oh yeah. so that thing about the EP. well, you know.

2009 is the Year of Change. and economic uncertainty and anxious futures.

in January we finally moved out of our lockout space in Burbank. no more practice space for the time being, which is just as well since we're focused on wrapping up the EP rather than playing any gigs. at least we're saving money on rent.

the EP is just slightly overdue now. by about half a year or so. it's tentatively titled The Lost and Obscure Artifacts Of An Unknown Band To Be Scrutinized By Asian Americanists In The Distant Future. it will have five songs, maybe four, each representing a time and place in 2008, none of them on our Myspace page. most of the production is currently being done in Duanes apartment, the interim meeting place as Monolidic, Inc., undergoes an extensive auditing and restructuring process.

stay tuned for the next update in 2011.

several pics from Saturdays drum recording session at Red Rockets Glare. im also trying out Wordpress' image integration to see if i like it... usually id just do it manually...

Duane with his head in the tom.

recording the drums was an intense and grueling experience.

in the background is Wendy the in-house recording engineer. thanks Wendy!

now we're going through the tedious process of reviewing our takes and splicing the drums into a coherent whole. i just put in an order for a Sansamp Bass Driver DI and an Art Pro VLAII Compressor. never mind the fact that i have next to nil audio recording knowledge and that none of us have a clear idea of what attack ratios or variable thresholds or flux capacitating exactly entails. thats completely beside the point. thats not looking at the big picture, kid. venceremos.

we're shooting for late August/early September as our target date for the EP. stay tuned.

fueled on red bull, gatorade, peanuts and banana chips, we tracked drums for 8 hours yesterday at Red Rockets Glare Studio. it went well, but a few more years of practice would have helped. pics coming shortly... today we're onto the bass...

i just did some minor updating of the website on the technical side. you probably wont notice anything different.

no shows as of this moment, my friends. lately weve been getting prepped to head to the studio to record our EP. we're shooting for an end of August date. maybe September? i guess we'll see. details will be forthcoming.

venceremos.

Friday was our first time playing Judo Chop, a monthly Japanese rock event in Little Tokyo at the 2nd St Jazz Bar in Little Tokyo. ive been to the jazz bar before and i distinctly remember there being a bottle of Santory somewhere in the shelves last time i went ("for relaxing times, make it Suntory time!"), but i forgot to check. cool venue, great host. thanks Judo Chop!

overall our set was alright with with some rough spots here and there, but we're still waiting to review the tapes. i saw a lot of new faces who havent been to our past shows, so thank you for coming out. we also had stickers but forgot to hand em out. the resident band Thee Out Mods rocked the house as well as drawing the moshing fans and the kid who got his t-shirt ripped in a fight and i got beer splashed on me -- so that means someone was doing something right.

below are a few pics. there were more, but the camera was accidentally set to full manual mode so a lot of them came out underexposed. sorry.

Judo Chop @ the 2nd St Jazz Bar in Little Tokyo.

Allen was bathed in a beatific glow while the band played on. note the synchronized movement of heads: "everbody look to their left... NOW!" -- thats discipline.

more shows? soon. we maybe heading into the perilous realm of demo re-mastering next.

venceremos.

ah well. it was a losing effort. i wouldn't mind so much if some of the finalists didn't consist of cheesy ads like the following. it makes me question the entire concept of democracy. i guess there's a reason why the "people's choice awards" isn't as relevant as the Academy Awards. note to self: next time use cute children and cheesy film techniques to maximize the tugging of heart strings. i actually like the second one. not because its a decent piece of work, but because it just makes me laugh. though im pretty sure that wasn't the intention.