Ah, Longweekends: Video & Gig & Day 9

Photo courtesy of WeLovePictures.

We have not uploaded any new songs in a while; please enjoy this one:

An easy battle, a lost war

We took Thursday off from work to visit what can only be called Louis Minnaar's torture dungeon. He made my spine bend in directions that it was never meant to go.
After a delightful 6 or 7 hours spent under scorching lights, dressed in black from head to toe, he finally listened when we used the safe-word, and it was home time.

We drove to the city of Johannesburg in pouring rain and pouring traffic to get to the Bella vista lounge. After a two hour nightmare of a sound check, we played our set and the response was pretty okay, especially since we're not even sure where our songs are going at this stage.
The recording process has definitely messed with our live performance. But we'll sort it out. We stayed for Tale of the son's set, which was pretty damn awesome (made me think of IfyouarewhatyoueatIcouldbeyoubytomorrow). I was really disappointed to miss "Eyes like mirrors", but it was that or asleep at the wheel on the way back to Pretoria. We'll definitely organize something with them in the near future. Thanks to Riaan and the bands for the opportunity to play.

On Friday, we hit the studio again. My voice was shot by this stage, so we decided to postpone any vocal recording and focus on instrumentation for two songs: a reworked version of "Kids in bad water", and a reworked version of "Christmas card". Jacob played us some of the work he has been doing on the mixes, and I am enormously excited and proud to have other people hear this album.

JOBURG GIG!

Hey Peeps!

We're playing a should-be-awesome gig next Thursday... On the top of a roof! in the city of Jo'burg! Friday is a public holiday, so there is no excuse not be there.

Here's the facebook event:
TAKE ME SOMEWHERE NICE

Be There! (We're going to be)

Day 8

Jacob took some pictures of our process. I'll try and figure out how to create better web versions of them (no photoshop :( )

We're heading in to the studio in about an hour. Had to wake up early this morning to render out some drums.

We took the rest of the long weekend to complete pre-production on 3 songs: 'Kids in bad water' (as you've not heard it before, but we'll leave it to the album to do the surprising), Up (which was sounding the least convincing last night at 1am), and an accidental new one called 'An easy battle, a lost war'.

The plan is to record 2 songs today, but I suspect that we've made a slight miscalculation somewhere, and we might be pushing for all three tracks.

Day 7 - Expert Heart

Saturday came along, and the first thing we did was to have a (slow-) progress meeting. During our hearty heart-to-heart, we decided that our work rate is not where we want it to be. So, come the following few weeks, we are going to up the ante, and geturdun.

We focused on the track 'Expert Heart' this weekend. This is a very dear song to me. It might have something to do with where it comes from:
http://askylineonfire.blogspot.com/2009/09/expert-heart.html
We reverted back to our traditional roles, with Werner taking up more drum programming and guitar, and myself moaning nonsense into a mic.

Jacob thought that our idea of a "bass synth" was hilarious, and after he did a quick substitution for illustration purposes, I can now see why he thought so: HUGE! He also contributed some colossal drums that made my tummy feel funny.

I've yet to put some photos up, will try to do that in the week.

Can not wait to play this to people.