Thursday, May 17, 2007

Faux Faust


Graham came over last night to create yet more music for his first feature film. He had cut an entire scene to a Faust song of dubious copyright, so like any industrious director decided we should sorta "re-create" the song for the scene.

At home using Fruity Loops, Graham built the entire drum groove and brought it over to the studio. First thing we did was upload the scene into Sonar. After the video thumbnails set themselves up we matched the loop to the timing of the scene. Then we found a nice analog keyboard sound to match the bass of the original track.

Then we went into our own thing. I'm a huge fan of DI'ing string instruments and building all of the sounds in post. Graham really wanted me to be insipired laying down the guitar parts by recording dirty. And he used dirty tricks to get what he wanted. He brought out of his bag the BUZZ BOX, a pedal he owns and knows I lust after. It is a pretty nasty sounding distortion which also has an octaver that goes two octaves below POORLY. I thought it would be fun to shred so fast that the pedal couldn't keep up and sadly it wasn't very hard. The octaver would chug along behind me at its own pace, sometimes hitting the right notes, sometimes not.

So this is how the guitar parts went. I did two tracks of Kraut Rock noodles completely DI'ed with the Buzz Box. Played back straight back through the monitors without any additional effects the sound was very reminiscent of early Butthole Surfers. I'm pretty psyched with it. As we speak Graham is adding vox, an e-bow track, and editing the whole thing together in his studio on a Pro-tools setup.

Between this, our doo-wop tune Spray it On, and the general noise weirdness we recorded, I think the soundtrack for this movie is going to kick tons of ass!

Friday, May 11, 2007

Concert schedule - updated

Jesus Christ I go to a lot of shows!

5/17 Mastodon
5/19 Heaven and Hell/Megadeth/Machine Head
5/21 Jesus and Mary Chain
5/25 Symphony X
5/30 Roger Waters
5/31 Metal Meltdown II (Gods of Fire)
6/2 Weird Al
6/21 Porn Rock Ball (Gods of Fire)
6/22-6/23 Brooklyn Metalfest w/Ross-the-Boss, Seven Witches, Magus Beast, others
7/7 Boredoms with 77 drummers!
7/8 Rush
7/28 Sonic Youth
8/7 Deep Purple
8/9 Daft Punk

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

dysgrace

New song up on the myspace. Check it out here.

I'm pretty proud of where I took this one. I didn't expect it to turn out this guitar heavy. A lot of the vocals were recorded before guitars were added to the mix. Discipline has never been one of my finer traits and shit, I can add layers indefinitely. Knowing what to take away or never put in was as important as what to add.

I think I'm getting the hang of the new gear. We'll see where the next one goes.

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

An open letter to the people promoting Dream Theater

How come I received 5 emails via 2 email addresses letting me know that if I pre-order Systematic Chaos I can get a free lithograph, but ZERO (0) emails letting me know that tickets for Jones Beach and PNC are already on sale?

Fuck your dead mothers.

Love,

scd

Celtic Frosted Flakes

On a whim I went to go see Celtic Frost and Type O Negative at the venue formerly known as Irving Plaza.

Celtic Frost was about 1,000 billion times better than when I saw them headline BB King's last fall. I think it had everything to do with them being an opening act. Some of the best sets I have seen are when bands come out hungry trying to win over someone else's audience. The two best times I saw Children of Bodom were opening for Iced Earth and Slayer. Sure their 90 minute headlining sets are great, but when they came on stage in front of Iced Earth's audience knowing most people neither knew nor cared who they were there was a fight in them that was positively intoxicating. Celtic Frost had this last night.

They came out in shockingly effective corpse paint and rocked through a very bare bones stage set up. Check out the awesome camera phone pic above. Yay, Motorola! Most of the songs were old, going waaaay back to Morbid Tales. They just got in front of the audience and kicked ass. No bullshit. No muss, no fuss.

Type O kinda sucked. I've seen them a few times in the last 13 years (damn!) and I really like the new record, but there was something off. Pete Steele's voice wasn't that great, the band didn't sound that tight, and the sound mix wasn't very flattering to their legato sustained notes. What sounds sublimely taut and tense on record was pretty boring at Irving. Even the punchy opening of Magical Mystery Tour into We Hate Everyone was a bit of a snore. I left after about 30 minutes. I know I have a knack for leaving shows early, but that had to be a world record. On the way home I listened to the new Symphony X and started getting pumped to see them at BB's in a couple of weeks!

Sunday, May 6, 2007

An open letter to internet music leakers

I applaud your efforts towards bringing me brand new records months before their release date.

Though I must say I am REALLY backed up right now. The new Symphony X? For reals? Right after you bless us with Bjork, Megadeth, Marilyn Manson, They Might Be Giants, Tomahawk, and Dungen?

Really, take a nap. I need to catch up. Seriously, I had to crash course the night of Dimmu as I hadn't even had a chance to absorb their record. I don't have as much time to listen to music as I did. The madness must end!

Leakers you need to take a leaking break. Let us enjoy some tunes before the new wave of bombardment. However if anyone out there is sitting on the new Bad Brains, King Diamond, Art Brut, Dream Theater, Shellac or Entombed, then please disregard this message.

Thanks!

Best,

scd

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

A perfect ratio


Today is a great day for the Gods of Fire MySpace page.

We have the PERFECT amount of friends! Looky look look! (click the pic for full size awesome awesomeness!!!)

Ok gotta run to PMK...........

A blog about recording Metal in Brooklyn.