I’ve been getting into the album The Sound They Make by New Ruins. My favorite track is Book Lung. They are releasing a new album in a few days. They remind me a bit of No Age. A muddy sound but well constructed songs. I’ve also been getting into Bee Thousand by Guided by Voices. While it’s not new either, I hadn’t heard it in a long time.  Goldhearted Mountaintop is great song. The Portland, OR band Starfucker another recent add to my library is just ok, a bit disappointing. I feel like it could be good live, it’s almost got the energy but just doesn’t work playing it on my laptop.

I met Danny Fujikawa at REMU four years ago. He has a new (ish) band Chief with his brother Michael, Evan Koga, and Michael Moonves. They recently put out a new video “Nice People”(below) that is really well done. It’s a big shift from more sprawling pieces I’d previously listened to of Danny’s and they have very controlled focus on the song.  Head over to their myspace to listen to more.

The Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton passed away today. Ron Asheton was an original member of the group with Iggy Pop, Scott Asheton, and Dave Alexander. Listen to the track “Search and Destroy” below:

I’ve been busy of late, so haven’t posted. I did troll through an old hard drive and found a few goodies from my early recording days. While listening back makes me cringe at the awful engineering job I did. It made me reflect back on how I learned a great deal in the studio back in high school it wasn’t much to talk of but it provided a place to truly experiment with both equipment i didn’t know how to use and artists that didn’t care. While they might sound bad I did learn a few fundamentals that helped a great deal in college. Comparatively in New York I had so little time in the multi million dollar studios I couldn’t really take the time to experiment to any great degree because I needed to get the sound down fast. In high school I could earn 25 bucks an hour to spend all day playing around with delay on a vocal, I found that I really started liking about 12 ms on her vocal it warmed it up a bit but did I need 8 hrs to do it? probably not. The one thing I was able to tackle in college was compression something that is critical to dynamic control and shaping the sound. I don’t have permission to post these files due to the age of the recording and lack of contact info so the artists will remain anonymous (saving them with an unwanted google link). Please do not through link, copy, or reproduce the tracks. Another sad thing to think back about is that these people paid 25 bucks an hour for my inexperienced engineering skills, now with a college degree in recording and music business I can’t even find an administrative job that pays 6 bucks an hour let alone a studio that would let me volunteer.

Track One
The beat and vocals are by a few kids I went to high school with.

At The Marriott NSFW (uncensored)
This one is by a paying client. I still find it amazing I charged $25 an hour. I could barely contain my amusement while recording this. If only I could earn $25 with my fancy new Clive Davis Diploma.

Real Recognize
This one was also a paying client. He threatened to sue me because the bass “destroyed” his cars subwoofer, an impossibility not even worth delving into.

I didn’t include any of my more recent work, but I may in the future. I guess this stuff is more fun to me even if its quality is far inferior.