We know it’s been years since you’ve heard from the crew over at hellocomein.com, but fear not young maidens and noble gentlemen, the beast has not been slain permanently. After our year-long hiatus, we’ve had a productive month of February, and created the newest edition in the ongoing melodrama: You Can’t Find Your Way Outside.
This undertaking was written, performed, and recorded (mostly) in the month of February for the famed RPM Challenge. For those unaware, the RPM Challenge, costs no money to enter, does not provide any winnings of millions for the best entries, and really, is merely a catalyst to inspire people to get out of their nightly taco-flavored-Dorrito-fueled reality television watching lifestyle, and get them to make music for the sake of making music. The rules are simple: you have the month of February to completely create either 35 minutes of music, or 10 songs — whichever comes first.
Listen to our attempt at greatness: Some songs are pure genius, while others only part genius. But it’s safe to say that you will either be crying from joy, or despair, or not at all, after listening. The point of the project is not true perfection of the final product, but the process of creating and making music. We hope that comes across in these new songs.
Please leave comments here in the blog about what you love/hate/don’t care about, to help encourage us to create again, or give up for good.
Thanks and good night sweet princes.
~Aryn & Mike
Hello Come In — Chicago & Washington D.C. Divisions
Click here to DOWNLOAD the full album.
Tracklist:
1. White Walls
2. Half Awake
3. The Winch
4. The Academy Of Birds
5. Yellow Matter
6. You Are The Sea
7. Why The Oceans Matter
8. This Is A Fire
9. Music Box
Produced by Mike Katzif
Recorded and Engineered by Aryn Crowley and Mike Katzif
Mixed and Mastered by Mike Katzif and Hello Come In
at Hello Come In Studios, Washington DC & Chicago IL; February 2009
Artwork and layout design by Mike Katzif
Cellos on “Yellow Matter” by Thomas Pierce
Special Thanks to Greg Johnson, Robin Hilton, and our dozen fans.
All Songs by Mike Katzif, Aryn Crowley and Hello Come In, Copyright 2009
Half awake is still my favorite. but that’s just because i like twang and that song has great twang. very nice!
as a little backstory I was thinking that the Academy of Birds would be kind of like a VFW for ex-superheroes. A place where the old timers can hang out, drink crappy cheap wisky, shoot pool, and compare battle scars.
Your most beautiful production to date. I’m gonna have to go with the Yellow Cello Matter as my my personal favorite. Instrumentals + cello = sex , and I love cello.
Nice work fellas. I really enjoyed Academy of Birds, Yellow Matter, and You are the Sea. So how much are you collaborating here? Are some of these Aryn and some Mike? Or are you doing different tracks and sending back and forth via internet? I’d be interested to hear more about Hello come In’s creative recording process.
Here’s sorta how we’ve worked in the past:
1) One of us will come up with the beginning seeds of a song; record some basic tracks.
2) Then we email an mp3 to the other person for their thoughts, often telling them stuff like ‘hey can you do some drums for this song in _____ style?,’ describing what we have in mind.
3) Wait wait wait for too long for response and buy in, fight skepticism from the other person and own self doubt of musicianship.
4) Get tracks back, edit, lay up, volume edit, mix, master
5) Rationalize every choice we’ve made so far and then break up the band.
6) Schedule a reunion and make up while listening to “Tiny Dancer.” (On tour bus, preferred)
7) Repeat these steps until happy with final tracks of the song.
8) Song originator gets final say on when to give up on the song and deem ‘done.’
In the case of these songs we did have a lot more back and forth collaboration on initial tracks than in the past, that is, my songs have Aryn on them and I’m playing on Aryn’s songs.
However, I did produce the record as a whole, making sure I had final mix and master to work on overall cohesion from song to song, not to mention helping shape Aryn’s tracks which typically came to me in giant 25-track monstrosities which needed some major love.
That’s about it. It came out pretty well all things considered.