Okay, so it’s July. Late again. But we still have a bit of June business to clear up… Hard to believe we’ve now been doing this for six months…But here we are, proudly unveiling our sixth EP in our year-long series…the June effort titled, Designed in Anticipation of His Centennial Years. This past month of June we collectively decided to take a breather from writing songs from scratch and do some cover songs. The initial idea to cover other band’s material somehow morphed into us covering songs written by our fellow bandmates.
The idea of cover can be a simple tempo or key change. Or it can be a structural revamping that turns the song on its side while still maintaining the essence that made you love it in the first place. Sure there were failures, false starts, and songs that fell a bit short. But the overall level of success exceeded the expectations of everyone as we re-envisioned these songs in our own image.
Check out the results on the album page here. Or right click here to DOWNLOAD the entire album.
Or listen to our podcast here, befriend us on MySpace, and feel free to comment right here on our blog or write to us at [email protected]. Enjoy!
Tracklist:
1. Look Out (Katzif/Crowley)
2. Push Reel (Johnson/Katzif)
3. Oxygen 1.5 (Crowley/Johnson)
4. Look Out (Katzif/Johnson)
5. A Track And A Train / TNT (Shout Out Louds/Tortoise/Katzif)
6. Puppets Are My Friends (Johnson/Crowley)
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Well cover month is officially over, and we have re-worked, re-mastered, mashed up, re-done, and generally messed around with other’s music. Originally we were thinking that it would be an opportunity to show our perceptions of other bands work. Musicians that may have been a huge influence, or maybe just something that we generally like and have always wanted to learn how to play, the source was open ended,and it only had to be something written by someone not ourselves.
Well, this suggestion that we pick our songs held for a while until someone else (either Mike or Greg) suggested that we choose two songs for one of the other guys to cover (two so they had a choice of which one to play). This idea simmered and evolved into “Cover one of OUR songs” and here we have it, a few interpretations of our respective hello.counterparts.
It’s always interesting to hear one of your own songs through another person’s fingers. Those subtle things that you loved about your initial version could be the one thing that is left behind, with something you never heard in your own track amplified and brought front and center. It could be an improvement, a complete disaster, or something in between. Either way, love it or hate it, it’s always good to hear your own art with a fresh perspective.
— Aryn, June 2007
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Temporary Setback :: January 2007
Clouded Spaces, Falling Skies :: February 2007
First Pull Up, Second Pull Down, Third Take Away :: March 2007
Ancient Telephones :: April 2007
The Cavalry Arrived Again :: May 2007
Designed In Anticipation Of His Centennial Years :: June 2007
The Rundown :: July 2007
The Ninth Great Fire :: August 2007
Empty Bottles And Dog-Eared Books :: September 2007
I Can Fix Things In The Morning :: October 2007
We Are Full Of Useful Noise :: November 2007
The Last Duel :: December 2007
Great EP this month guys!!!
Guys I really like how this is sounding so far.. I am only on oxygen 1.5 the greg version, and man i LOVE how these tracks were reinvisioned.. I hear some dark sounds ahead.. ah look out here comes nick drake.
Mike this shout out TNT turned out really great.. awesome backings and vocals.. nice work with the mashup.
First off, congrats gents… another one in the bag. You should both feel proud of your efforts this month… im really enjoying the music this month!
Throughout the day, I jotted some notes of the great things I hear in this month’s music… so before we start to get too nitpicky here are nine things to put in the ‘Good’ pile:
1) aryn’s electro drums on Look Out… (really like what did you do to the drum beat to get that bit reduction and those great analog fills.)
2) greg’s flat twangy melody line of guitar in Oxygen1.5… has an eastern world music tonality to it.
3) mike’s distorted guitar things in Push Reel
4) greg’s hand claps on Oxygen1.5… (how did you mic\overdub\pan etc to get them to sound so full)
5) aryn’s vocals Puppets are My Friends (w\ sue)
6) aryn’s acoustic guitar strums sound great on that same song are great.
7) mike’s concept on TNT (even though not perfect still ambitious)
8) greg’s stripping down of Look Out and finding the song’s essence… Nick Drake would be proud.