, master, press, package and distribute this little EP all in house. In other words, nobody but the boys in Junkyard Empire and the person we hire to do the mix down will have a hand in putting this thing together. We might even design the cover of the EP all ourselves, individually screen printing the first 100 or so. We'll see what happens, but the point is we are going grassroots mafia on this one.
By the way, Graham O'Brien sounds fantastic playing our music so far. After only three rehearsals, he's got the material nailed and we are feeling really good about the session. Hear me when I say YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW GREAT THIS EP IS GOING TO BE. Unless you've seen us live this year, you haven't heard the amazing evolvement of our sound over the past year. Add to that the deep pocket Graham brings to the stage and the new sound is just bangin'.
This will be in effect, the reintroduction of Junkyard Empire to the world. You can definitely expect to hear some tracks on the radio, because they will not be able to resist playing them. We have especially high hopes for one of our tunes called Progression.
We're at a whole new level baby.
-Christopher
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