We moved the fallen tree limb off the path, and drove the panel van through the overgrown trail. Eventually we can’t see the path ahead anymore, and none us wants to chance the van getting ditched…it already seems to be having some trouble on the uneven, slippery ground. So we get out and begin to walk. I used the battery draining camera accessory LED to light my way (the five dollar special Hong Kong super battery pack actually worked) and carried the axe. Kirk and Dareck walked up ahead, waving the torchlights. The dew starts to soak my canvas shoes and jeans…we are really not prepared to be up here. Why can’t they make Rocket Dogs more sturdy -- the glue is coming loose were the rubber meet the canvas already…We turn a corner on the trail, and the flashlight beams catch pieces of the house up ahead. It is so dark that an ordinary flash light can illuminate something hundreds of meters away -- there is a burned, rolled over car adjacent to our path, but we even don’t know it yet because its two A.M. darkness, and no beams have happened to cross its way yet.

The abandoned two story house is groaning, and is pitched to an unnatural angle -- it’s literally on its last legs. Half of the first floor has been blown away and destroyed, so the foundation on the bottom, and ribs up top are visible. The second floor leans down and buckles towards the first, as if looking for a dismembered wall that once held it secure. There are rotting boards with rusty nails all over the floor, and encroaching tall grasses and weeds. Nature is taking over floor number one.

We enter the house. There is no door -- just three quarters of the frame. Broken glass, and a pile of sheet-rock dust is loosely arranged in one corner, as if someone has been here in an attempt to make the place presentable. Old wiring hangs all over, but this place has been off the grid for a long, long time. The house is gutted, but our entrance is noted by something, which begins to fly wildly on the ceiling, beating its wings until it finds its exit…its pretty large, and I hunch down and hit the button on the camera which turns it off, instead of on. We stick close to the remaining walls, feeling the floor boards along the way.

The side of the house where the second floor is falling in stretches out into the blackness. The flashlights point to another room in the back. There are stairs in there, and we decided to creep forward to take a look. Dareck takes the lead, and calls back “be careful Kris be careful”. Dareck notices the hole in the floor. There is a cellar down there. The walls are covered in aged newspaper. I’ve seen enough, and want to get the hell out. This ceiling feels like it is going to drop. We were lucky that night, because the floor didn’t move. Had it shifted the way it eventually would, we probably wouldn’t have come back the following night. This is the place we are going to perform in. We are going to film sunset traffic. True to the monsters in the belly. We left, and began to prep for our rotting house.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Soxv4wRTclU

It’s great having my own robot, that way i wont get squeezed by charmin (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WBmpaoLS4g). Kirk and I argue way more when it comes to video…with music it’s pretty much an unspoken thing thats worked out subconsciously with instruments. With video it seems like there is a lot more friction generated before anything gets done, as we all bring different approaches to the table. Were going to try and shoot “sunset traffic” this weekend…

I carried robby everywhere I went the past few weeks and recorded stuff:

Plastic Horses http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lvmRMeBmgI

Roncevalles weekend http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBes4jQFvhg

Backyard in the clouds http://vimeo.com/13198248

Julie and Johns wedding http://vimeo.com/13438731

The barn http://www.vimeo.com/12654853

…for jeta (up in the clouds)

The song is a new demo called a place underground. I did the time lapse in my backyard.

The lot had two rubber strips on the road that would activate the ‘ding ding’ bell when a car drove over them towards a gas pump. There was a whole lot less dinging past the dinner hour, so as soon as I finished up with the chores (clean the bathrooms, sweep up trash on the lot, then count everything in sight for the inventory clipboard), you could throw a mix tape into the boom box and watch the sunset over the pavement. You’d often wonder about the people inside the cars as you’d watch their tail-lights turn right and disappear out of the lot. You convinced yourself that their lives would always be more exciting than yours – because they were literally always going somewhere, and you always were stuck behind, just watching…

I worked with Cheryl every other week. She was about three years older than I was, which at that age meant she was a lot more mature, and therefore demonstrated a type of experience and sophistication that I found appealing. I looked forward to the shifts we had, because when she was on the lot, I’d feel like anything could happen. She was into Gish and other cool alternative albums I’d never heard of (I was all about obscure Hendrix tracks and Slash n’ Izzy guitar licks). Her brother, Adam, was a soft spoken, laid back guy who worked there occasionally; he’d listen to this one metallica tape on repeat while fixing cars now and then. Lazy Lloyd (as he was called by many) was probably in his late thirties/early forties when I met him. He was a ‘gas jockey lifer’, and during the summers when school was out, I’d be on shift with him during the day. Lloyd lived for the weekends, and he would tell you about his sordid sexual exploits over them in pornographic detail. I really didn’t want to know, but he’d tell anyways. I got along with him pretty well. Jason (another kid on the lot) didn’t, and smashed the headlight of Lloyds big grey 80‘s sedan with the handle of the window washing squeegee one night after an argument. When I started laughing, Lloyd took my limited edition Hendrix tape (‘Are you experienced’ on Side A, ‘Axis bold as love’ on Side B) out of the ghettoblaster, held it up high between his motor oil smudged hands, and threatened to smash it on the parking lot. I pleaded and yelled “don’t do it – I NEED that tape”. He must have heard the desperation in my voice, because he gave it back without a word. I know I know, I should have made a copy of that limited edition tape, especially to bring to work, but I couldn’t part with that original white plastic cassette; it formed a huge part of my identity…

I thought Dave was really cool, because he’d ride into work everyday on his honda motorcycle. It was styled as a classic road bike. Because I was a few years younger I kind of looked up to Dave in an older brother-ish kind of way; he’d actually listen to stuff that I would say, always had advice to give, and was patient with my varying levels of confusion or stupidity about things in general. I actually started putting some of my gas station money aside for a bike just like Dave’s. My dad, who was the family comedian when he was feeling good, would joke around with him on the days he dropped me off at the station, and called him “Captain Nozzle”. I got drunk for the first time in my life at Dave’s apartment after reaching my limit with my dad. When I was about 15, and my mom was away on a work trip, my dad, as per the norm in those days, changed from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. He could be happy with everything that life had granted him one minute, and hate the world in the next. He’d give the shirt off his back to try and keep us safe and content, and could fill the house with laughter, and at the same time his anger would fall like rain. You’d do your best to navigate between the drops.

My dad got upset that there was dog hair all over the carpet. I guess my mom wasn’t there that week to clean it up. To palliate him, I took Cody, the shedding Akita, out back to brush her down. I was able to get a lot of fur off, and halfway through brushing the dog, patchy thickets of white fur appeared over the back lawn. A bunch had flown out of the grocery bag as I was sticking it in. When he came out to check on my progress and saw the dog hair all over the back, he glared red rage. “What the fuck are you doing?” he said. “Get inside, now!”. I cant remember the argument that ensued, and by argument, I mostly mean that I’d sit there, head down and slack jawed until he got to the the final part and said “your attitude stinks, get out of my sight”. I got so accustom to the phrase “your attitude stinks, get out of my sight”, that like in an any other dysfunctional household, it can be parodied when you get older. You move out and are able to put it in perspective. Its sounds screwed up, but my sister and I will utter that phrase to each other nowadays, and it’ll just elicit laughter…

There was a some type of get together after work, and after he cooled off from the dog hair fiasco (some incidences were forgotten within hours, others led to days of the silent treatment), I asked my Dad if I could go when my shift was finished that evening. He was still in a dark, volatile mood, and wanted to know why I would want to go to such a thing in the first place. I could never explaining to him the truth (i.e. i’ve got no friends and actually got invited to something so I really want to go), so I just murmured something about that ‘it was at Daves house and you know Dave already’. He eventually relented – “just do what you want, I dont care”.

I didn’t go home after work, and rode the bus in my dirty oil and gas fumed clothes. It was tolerable, because I didn’t pump that much diesel that day (sunoco gas smelled like burnt raisin bran muffins; diesel smelled like rotten eggs). By the time I got to Daves apartment, everyone was already there. Dave just bought a new electric guitar, so I settled in pretty fast with that in the corner. I was probably playing “little wing”. I knew I smelled like a bottle of 10W30 and was a little bit embarrassed surrounded by girls in their summer dresses. Id talk to Cheryl when she talked to me, but I wasn’t really good at sustaining conversations back then. I had until 11:00. After eleven, I’d miss the connecting bus, and id be stranded in some London suburb, and would have to call my ol’ man to pick me up. The clock said 11:23. Sigh..

The thought of going home, or having him pick me up at Daves building (and chance a public scene in front of all these people) was too much to take. There is only so much you can hear of how much of an useless idiot you are in one day. There was a bunch of beer cans, liquor and shots on the table. I’d never had a whole beer before, and while I knew what Jack Daniels looked like, id never tried it. I drank that beer (i forget what brand it was, but it was so bitter that i couldn’t finish it). The shots on the other hand were downed before I even knew what they tasted like. They burned. I rambled on to the amusement to my workmates, then slunked on the couch…and then didn’t worry about anything at all for the rest of the night.

Fear. I can wake up, and immediately and instantaneously have a filled-to-the-brim onslaught of emotion press up upon my eyelids. It’s all physiological – it’s all fight or flight conditioning, and it took years to be rid of it. But that morning, I was in someone else’s home, so I put on my game face…but really, it was all shaky fear on the inside. In the movies, the teenage kid screws up, goes home, and gets grounded but is forgiven and everyone eventually laughs upon the days memory – cause the kid is essentially a good kid. I was a good kid, but just getting grounded and laughing about the past would always be the reality of someone else son. Ramping levels of fear at any wrong turn, inadvertent or not, was the deck I got dealt, and I was powerless against it. The glares, verbal onslaughts and threats were always possible and unpredictable (he’d never hit us – but he’d break and destroy things all around us as if to prove that point). And the whole time, you’ll do or say anything so everything would go back to ‘normal’ as soon as possible…because ‘normal’, believe it or not, was there on a regular basis, and was actually really good once you swept everything that had happened under the rug…

Dave passed me a helmet, and we took his honda back to my place. I’d never been on a motorcycle before. I made him stop two blocks away, so my dad wouldn’t see me arrive home on a bike (that would just add to the inevitable). The cycle was exhilarating. Joy on the surface as we rode and the wind blew against my face, fear at the bottom of my belly as we got closer and closer to my house. I opened the locked door, walked in, and he was sitting in his chair, just waiting…

What happens when you are middle aged, with kids you dont understand, working a low paying job you hate, after your business fails, and you still havent figured yourself out? When you dont have the tools to deal with your own personal demons and failures? When you dont have anyone in your life to confront you, to show you that there is another way? If you are this person, and then the depression sits in, you are going to do things that you wont be proud of years later. Things that you do your best to forget – I know this because he erased some of the family video tapes. My dad taught me that the most important relationships in your life are going to be the most volatile. Im trying to see the world through his eyes. But I learned all that much later, after the resentment began. After I learned how to get angry…

I went from getting bullied or ignored to full force I don’t give a shit guitar obsession in two years. There was this other unpopular kid in grade eight (except he was big for his age, so no one gave him a rough time), and he brought this grey, pointy head-stocked guitar into school one day. The kids flocked around him, and for all the awkwardness that he was, it didn’t matter once he held up that guitar. He couldn’t even play it that well, but it didn’t matter. It was like there was something about that instrument that would make things copacetic. When I left for London, I became aware of my first adult thoughts. They were provoking…and they were all focused around that instrument. I would never think the same way after that kid brought that grey guitar to school. It’s amazing that a life long path can stem from a  single day in your life.

There was a full serve Sunoco station in the south end of London, and my dad knew Dan, the owner of the garage the gas bar was attached too. They made a deal, and Dan gave me my first real job that paid “real money”. I pumped gas, checked oil and washed windshields at the full serve. I cleaned up the lot, and eventually would break dawn or close up after sunset on my own. It was London, so cleaning the station bathrooms and killing the night shifts wasn’t that bad at all. It was minimum wage, but at fifteen, cash meant independence, it meant I could get an axe and start a band. Friday and Saturday nights, until I was about nineteen, I was on the corner, pumping hi-test to make my coin.

I didn’t know anything about cars, and being a full serve station, I quickly found myself under the hood, putting on the occasional tire, and inadvertently sniffing gas within the tanks of every make and model. I also didn’t know much about dealing with the public, and as fate would have it, on my very first day, one of my customers was a grey haired jackal. I still remember her glares and insults mouthed through the windshield, her pointing fingers, and cackles of “whats a matter with you boy?” She pulled up in one of those old four door sedans, a battered land boat that took up most of the isle. I ran out, and she said ‘eh boy – check that oil”. She popped the release, and I couldnt find the lever under the six foot grill to pop the hood (on older eighties cars, those levers are all over the place under the grill or recessed within the hood, and have different mechanisms; in time you just know what hand gestures will pop the thing in a few seconds on any model). When i finally got the thing open and secured up with its rusty support, I couldn’t see a damn thing. This car was one of those weird ones with some type of insulation material underneath the hood. It was rotting, so lengths of it fell all over the engine. Everything else in there was camouflaged in dirty soot coloured black grime. I moved all that crap aside, but I couldn’t find the dipstick to check the oil (it was old school – made out of little black plastic knob, and tucked underneath a big circular air filter – effectively invisible to virgin eyes). I tried to gesture for a fellow “pump jockey” to come help me out, but the lot was completely full and everyone was preoccupied with doing their own cars.

After about 30 seconds of me searching under the hood, the lady rolled down the windshield, and barked out a train of “whats a matter with you”, “do you want me to get out of my car and do it myself”, “you aint found it yet – whats your problem boy, you a little slow?”, “what, you some kind of idiot – it’s right over there”. Her glare and tone was just nasty…and even at that age I knew there had to be more behind it than not finding a dip stick fast enough. She watched my movements like a hawk, and my lack of progress was met by reprimand at any available opportunity. If there were less people in the lot, I think she would have just said what she really wanted to say: “why don’t you just fuck off back where you came from immigrant”.

She got loud enough that Dan came out of the shop to see what was going on. I was relieved that someone was coming to back me up, especially since I didn’t know how to react to verbal onslaughts on the job. Dan looked at me, looked at the late forty something woman in the car, and then apologized to her for the delay. He said “I know ‘mam your busy and in a rush, we will get you taken care of right away”. He found the stick, pointed at the oil cap and I finished up the car. When I walked inside the gas bar, Dan came out of the garage and said “I saw you fumbling around with that car – that was bullshit! Just what the hell were you doing out there – goofing around?” I gripped the oil rag that was hanging out of my pocket…I was pissed off but I needed this job. I wanted that strat. I was fifteen, and didn’t want to look like a sissy…I forced my eyes not to water up. Tom petty was playing on the radio – “im learning to fly, but I aint got wings, coming down is the hardest thing”. On the way back home, I stopped by the library, and picked up this cassette called “GNR’ lies”…

Over the next few months, the London gas bar got real busy…and I got much faster at doing my job. I’d listen to Guns N Roses and run around the lot with a smile on my face. I still screwed up from time to time; I poured tranny fluid into someones oil reservoir once, and I pumped a tank full of diesel into the gas only tank of a Lincoln mercury (the dude parked right beside the diesel pump, pointed at it, and said fill er up). Once, when I was the only one on shift, and the lot was chock full of people upset about the wait time,  I left a gas nozzle into some ladies car as I rushed to start the fifth vehicle waiting in the lot, and she drove off. The nozzle anchored into the car and ripped the hose out of the the pump. Gas started shooting out into the air. I had to hit the emergency shut off, and the yelling customers got real quite; they didn’t say a word and just drove off. My dad came down to help me clean up the lot, and that was the first time I think he ever heard me cussing. The lady, who’s car was all bent up, was an angel…she was kind and didn’t make me feel any more stupid than I already felt. Dan, to his credit, never gave me a hard time after that first incident, and never fired me either. He’d fix all the mistakes and would just say “shit happens”. He gave people second chances, and because of that, he’s a good guy in my books.

Even if it was all down to pre-adolescent fantasy, the bullying had gotten out of hand that final year- i would skip days of school or get up and walk out of my eighth grade classroom when it got bad enough. The worst was when I got swarmed. I got out of it ok, because not one of those suburban kids was ready to cross that line as a group – there was always one kid, a linchpin, behind anything physical. One day, my dad and sister were driving in a mall parking lot, and my sister pointed out one of the linchpin kids – my old man stopped the car on the street, ran up to the kid, and threatened to find and kill him if he ever touched me again…

We lived in the older part of town, a bike ride out of reach of the industrial area in the south end. There is a scrap yard there, and someone has recently welded a collection of metal sculptures; they sit in the sky on poles as tall as street lights. In true london fashion, someone driving by screamed out their car window while I was snapping these shots. It’s an isolated lot, so I hurried the hell up.

As for my sis, she’s like this image snapped from the basement window.

Trapped within black screens. Everything is pixelated, so she can’t tell what is to come next, and the future is a mirage. If she breaks through (and she will), the brambles will make sure that any victory is seated in discomfort. But off in the distance – it’s blue out there – the grass is greener on the other side…

Because I managed to live rent free for half of 05′ and now the first few months of 06′, it meant that two more boxes were going to show up in the mail. Always by USPS; I learned the hard way that if you order things from the US into Canada, and used UPS, you’d get a nasty surprise at the post office. By inflating their border handling fees, the extra UPS charges could end up being more expensive than the item you actually bought. No other shipping company does this, so I “boycotted the brown”.

The “Broadhurst Garden” mic preamp was first to arrive (it hooks up to microphones, enabling you to record whatever you need to record). It’s a monolith, steel black box that isnt much to look at from afar. It’s web 1.0 netscape navigator AOL website isnt much to look at either (http://www.davelectronics.com/bg1.htm). But thats ok, because Mick Hinton knows how to make a preamp that makes the microphones come alive. Things you record sound slightly larger than life through this black box. Mick worked at Decca Studios, way back in the 60′s. Decca put out the classic sounds of that era, and Mick was the engineer responsible in part for building the equipment that resulted in those recordings. I had all these preamps to work with by this time. Fostex, art-tube, studio projects, symetrix, rane, full voltage akai tube, and now the “Broadhurst Gardens” Decca preamp. They all made it on the album in some capacity. The album is a preamp mutt.

Natalie had come through for me – it just so happened that her old basement apartment was up for rent. So when the second box arrived in the mail, I just stuck it on the pile of other moving boxes that I had started to pack. I used duct tape instead of clear packing tape on all my uhaul boxes so I could unpack and reseal them easily for future moves. It gave them a distinctive ghettofabulous look, and even though they were starting to show signs of wear with mild bulging on sides, they were still holding up because of the thick layers of “duck brand” duck tape.

The new apartment was just 5 minutes away from the trailer up in the hills. I drove towards the lake, turned left at the T-junction, and entered the shaunigan lake villa. It was very west coast – a real bakery, greasy spoon, and art gallery all on the same strip. I turned right onto the little road where the house was – and as I looked up I knew immediately I wanted to live here. I saw an older neighbourhood, with a huge canopy of trees draped over the road way up above, blotting out the sun. Nicole and Matthew lived on the last house beside a very steep hill leading to the boat ramp, water sport club and lake. I took a liking to both of them pretty quickly – very easy going, down to earth people, and they had a cool skinny dog named Sophie. Matthew worked at the private school (I never figured out exactly what he did but he dressed nice for work), and Nicole did custom furniture building and design. Her shop, full of large, loud industrial furniture building equipment was located in their renovated garage. I guess they were used to loud noise – because when I mentioned that I had drums, and all these other instruments, and that I played them quite often, they didnt seem to mind at all, even though I would be living in the basement right below them in their two story home. The house was perched on the steep slope, so the basement wasnt submerged, but actually opened up to the rolling hill towards the lake. This was going to work out…I’d have one room full of gear and all the basic amenities. I decided that I was going to settle in, bunker down and record an EP over the summer months…

I didn’t know that the beast was waiting, in the corner, biding its time. I wasn’t aware that I’d get this one last summer to live without it. You can plan things out all you like, but come fall of 06′, God knows we were all helpless.

I started acquiring some equipment this week. While surfing around, I began to experience that familiar feeling…the online audio engineering world allows for endless hours to bask in pure geekdome. Im looking at you, “gearslutz.com”. How many hours of my life did I give you? In any audio forum, you can discuss the sound differences between all sorts of gear, debate if analog is better than digital, and watch weekly flame-wars erupt over the most arcane details. Saturating your brain within these websites also predisposes to “gear-acquisition-syndrome”: you feel like you can’t do anything for real until you just get that special mic, or this particular plugin. There is always one more thing to get, one more excuse around the corner before you think you can put forth your best work. The ironic thing is that for all the countless hours I spent on those sites, I never ever read anything that actually translated directly into a better recorded sound per se. Those type of improvements were totally left to the realm of trial, error and experimentation…

So it was interesting to see that exactly the same structure and community exists for indie film makers: Huge, established online forums dedicated to film gear and discussions of technique? Check. Cult followings for certain pieces of gear, while certain other gear selections are frowned upon? Check. Periodic nerd-o-file flamewars between trolls, sages, and wisecrackers? Check. But beyond that – you can learn a tonne of essential details on some of those websites, really fast. Especially if you are taking baby steps. And many people are genuinely willing to give their time to teach…just cause they want too.

So I picked up a video camera this week – a tiny little tape based canon hv20 that’s got a huge following for indie film making. Like all great deals to be had in the digital realm, it’s a flagship model that’s outdated by three, four or five “product generations”. So the depreciation is quite severe, and you can ebay them for pretty cheap. My particular hv20 was the backup unit for a zombie flick, produced by a first time filmmaker who just happened to live in the same city as I did. I was in a total asthmatic haze when I picked up the camera the other day (im having the worst seasonal allergies ever – it’s like im ten years old again with a runny nose and asthma puffer). I could tell that Randy kept his stuff in good order, just by the way he had the original box and packaging set up. When you pack stuff in haphazardly, the little cardboard flaps never go down and the box bulges all weird. This camera and all of its add-ons looked like new. We talked about his recently produced short film – called “Fear of the Living Dead” (http://www.fearofthelivingdead.com/trailer.shtml). I thought it was cool that he just decided to use what he had available (his house and neighbourhood), then organize a bunch of people and just get working, ready or not. Cause it’s so easy to stay online…in forum land…

There are two buildings adjacent to the back alley parking lot where I show up for work. The first building, which is a renovated house, is painted blood red, with black trim on the window frames. Apparently it’s where music lessons are held. I think its supposed to be a homage to the “Red House”, as in Hendrix’s “There’s a red house over yonder, that’s where my baby stay”. The house instead looks vampire cartoonish and sinister, like a west coast crack shack painted by its tripped out inhabitants. Because of the impossible cost of real estate out here, crack shacks regularly compete with legit houses on the market. No kidding – http://www.crackshackormansion.com/original.html. Can you tell which is which?

The apartment building right beside the red house is one of those standard 70′s concrete constructions, about nine floors high, with black wire balconies lined up facing the parking lot. Because the balconies face the sun for a good portion of the day, and there is no central air, the people who live inside shade themselves by lining the smaller windows with tin foil, and clip up queen size bedsheets over the large sliding glass double doors that lead outside. When you watch the sun rise and set, and see the shadows shroud or light bounce off the balconies, there is something that you begin to notice, that eventually becomes undeniable. It’s not the sparkle of light off the tin foil, the assorted plants, or even the fact that someone has left a plunger in an disassembled American Standard toilet that just sits there exposed on the third floor. One day at work, I look carefully at the balconies, and I blurt out to Jolene, “there are stains all over those bedsheets – that building should be called “sperm towers”. The name sticks.

I occasionally buy guitar strings from the music store next door that owns the red house. There is a guy who works there who I chat with, and I eventually meet his wife as well – they’ve got a new kitty. They are a young couple who married pretty early in life. He plays guitar, she plays piano. We talk about music a lot, and I get the sense that working in the store is not exactly his most favourite job. It’s not anything he says in particular; its just that once the muse bites, any other job becomes hard time. I get motivated when one day they invite me over for dinner; it’ll be great to get some feedback from fellow musicians I think to myself. They have another friend over as well, a girl named Christine. She’s pretty cute and she’s going to school to become a nurse. We all pile in a car afterwards, and we are heading out to see a show in a converted theatre. On the bill is some guy who plays wonders on his acoustic guitar and sings his story. It’s not my favourite genre of music, but I haven’t yet been to see any live music since I’ve arrived on the island. On the way there, I pull out my CD of songs that I’ve done so far. I’m excited to have a small group of people casually listen to them. He takes it, but then hands it back to me almost immediately. “We are going to listen to this before the show he says,” as he pulls out another CD. We listen to down tempo folk on the way there. He tells me that he’s given up on trying to play rock music, and has escaped the attempts to emulate his heroes. I cant argue with that, but the show is kind of unremarkable. Not that the music is bad, but the message within it just doesn’t resonate with where I am at; I need things to provoke and push me. It’s ok if a song can console, but I don’t want the music to tell me that “everything’s going to be alright” just because it always must be so.

I begin sending Dareck the recordings I’ve been working on. Most of the time, he has one of two responses. He can ignore them completely, and I receive absolutely no feedback whatsoever. Alternatively, an mp3 will show up in my inbox, in which he has added on some really good vocals. If he is really into something that I’ve sent, he’ll on occasion reinterpret it and record an acoustic version, with the aid of an old AKG stage mic his friend Aaron gave him (Aaron’s son is holding the chainsaw on the front cover of the album). I often like his versions better than my own. Darecks best feedback is all or none, and anything in the middle is often hard to interpret (any particular recording assessed as great for any reason can also be claimed to be a failure three to six months later). He’s one of the few people I know who shows sustained interest in creating music, and in that sense he pushes me to do better.

One day, Dareck calls me up, and tells me that he has built a robot. His evolution of robot building is quite unorthodox. His first was a gigantic, 9 foot tall suit, that you could wear. It was made of huge sheets of foam, and was very costume like. He actually built two of them, and when they took to the street, he said people were stopping to take pictures. His second set was a pair of miniatures, based upon his larger suits. They were made of felt, paper and erasers. He animated them for a short video he made. The third was actually a real robotic arm he built on set for a film, that functioned via hydraulics and was made of metal. A pretty steep curve in robot building that was. Little did I know that his writing was going to take off in a similar way. Overwinter, and into spring of 2006, Dareck was going to connect a train of old 80′s electronic equipment that would set his song writing off in a new direction altogether…

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Anything involving html means that several days will be lost dicking around with code. It’s like pig latin to me, so the process is purely trial and error for the most part. It’s like french class back in high school, and I barely passed that one. No wait – I actually flunked grade nine french, and had to repeat it in grade ten, at the “basic” level. The school where I lived organize things such that you would be sorted into ‘advanced’, ‘general’ or ‘basic’, because that’s gotta be good for self esteem, right? Basic kids were unpredictable, and I bet you a lot of them went on to do things they never would have imagined, even if the biggest accomplishment in basic french was to make a laminated placemat with french words all over it. Anyways, I used “fanbridge” to create a LNOYL mailing list you can subscribe to. They were the best providers of the bunch that I checked out, but I just couldn’t relate to their name and logo. I altered the html as much as I could to remove their ‘totally awesome’ logo. They still say that im ‘totally awesome’ and should ‘clap my hands’ when I log into my “fanbridge” account. Pretty campy, but it works well. I encourage you to subscribe to it – were going to send out our upcoming tracks for free this way, as well as blog updates (http://www.lnoyl.com/subscribe-to-mailing-list/).

Vinyl Collective

Rabid music fans can be found at vinyl collective. Thanks to everyone who participated in our promo, and we’ll announce the next one on the mailing list. Vinyl for all! People from Montreal to Texas are going to receive the first promo release of our vinyl L.P. (Yeah, I typed stuff on the back of the photo). Check it out: http://vinylcollective.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=49665&page=1

Rehearsals

Last week we parked a cube van up against one of those desolate highway motels – you know, the Hitchcock bungalow psycho styled joints. We rented a room and practised. Somehow we had left the guitar amp in Kingston, so I leaned my guitar into the dresser to amplify it. Yeah, I used a piece of furniture to amplify an electric guitar. You lean the headstock into an open drawer, push up into the corner, and the whole unit amplifies the strings. It worked best during the intros and verses, but I got drowned out at other times. The toilet in this place did not work very well. At least is was clean.

Modern Cello

Considering what that thing is worth, im amazed that Kirk lets me mess around with the cello for photography. Hammer in the f-hole is the best shot so far, and so far, not a scratch.

Archives of Canada

So when you make a record, and manufacture the pressing yourself, the government of Canada views you the same as any other record label.  One copy of everything you create must be submitted to the National Archival library, and we got a letter a few weeks ago telling us that we are obligated to send the album in. I had no idea this library existed, or that there was such a law, and I don’t mind the idea of it. As an archival medium, vinyl is great. It is impervious to the effects of magnetic disruptions that render tape or hard drives useless, and it still works even if its surface degrades, unlike CD’s. And you don’t need advanced technology to decipher its contents. Any sharp, thin piece of metal (sowing needle or paperclip) attached to something hollow will reveal whats on the vinyl. Im putting a note inside the record, so that when the aliens come a millennium from now, they will know that a copy of the record has been set aside for them and is available for a spin – like at the end of Steven Spielberg’s A.I…

A month ago, I learned that I lived 20 minutes away from a nuclear bunker (http://www.lnoyl.com/2010/04/04/diefenbunker/ ). Yesterday I figured out that I also live 20 minutes from the Canadian archival library! Im totally set for Armageddon. So I took the record to the archive building yesterday. It’s got all these little windows on the outside, resembling port holes on an ocean vessel. The archival office was closed, but the first floor was still open for visitors. The security guy had this uncertain look on his face as it looked like I was taking photos of the floor. He said “just don’t use flash”.

When I arrived, I was surprised to see how clean the place was, given that it was inhabited exclusively by males. During my first couple of years at school, I subleased and moved to new accommodations pretty frequently. It didn’t matter how awesome the houses would look on the outside – the bathrooms were almost always a toxic nightmare. In the first apartment I shared, the thin plastic shower curtain was calcified. The water would leave mineral deposits on it, and over the years, I guess this shower curtain began to obtain tensile strength and moved as one piece. In another place, I painted over the stains in the bathroom, so there was a layer between me and it. But the absolute worst was when I lived in the attic. This house was right beside campus, in a very respectable area, and on the outside, it looked like a squeeky clean, well kept Victorian era home. There was three or four of us living there over the summer, including the dude who never left his room – he’d be on his computer 24/7. He pretty much had a monopoly over the shower downstairs, which left the upright shower on the second level for everyone else. It seemed alright at first first glance; older, but the sink worked fine, and the tile on the shower floor looked pretty clean. The next day after moving in, I got into the shower and turned on the water. At first, I couldn’t tell where it was coming from – that faint, mouldy odour. But it grew and grew until it was the only thing I could smell. Five minutes later, I felt something against my foot. I looked down, and the fucking tiles were bent and raised off the floor. The wood underneath them was swollen, and pieces of it pierced upwards from below the tile. There was mold all through it. For the rest of the summer, I got up extra early, got in my car, and took a shower at the YMCA. Wearing flip-flops.

After taking the tour of Darecks really clean house, I saw the drum kit set up in the basement, owned by some girl apparently. She was dating (or had just broken up with) one of his roommates, and the drums were still in the basement. I began to set up the Symetrix gear next to the drums. In the 60′s, 70′s and 80′s, Symetrix made a lot of equipment designed for broadcast studios. You can still find their equipment today, devalued on the used market. In 2004, there still was not that many available options when it came to good gear on a shoe string budget. That is, not much between relatively inexpensive but mediocre sounding hobby gear and the out of reach pro stuff. The older Symetrix equipment lived between that gap, and ebay always had their microphone preamps, EQ’s and compressors in stock. When you lit them up, they still had lots to say, and gave this kind of gritty radio tone to whatever you recorded with it. If you listened to people talking on the radio in the 90′s, then you’ve heard what symetrix sounds like. Dareck made a few calls, and Silvana showed up the next day, ready to play her kit in the basement.

With the old electrovoice mic and symetrix rack, we did the base tracks to “got a new kitty”. We experimented with a few things; at one point, Darecks friend Adrian came over and played some tin whistle over the top of it. I could never find those tracks again, but they left their mark on the album – I think there was some headphone bleed, because whenever I listen to the intro of that song now I can faintly hear the whistle! When Silvana came over, she sat down on the floor next to her drums, and listened to the tracks. The timing near the end of “got a new kitty” worked, but we didn’t use a metronome or click track, and therefore the tempo wavered back and forth towards the ending of the song. Despite all that, she liked it. In three takes, she adapted her playing to ebb and flow with the tempo variations, and improvised an explosive drum track. An hour later, I had three dozen drum tracks full of alternative takes for that one song. She hit those drums hard – I have no idea if she was creating this work back then, but later on, I learned that she would take the drum skins off the kit, and would create these images out of the stick impacts (http://www.silvanabruni.com/gallery.html).

Sitting in the golden trailer, I had all these drums tracks of hers that I started to mix…

Marty was in love. All the pistons of “puppy dog phase” romance were still firing away, and Marty seemed really happy…and serious. He was really, really into his new girlfriend. When he arrived off the ferry, I had imagined things as if we were back in the basement with all of our gear and instruments. Jamming, or just talking about anything at all for hours on end. We used to have these conversations, that would just expand and expand. We could talk about something in particular, draw the most cryptic stuff on chalkboard to explain it even more (pictures, words, whatever), and would end up pushing each other until we’d both walk away with something new for the effort. I guess that’s a tall order to sustain as lives become more sophisticated and new relationships unfold. Things like that are supposed to change, right?

Although it was just the two of us, I began to feel like I was the third person tagging along. With frequency, he would dial up his phone, or it would ring, and whatever we would be doing or talking about would get temporarily dropped as he talked to his girlfriend. “So, what were we talking about?” he’d say when he got off the phone. We decided to drive up the road to Victoria to get something to eat. When we got there, we visited a few landmarks and homes that had all to do with his new relationship. We visited and ate at a noodle shop that his girlfriends brother worked at. I couldn’t share in any of these experiences that obviously had meaning and were important for him, and I started to feel excluded. Plus, I was too busy being extra sensitive and jealous to understand what was really going on. I didn’t want things to change. Marty had been in a bunch of shitty relationships in the past. Not that he was involved with destructive people – it was just that he really gave each one all he had, and it never was reciprocated back in the same way. I should have been happy for him that he clicked so well with his future wife. I probably sulked.

Just before Marty arrived, I totally revamped the recording arrangement in the trailer. I moved around a few more things of Cathy and Ians, set up the little fostex mixing board, microphones, compressors and preamps. I arranged all the cables, and miced up the drums in their new location. As a result, things sounded better. When you are recording on your own, the preamble takes a lot of time. In a real studio, there would be an assistant, engineer, and the talent. The assistant runs around, fixes things up, tunes the instruments, assembles and disassembles, and completes all the grunt work the makes the session go smoothly. The talent does his or her thing, and then based on what the engineer is hearing at the board, he tells the assistant or talent to do something different (play this way or that way, change out that mic, or move the whole drum kit over there). This way, you get a sound that matches up with everyone’s expectations.

If you are trying to play all three roles in the recording process at once, you do a funny little dance sequence. You set things up, then hit record, swerve your hips to avoid all the boom stands while running back to the gear, play whatever instrument is set up, run back, hit stop, listen to it, then go back, move things around, tweak a knob, or play something harder or softer. Then rinse and repeat until you have something that approximates what you want. I can’t tell you how many of my early songs feature the sounds of jiggling change in pockets, or stuff falling down as you run back to the instrument after you hit record. It once took me 5 days to mic up a drum kit, working this way…

We recorded the rhythm section for one of Martys songs. It took us only a few takes before we nailed it. The original version was very sparse and well done. He wrote it while watching this old time movie, where a guy was situated in a boat on an artificial sea (you know – the painted cardboard cut out waves that go back and forth). I dropped him off at the ferry afterwards, and finished the rest of the song during the week. I over-enthusiastically added every new technique or sound I had on the pallet thus far. There was a cacophony of mangled cellos and violins all over the thing. It made sense, in a busy sort of way, but I should have set the volume on a few of the mixed in tracks to zero. Through this song, I learned that the mute button (the button that turns a recorded sound off while mixing) was an instrument in its own right – and it had to be on the pallet. Zero is just as important as all the one’s. I think that holds true for making your way within vital friendships as well.

There is a local market on the island highway that I pass by every day, back and forth from Duncan to Shauningan lake. It is full of fresh, locally grown produce that is actually less expensive as compared to any of the chain stores. There is a rustic, country cafe attached to the market, where they will make you something to eat using all the ingredients found within the market. Natalie and I met there for coffee. She parked her truck out back, and arrived dressed in her mountain bike gear. That’s what got us talking in the first place; I wanted someone to show me the running trails around my new neighbourhood, and she lived just a few roads down the highway…

If you didn’t know her well, Natalie would first appear to be the classic “unrequited love interest in disguise” archetype; you know, the obviously beautiful girl with who wears glasses and tomboy clothes as a veil, and then pulls the pony tail and dons the contact lenses towards the ending to reveal that she was drop dead all along. Too bad, so sad to the boys who should have known better.

It wasn’t that far from the truth. I could tell because of the way she watched the clock. I had only known her a few days now, but I could tell something was pulling this girl in two different directions. I had entered her life during tug of war. We ordered a few coffees, and took a table for two in the market. We talked about gliding along running trails, until there was no trail left and our conversation hit the underbrush. When Natalie decides to tell you something, even if its dark, she will floor you with unfiltered honesty. I guess sometimes it is easier to reveal things to a stranger than it is to people you have known your whole life. About all the details that you learn to keep quite and close for fear of rocking the boat. We sustain our worlds with sorrow this way. But she was also looking for a way out. That was clear, even as she anxiously glanced at her watch and said she had to go.

Back in the cabin, I was eyeing up the midi keyboard. It came with this crappy software that allowed you to hook the keyboard up to the computer, and use whatever sounds you wanted the keyboard to control. I gravitated towards classical instruments, like violins and cellos. A music school was giving away samples of classical instrument recordings online. I downloaded a bunch of them, and started cutting and preparing pieces of those classical instrument sounds for the keyboard. It was pretty crude. With the way I had done it, as you hit higher notes on the keyboard, the software would attain and play back those higher notes by speeding up the original sample you stuck in it – so certain notes sounded like they were in fast forward (you’ve got to multisample to avoid this, I eventually figured out). I went along with this type of mangled, classical instrument sound.

I was thinking about my conversation with Natalie, and all the relationships I had left behind in Ontario. I typed out a “wish you were here” sentiment on a post card. I pulled out the old green acoustic guitar, and recorded the backing tracks and drums for this new post card inspired song. Even though it was crude and unsteady, I loved the new sounds I could make via the keyboard, and the mangled oboes and cellos fit perfectly into the mix. The bass went on, then finally the vocals. Sometimes, a song just comes together all on its own, and this one practically wrote and recorded itself. It was my best composition yet. I called up Marty. I wanted him to hear what I had done; I wanted someone else to be excited about it as well. Marty listened to it, and when I suggested he come over to the island to work on a song of his, he was pretty positive about the idea.

The first box contained a “lynx one” sound card. Any computer, regardless of if it’s a Jonathan Ive designed macbook, or a cheapo microsoft beige box special has a sound card in it. Sound goes in, and sound comes out because of these swappable computer chips. The lynx sound card altogether changed how I interfaced with the computer during the recording process. The lynx was going to clarify the sounds I could hear, and allow me to try a limited amount of higher resolution recording. I knew there had to be something special about this chip even before I received it, because even though it was born and released in the 90′s, it was still being manufactured brand new and sold for its original price. That is a huge feat for something digital, which usually equates to disposable very quickly.

I unpacked the lynx, careful not to squash the tiny yellow boxes and flat black canvasses embossed into the green silicon board. There was a cello on the front box. I have no idea if the lynx engineers realize it, but beyond efficiently conducting electricity, up close, their sound card has remarkable architecture. It looks like a modern city, complete with a downtown district and city hall:

side streets and a board walk,

an outer suburbia,

and a nuclear power plant.

The cables that come with the card look like a mechanized godzilla-like sea monster, contemplating while the townsfolk gaze in awe.

The flip side of the card contains a fog that surrounds anonymous grave markers. Is it amazing that a digital chip looks like a city, or a sign of the times that many cities look like a digital chip?

“Mih-Dee”. It’s “mih dee”, and not “my-dee”, the music store clerk said with a condescending smirk. I let the overpriced midi keyboard slide out of my hands, and left the “recording section” of the long and mcquade music emporium. I’ll support local business, but not if your a jerk. Ebay, on the other hand, is usually not a jerk I mumbled as I opened up the other delivered box. Just like the first time I entered the park, my head was full of preconceptions. I saw the word “midi” associated with a lot of music I didn’t appreciate other than for entertainment or train-wreck value – cheesy, bad sounding sample driven music like “don’t copy that floppy” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up863eQKGUI). Apparently, midi gear didn’t actually make sounds or music on its own, but you had to connect it to a computer to generate sounds from samples or software. When you hit a piano key, the hammer strikes the string, generating the played note. When you hit a midi piano key, it sends a series of 101010101010′s to the computer, which then gets interpreted as turning a sound on in whatever program you are using. Dareck and I used to make fun of midi stuff, and Marty and I probably would have broken it years earlier. Yet here I was, years later, coveting my first midi keyboard. What convinced me to try this thing out was the pump organ and thrift store keyboards. Hearing things I would normally play on guitar, but massaged through alternative instruments was eye opening. I could start to understand the decisions one could make within an musical arrangement, and the resultant effect on the overall story presented within as song. Unknown to me, Dareck had started collecting old, eighties hardware samplers and midi stuff as well. One of his first songs he wrote this way was called love collision.

The following weekend, with clothes still in the suitcase but boxes unpacked, I set up the mics and recorded two songs. One was called Ash, and the other was a version of Darecks new song, Love collision. Ash came out quite well (I would probably still enjoy it if i heard it today by chance). My drum sounds were a harsh and unbalanced disaster, which I could now hear in fantastic detail thanks to the lynx card, and love collision paid the price. While struggling for ideas to improve the drum sounds for love collision, I tried putting swaths of fabric all over various drums and cymbals. It was an attempt to change their sound so they would record well. I even cut out and stuck a big piece of felt over the highhat. My drum kit looked like a shanty. I embarrassed that poor drum kit, and halfway through playing, all that stuff just fell off anyway. A year later, I did find out what the culprit behind my dismal drums recordings were…

Shortly after finishing ‘love collision’, which was still kind of cool despite my failed technique getting in the way, I got in touch with a girl I knew from school. Earladeen lived in Victoria, which was just a drive over the mountain away (things were cool that way out west; to get somewhere, you went over the mountain or through the valley). Earladeen was an attractive, athletic girl, in the process of figuring out her post-school world just like I was. We met up for coffee. I was really enthusiastic about the recordings I had just finished, and she was kind enough to listen to them. She liked love collision. Earladeen was house sitting in this awesome neighbourhood, close to the water. She was just learning to play guitar, so I pulled the acoustic out of the trunk.

The acoustic guitar is an arthritic old beast. It has been the acoustic in the trunk, the acoustic in the snow, the acoustic on the floor and underneath the stairs. It’s that kind of guitar. It has never required the use of a case, because it is undomesticated with a thick hide. Dareck was the first to possess the acoustic (actually, I think he bought it), way back in high school. Dareck covered the guitar in shag carpet. Later, he stripped it down, painted it green, and glued a compass onto it that fell off.

There is a single dehydrated, organic nacho in the body of the guitar, that has been there for 14 years. You can shake the guitar around and it rattle via the nacho. Marty is a messy eater, and he dropped it in there when he took the guitar. I once picked up my electric guitar case, and a whole dusting of orange cheato dust came out – Marty was hungry and wanted to play at the same time, apparently. When I moved to Guelph to start school, I took this acoustic guitar, and Marty came over and wrote phrases all over it with pencil and marker. It’s final transformation involved replacing the bridge with a cut segment of coat hanger. It’s been there ever since, and the guitar is more playable than ever (it even has a pretty unique twang). Even though the acoustic is ghetto, I would feel bad if anything happened to it, because it has more than earned its keep – it’s kept me company when the best of what I could record sounded like it its own battered shell.

Earladeen was a quick study, and I was surprised at how quickly she picked up on the chords, and most importantly, understood rhythm. We went out for a bite to eat, and on the way back, the conversation dried up real fast until there was no talking. I wasn’t exactly sure what had happened, or what to say. As it turned out, I think I took corners in my toyota too fast, and she became nauseous. The second time I saw Earladeen, she had her own apartment in Victoria. I remember these cool little animal shaped toothbrush holders she had in the bathroom – she gave me one. It’s a little horse that sticks to the mirror and holds the brush. We went out to this pot luck that night, and there was a table full of munchies and meatballs in the centre. I drove home that night, across the mountain, and started to feel a little warm as I got to the peak. The vomiting started later that night. That was the first time I’ve experienced food poisoning. I haven’t seen Earladeen since.

I met Marty mid way through high school. I was the short, quiet, introverted, awkward kid with braces and bad hair. Not really overweight or chubby, but in possession of that lack of testosterone fleshed out appearance. Marty was the very tall, underweight kid with huge, dated eighties rim glasses. Marty and I met because we were bottom of the barrel and looking for a way out of it. Marty cast a rope up and over the side, and we helped each other out and over. We had an instant predilection to be consumed by the effects and inner workings of music, and we forged a friendship over stratocaster guitar tones and guitar hero’s. In the beginning, I had the guitar, and Marty had a k-car and basement that we could play in. Marties basement was like our own sealed diefenbunker. It was our underground tree house, and as the years went on, we’d put all sorts of stuff we could find down there – cassette recorders, drum machines, radioshack mixers, flood lamps and mirrors. It was pretty ghetto by todays standards, but in the 90′s, even the cheapest recording equipment and digital gear was very expensive, sparse, and out of reach. Purchasing a box of high quality cassette tapes meant we were set for a few months in the basement. I had no interest in recording whatsoever. Marty, who was more technically adept, put all that together.

We started breaking things. It lasted for about a year. Other kids got high or drunk, played video games, had girlfriends, were good at sports, or did well in school. We had or did none of those things. We played guitars and broke stuff. It started upstairs – Marty had just got this new acoustic guitar. It had high action – meaning that the strings were so high off the fretboard, playing the instrument was painful and limiting. We were listening to “Are you experienced?” on the boom box in his room, when I picked up the acoustic guitar by the neck, swung it into the air in an arc, but gently slowed down so it harmlessly bounced on the bed. Marty got up out of the corner. He had this funny look on his face, and I thought he was pissed that I’d swung around his new guitar. He grabbed it out of my hands, swung it high, and flung it towards the ground. He smashed that guitar until it was in 30 pieces. We got into his k-car, and proceeded to drive around the city, throwing pieces of acoustic guitar out the window as we went.

It must have been infectious. Id’ say for about a years time, if something we owned didn’t quite meet a certain musical standard, it ‘got broke’. Cassette tapes, if they were “cock-rock” hair metal or artists we did not like, got unspooled. About the term “Cock-Rock”; Rupicola peruvianu is a species of bird, that show a “cacophony of bright color and frenzied activity filled with very strange sounds”, and instead of working on building his nesting chops, “the male’s energy instead is devoted to very elaborate display rituals, that show off its magnificent plumage”. The common name for these birds are “cock of the rock”. I can’t make any of this stuff up.

We broke a lot of his sisters tapes (sorry Vicky and Lisa). Some tapes didn’t deserve to break (i.e. we were to immature to appreciate what they were at the time), but they ‘got broke’ anyways. It was never planned, and always spur of the moment. Bad music on CD’s got splintered by throwing them like ninja stars against the basement wall. I have a vague memory of Marty swinging a 10watt guitar amp, by it’s 10 foot cord, round and round in the air, then watching the amp fly away to a rolling destruction. The amp didn’t sound good, apparently. The worst was when there was this radio-cassette thing we were trying to use to record with. We were in the basement, and it ruined perfect take because it got all warbly. It got broke. I think Marties mom found it later – we had literally swept it under the rug downstairs, and it would go crunch when you walked over it. Every week, something unsatisfactory would bite the dust. Teenage angst, testosterone, boredom, bottom of the barrel and no girlfriends, mixed with family dysfunction that had seeped into the works. We didn’t have the tools to articulate our issues back then, so it was get it out into the music, or become Lou Ferrigno: “hulk, smash”. Ironically, after trial, error, and even repeating a year in highchool, Marty became a brilliant earthquake engineer. He ran a gigantic shake table at a university while getting his Phd, designed to break huge buildings on a large scale. He knows how to prevent things from being destroyed from the inside out…

Even though we were only a ferry ride away, we only saw each other three times in all the years I lived out west. We had both dug up opportunities and elements within our personalities that we didn’t think were possible or could exist ten years earlier. We didn’t need each other the way we used to, because the bottom of that barrel was long gone. You want to find fault in why things are not the same, and because of that, misunderstandings happen along the way. It took me a long time to figure that out.

I made it back to the golden trailer with Marties guitar amp. I needed to reinvent things in my life again. Is that how people stay happy for a long period of time I wondered.

It would be great to film a video in there, maybe for dedicated to the national trust Before you hit the innermost layer, you find mid century modern inspired design all over the place. The basement is bleak, and there are mixed messages to be found within all the multiple use transformations the building has gone through. I wonder what Kim Jong-il’s bunker looks like. Probably something like this (click any picture to enlarge/view gallery):

Just outside the gates…

Decent into the bunker

DND commander chair. Notice the ashtray. In the 60′s, you filter your recycled air for nuclear fallout while filling it with smoke all at the same time.

Agent des operations got to work at the sturdy tank of a desk, while sitting in his government issue, stylish Eames inspired chair. Utility meets function meets fashion in the nuclear age.

Alarms in the belly of the beast.

“Area 2″ mid century inspired bunker arrangements.

Doomsday conference room. I sat in the command chair. Dareck said that I wasn’t supposed to. I said if Obama could, then so could I.

The shower walls were yellow, and the overhead bulb also contributed to the yellowish haze. At first I thought it was your typical “boy bathroom” (I don’t think they let girls in back then, unless they were secretaries probably), until I realized that it was lined with lead paint.

The commander got a single issue DND bed. The family had to stay home. Good thing he had the rotary dial phone to check up on them after the blast.

Bedside Canadian made Eames inspired chair.

DND issued blanket to keep oh so warm in the isolated underground.

Descent again…

Colour coordinated cabinets to lift the spirits…

…while you are determining fallout calculations…

Adjacent to fallout man sits the scientific advisor.

Eames inspired shell chairs supply the only colour in the room…

Reels of tape & the mainframe computer.

There were many computers in central command. BULL DPS stand for “bullshit digital processing systems” – the perfect computational algorithm for when the nuclear shit hits the fan.

In the eighties, Canada’s nuclear bunker upgraded to floppy disks (Im sure it costs thousands of dollars to add megs of storage). It was either that, or they’re for playing muzak cassette tapes.

Blast detector!

The ruler says “emergency measures”…Get it? Har har har.

Isn’t a nuclear blast suppose to change weather and wind directions and all that? I guess that is what this is for…

When a button is pushed and that light goes on, the emergency studio takes over the signal and broadcasts to every radio station in the country.

Descent.

The cafeteria, complete with modernist table seating. The picture in the background was a huge nature montage – to combat depression.

Eames inspired Area 2.

The innermost layer. There is a huge mirror before you enter the treasury. It’s like the 2001 space odyssey monolith.

Where the gold was kept…

Keep them out or in?

Blast siren

As fall progressed, Jay helped me with finding a new place to live. I started perusing the grocery store community pin up walls after work, and scouring local newspapers for rental and house-sitting ads (I wasn’t really aware of craigslist in 05′, and in small towns, traditional media still functioned well enough at that time). I knew that if another house sitting opportunity didn’t arrive soon, I would end up paying substantially for rent, which would stifle the flow of instruments and gear I needed. Given the amount of noise I’d be making, I figured that cheaper apartments or living arrangements with roommates wouldn’t work so well. Sometimes it’s not the transient loud sounds from a snare drum or cymbal splash that upsets the neighbours. What gets under the skin instead is the jarring starts, stops, and repetition. The similar sounding takes, and snippets of song sections that appear to repeat for no discernible reason. These sounds are filtered through walls, and become unintelligible, out of context, and therefore grating.

When September arrived, I started looking for a place to rent. I spent a lot of time in the corolla, checking out various places. Trish’s parents had a home that was available. I had a hard time resisting that one – I knew that if I rented it, Id have a beautiful, motivating place to record in – but no cash left over to fill it with the right equipment. Another accommodation was right on the beach, complete with inspiring panoramic ocean views. Unfortunately, living there required assisting the owner with yard work on the weekends, and the guest house where I would be staying had eighties floral patterns on the walls. Jay found this other place – which was modern and of perfect size, but it was being drywalled at the time, and wouldn’t be done for a while. I found an ad for a place near Shaunigan lake. I called up the number, and got these strange directions to view the house. I eventually found it – it was a house, placed in the middle of what seemed to be wild forest. You had to reach it by dirt road. The guys who had lived there had girly posters on the walls, and there were piles of budlight cans everywhere. No lights were to be found on the property, so when the sun went down, the dirt road must have looked like a black hole. They were asking 850 a month plus utilities. I didn’t think my 1990′s low suspension could take the dirt road to get there (there was a plethora of pebbles stuck in the tire tread and the bottom of the car got scraped up), and my imagination didn’t want to tango with the pitch black nights out in the isolated hillbilly void.

Closer to town, I found another place for rent that might have worked. It was this little cottage like cabin, arranged apartment style, on the front lawn of the main home it was associated with. It was kind of like Alice in Wonderland on the inside. It had this weird, sloping ceiling in one of the bedrooms. I wasn’t the only one checking out the place that evening; there was a single mom and her pre-teen kid also looking it over. I think they got the place as well. I wonder how they managed in the small, oddly shaped space.

The series of towns within the valley were all connected by the island highway, so they were sort of close knit. By word of mouth, someone in a neighbouring town, Cobble Hill, heard that I was looking for a long term house sitting situation. They wanted someone who could also take care of their cat while they were away in Mexico for six months. Six months! One place for fall, winter and spring, where I could get really settled in and work on the recordings. I confirmed that it wasn’t an apartment, and that their were no roommates. I met the owners, Cathy and Ian, a few days later, in order to go over the details to see if this arrangement would work for everyone involved.

I met them in the vet clinic parking lot, and followed their red Nissan to their home. We took a winding road, flanked by the occasional set of houses, open fields and thick forested areas, so that the community seemed nestled within the terrain. We turned right, then right again and entered the park. Except it wasn’t a park with jungle gyms and benches. It was a trailer park. Now, most of us have stereotypes about trailer parks, and as I drove through the park entryway, I must admit that mine came to the surface. We slowly drove over the many speed bumps in the parks winding road. It was evident that the place was well maintained. But the trailers looked very small, close together, and I wasn’t sure if this was going to work. But up ahead the red Nissan kept driving…how big was this trailer park anyway?

The road began to ascend. Quit steeply. Up and up through the park and then a sharp U turn to the left, where the road then levelled out. There was a hidden alcove back here. There was a single row of prefabricated homes to the left, and my first impression was that they looked like summer cottages; sort of what you would find in Ontario cottage country. To the right was a large, steep hill, covered by trees. Ian and Cathy pulled into their lot, which had a fenced backyard. As I stepped into the yard, I saw this workshop out back, set against a garden. I walked into the mobile home, and toured the premises. There were two bedroom, two bathrooms, a dining room, living room, kitchen, laundry, and a front yard, that was beautifully landscaped as it rolled down the hill. When I walked onto the adjoining deck/patio, and looked out, and saw all this:

This was one of my favourite places on the island. I called it the golden trailer. Within a years time, I figured out many things about myself while living within the golden trailer. I also learned how to make a record.

Addendum: I think Ian and Cathy got it right. They purposefully defined their living arrangements to accommodate what they loved to do the most…travel. Mcmansion mortgages, even at their healthiest, require lots of life support…

By the time I had made my trek to Vancouver Island, and found myself on the front porch of Trish and Scott’s house, Dareck and I had started to trickle songs back and forth to each other. We had quit talking to each other for over a year, and sending these songs back and forth reestablished some type of meaningful contact. He’d email a thirty second song demo, and I’d send my meandering recordings, and it was like we were picking up again from first principles. The first car load I stuffed in the corolla to put in Trish and Scot’s house for my week long house-sitting gig were the drums. The drums were a low point for me. I started piecing the drum kit together a year and a half earlier when Dareck and I began to fall out, and to my ears, the kick drum still sounded like failure and frustration. The night I got that kick drum, there was phone call from my sister, crying to come pick her up at the strain station in London. She couldn’t stay there anymore. I picked her up, and Dareck, myself, and my sister lived in a one bedroom apartment for a while.

Trish and Scott’s place was a neat little house, located on one of the towns main streets. Nice big window in the front, and an art studio up in the converted attic. I was farther from the ocean than the basement – but distance is relative in a small town; the ocean was just a five minute walk down the hill. There was a tiny noodle shop a few doors down that I began to patronize, and a hardware store a few doors down further owned by a pair of sisters. Apparently the sisters played in a band as well, but I never saw them while I was there. Once the front porch pile of recording equipment, drums, amps, keyboards and guitars was stacked and ready to go inside, I opened the front door. I looked at the living room, and then all the instruments, and then found my point n’ click and took photos of their living room. I knew I would have to move things around to fit the instruments and gear, but I wanted to be able to put things back in their exact spot. During my two and a half years on the island, I eventually became good at capturing photos of carpets, couches, runners and coffee tables in such a way that I could accurately judge their exact replacement location. One couple actually said their place looked neater than when they left…

On the neighbouring island, which was called Saltpring, there was this guy that built these tube microphone preamplifiers for recording, out of old vintage reel to reel players. For those of you unfamiliar with the jargon, a preamplifier to a microphone is like a guitar amp to an electric guitar. You plug the microphone in it so you can hear and record what the mic is pointed at. The old, high voltage vacuum tube preamplifiers are desirable because sometimes they can alter the sound a certain way that is complimentary to the recording you are trying to make. Instead of modern age guts, they are full of those old tubes that light up and get really hot, kind of like the ones you see in 1950′s supercomputers. I got a great deal on this archaic preamp, and went to go get it. I drove my car to the ferry, and made the short trip to Saltspring Island. Being new to the west coast, the ferry trips were still novel for me, and I thought they were cool – drive on up, watch the water, and listen to tunes. The boats seemed like they were built (or at least renovated) in the 80′s, and the bigger ones had multiple decks with gift shops in them. They also served a hybrid of cafeteria and movie theatre food, but managed to combine the worst of both worlds (refined white bread and everlasting cheese sauce).

The guy I met where Saltspring meets the ocean had a big beard and donned a well worn jean jacket. He handed me a cardboard box, that had the retro looking, tube device inside. It was his prototype (it broke within two months, and he got around to fixing it two years later. If the pace on Vancouver island can be said to be slower than Ontario, then on Saltspring, it’s pure molasses). I hid the box with metal and tubes sticking out on the ferry ride back. I figured that a medium dark skinned, single male holding a big metal box with flick switches and tubes in it, on a boat in the middle of the ocean, was something nobody wanted to see.

Back at the house, the recordings took on shape. Most of the songs had arbitrary names, although a few derived from the stories that I started writing – throwing stones, ash, and the gimp. Little by little, I was coming to grips with the pallet – observing how some sounds just fit together, and other instruments, no matter how much you massaged them, would always fight each other to be noticed. I referred to those sounds as the tones of jealousy, and they would always destroy the true sonic intent within a song. I learned that if I stuck strings the size of rail road tracks on a ‘crafted in Japan’ P-bass, the bottom end sorted itself out with no questions asked. I learned that if you used a certain mic, at just a certain angle on the Frontalini pump organ, you could jack up a certain frequency on the EQ that would make it sing. I also discovered that dbx made these little consumer tape devices in the 70′s that squished and compressed sounds in a way that sometimes worked. My guitar and drums sounds were still not good, no matter what I tried. It was evident that the right the instruments, carefully chosen, and not just the right recording gear, was going to be key to developing a sound that worked. A very dim tungsten bulb went off in my head (it would take me another year and a half to understand these things enough to really make use of it) – it always starts with a core of very simple things. Big gauge strings. A nice room…

I took my cue from the vertical blinds in the living room – when the sun streaked through onto the couch, it was time to tear down for the evening (when you are living somewhere for free, you don’t make the neighbours upset). Sometimes I’d move the drums over, and stretch out on the couch. One evening, I flicked through the channels and started watching a documentary about Muhammad Ali. It was about his match with George Foreman, and was dubbed “Rumble in the Jungle”. The fight took place in Zaire, Africa, and documented some of the turmoil in race politics at that time. Although I cant describe myself as an avid boxing fan (although I named one of my turtles “Rocky” as a kid), the story these boxers have are often compelling. The recently filmed “Tyson” demonstrates the same thing. These guys will break their back for what they can’t have. The emotions they project are harsh and so brutal that they simply must be true. The world rides those emotions to a pay check when they are on top, but the beginning is always a lonely road indeed.

Addendum:  All those guitars that go ‘pop’ in ‘Got a new kitty’ got run through and squished by those little dbx units. The frontalini keyboard with its ‘counter bass’ never made it onto any final recordings for the album. The big metal tube box, once it was fixed, was used to record the cello’s on “Message in the Machine”. Kirk’s first impression listening to the playback was ‘they don’t sound like cello’s'…they now sounded like the machine.

k

We did precious little of this:

But met lots of great people in the interim.

Anthony’s interactive light projection was pretty cool.

Congrats to the guy who won our vinyl LP during the Haiti Relief fundraiser; till next time, k.

After crashing and Jay and Lori’s house for a few weeks, my first living arrangement was in the basement of a vet clinic. It was an unfinished basement, and I lived with pet food and other assorted equipment. There was a shower, microwave, and plug-in kettle for instant coffee, and all in all, it was a pretty cool basement as far as basements go – because if you opened the double doors at night, it would land out beside this shipping dock where those gigantic international freight ships would sit in the ocean, with their cinematic, thousand watt lights blaring into the sky.

There was a vintage X-ray unit in this basement, and Jay let me set up all my equipment on it. First to go on the X-ray table was the relic of our times – the digital Fostex recorder, produced in the late 90′s to early 2000′s. It worked fast and quietly at a time when average PC’s were slow, noisy and expensive. The ghosts of old X-rays must have permeated the old school digital Fostex, because years later, we found some older tracks buzzing out of the fostex’s hard drive that sounded better than they should have (some even made it onto our new LP). Behind the x-ray table, I put the drums, then ran wires to the kitchenette, which became the vocal booth and mix down room. I put up some curtains on the basement windows, so no one could peek inside.

About once a month, there would be a new ebay’d microphone arriving at the clinic. I’d find all these vintage, less common (and cheap) German, Russian, Chinese and U.S. manufactured microphones. Most microphones, up close, look like something out of THX 1138. Is this why engineering is such a male dominated profession? I’d stick mics everywhere and record anything, from the pitter patter of vancouver island rain on tin roof tops to slugging my way through the instruments that I was slowly acquiring. I was incrementally learning these tools, but didn’t know how to put everything together yet, and you could hear that in the music. All my recordings that summer were disappointing – the kind of thing that friends would smile at to be kind, but you knew that the real connection to be made was not there yet. The slightest ability to do something new was enough of a reason to keep going with it I thought, and with every place I moved to, something got better. Although I couldn’t articulate it back then, what I was doing was figuring out the necessary pieces to create a pallet; sorting through the infinite availability of equipment and software that the net provides, to focus on the best representative sounds.

I began to write short, biographic stories to wring out ideas. I’d just heard from an old friend, Jen, who I hadn’t seen for many years, and I’d write up these short stories to show her where I’d been. I’d put these stories to music in the months that followed, and recorded them on the X-ray table. I made most of the noise and recordings overnight or on weekends when the clinic overhead was closed. Although the place was made of thick concrete and had good sound proofing, I wondered what the locals and tourists thought of all those muffled drums beats coming out of the vet clinic. The sound of a cheapo pawnshop keyboard and pump organ also blared out of the vet clinic for a few months. I had no experience with keyboards, until a classmate named Laura left her Casio at my place a year earlier while working on a song of hers. I plugged the Casio into this cheap little tube preamp, which resulted in a fuzzy tone that I got excited about.

Once in a while, Tash would knock on the basement door. I think she heard all the sounds coming out of the basement. She worked in the clinic above, and we became friends. We’d get popcorn, and started watching movies on occasion. She would listen to some of the demo’s I’d made (a lot of them were probably vocal-less, rambling jams, since I didn’t know how to produce myself at that point), and would give me the thumbs up nonetheless. Being a small, island town, people would talk, and rumours would fly. Sigh…I never saw her again after she left town a year or so later.

I moved out of the basement, and my next place was going to be a weeks stay at Trish and Scotts house up the road. Their beautiful home used to be a hostel of sorts, and was now their primary residence (Trish said they occasionally had people  knocking on their door seeking accommodations).  It even had a urinal in one of the bathrooms. I had just received a pair of Russian, pencil bodied mics, and I planned out 4 or 5 songs I wanted to do that week…

addendum….so many mic’s, trails of wire and so many places have left their mark on this album. Some of these mics would not look out of place orbiting the planet, when viewed up close and personal. The telenfunken stereo basket mic, when it worked, showed up on various vocal or acoustic guitar tracks on ‘the plan’. The cello was recorded through just about everything. The blackfire mic came with its original box, which featured 70′s musicians with disco bell bottoms. I bought it from this church that was selling equipment it didn’t use anymore. The microphone featured up top, with its multiple grills, was what Dareck sang ‘got a new kitty’ through. They all coloured the sound in a way unique and relative to their history.

Spreading the word about something within the digital saturation is deceivingly tricky. It seems like there are a lot of opportunities, and if you get all your clicks in a row, you can spread all the words you want, and make some kind of ‘impact’ for what you are offering up. However, if you’ve been with us for a few months, you know that most of those opportunities are actually advertising and promotion ideas that have come out of the machine – the methods developed during the heyday of the marketing industry. Those strategies are experiencing new life online as people throw them your way as an ‘indispensable blueprint to promote your work”. They are strategies that try to put you in the drivers seat.

The main insight is this – if you have truly innovated in your work, then you have to be comfortable with destination unknown. You ain’t in the drivers seat, but along for the ride. People will sacrifice their time to experience your art form, and tell other people about it on their own terms. When we signed up for CDbaby (an organization that will broker your album onto Itunes), the months that followed found our inbox brimming with promises. Online services that bragged about maximize our exposure to hundreds of ‘relevant’ sites, including exposure to “industry professionals”. Sign ups for banner ads on websites that get a million clicks a day. Invites to web based artist platforms that proudly boast that they cater to “thousands of artists” and promised to distribute our music to everyone known to mankind. Publicity outfits that wanted to broker us to traditional mass market print media, mass media radio, and DIY info on how to make a “street team”. I think all of those things actually represent the way to stay anonymous to those that need to hear from us the most. The cultural conditions required for those methods to work are rapidly fading, if not already gone.

I was driving Jen to work a few months ago, and CBC radio broadcast a spot for a local band that Dareck and I had saw at the Mercury lounge in Ottawa. They’re similar to us in that they are a new, pre-critical mass group, probably on the verge of finishing their first album. We thought they sounded pretty good, and had a promising vibe especially when the female guitarist took some of the vocal duties. Anyways, it was a popular morning radio show, and they described the band a bit, played some of their songs, and advertised their gig, which took place later that evening. The spot ran at least a few times in the day. I wanted to know what the effect of this mass-media coverage was, to see if the ideas about spreading ideas that i’d been reading about held up. I also wanted to know, because if you go by first instinct, you’ll hear that radio spot, and feel like “we should be doing that too”, or you’ll start asking yourself “so how did they get on that show…”, and your mind has already stepped onto the path of wasting time and energy were it doesn’t need to go.

Here’s the quick and dirty analysis I did that morning. CBC radio Ottawa has a large potential listening base (close to a million people), given that the city is Canada’s fourth biggest urban location. Let’s assume a very small percentage of the population were listening…maybe ten thousand or so. So, what was the effect of mass media exposure, based on the bands measurable myspace online activity? That day, the bands myspace visit count jumped by fifty. Hey, fifty visits is fifty visits. However, if any money, significant time or effort was spent on that radio campaign, then it was probably wise to recognize that 50 into 10,000 gives a response rate of 0.5 percent. This number is typical for distraction based marketing. The hypothesis behind those kind of response numbers is that people have learned to tune out unsolicited messages. Obviously this isn’t a scientific analysis, nor is it intended to reflect badly on this band. We’d probably be trying at the same things twelve months ago, undoubtedly with the same result. Was there at least a persistent effect – did those 50 visits or plays on their website, regardless of an initial, dismal response rate, turn into anything else? The next day, the bands myspace plays dropped to three, which is a typical, baseline level of not much happening on myspace (I should know, because that’s where our own useless myspace site stayed for a long time after we set it up). In twenty four hours, their page visit counts returned to what they previously were before exposure to thousands on thousands of people.

So, I think Godin (2003) has got things right – the resources and energy previously placed into advertising and marketing art/literature or any creative work must now be funneled into creating innovations within it. This is essential, because if you are average or exchangeable, then you are effectively invisible. The idea is that you must take your innovative work of art, and connect with passionate people who are already looking for what you have (consciously or unconsciously). If you’ve got a few right people on your side, you’ve got a shot at creating an environment that supports the continued growth of your work, basically.

A bands ‘fight or flight’ response is to ‘create or captivate’. And this only seems to happen within a reciprocal relationship. That inner drone that disposes us to music also says that without people to share it with, it begins to feel like an insular endeavour. It becomes an undertaking that is too much about ‘me me me’, which feels non-adaptive and vestigial. So, as a band, in the process of supporting our first LP, we are on the first date. We see you standing there, and it makes our palms sweaty, breath rate fast and shallow and heart rate rise. Now, we can date promiscuously, or we can put up our dukes with those who are also looking for answers, companionship, or a way out…

According to Goding (2003), the key to understanding how music or works of art gains awareness in today’s culture is by realizing one thing – you will only be sought out by the innovators and early adopters. These people are not average, nor are they interested in actively seeking things designed for the masses. Early adopters and innovators are not looking for inspiration within ‘average consumer products’. So even though early adopters and innovators represent a fraction of the population, they are everything and the apple of our eye, because we rarely hold court for strangers that we think are average, do we? We want those who want us as well.

As Godin loves to point out, the largest audience you think you have access to, is the very one that will be the best at ignoring you. It’s the classic Hollywood motion picture theme of unrequited love – spending all your time and emotions trying to get noticed by someone who barely notices your alive, while the one who really wants you is getting sloppy attention seconds. It is important for us to get real comfortable with that idea, because it implies that to plan the introduction of our music to everyone, is to actually introduce it to no one. If we spend all our time and money trying to reach the masses, chances are that we run out or resources, momentum and motivation before we can find those we can hold a litter closer…

ok…those of you looking for it…your going to get all of our attention….if we are not what you need, we can’t help it at all…

(previous post in this series:  swivel)

My body doesn’t want to change. It’s sabotaged me, and got it’s ducks in a row. If you align the right muscles, and twist them so a knot appears, then charlies your uncle if a nerve get’s caught up in the fray. Ha ha it says- your destined to record in a messy bedroom forever….

The messy bedroom phenomenon began to show its limitations a few years back. Basements and bedrooms formed the staple of our songwriting and recording environment. You don’t really see the clutter when the clutter is all you have to work in – but even more importantly, the state of the space is just not a priority when most of your effort is spent in just trying to get something started in the first place. Dareck and I spent a lot of time in Guelph a few years back, and that’s also when we got our first taste of multitrack recording. I was learning how to record, and Dareck had just found a way to translate his ideas into arrangements that flourished in this format. I’d go to school in the day, and sometimes Dareck would stay in the apartment, spending the day with congo drums, two mics, a guitar and bass to record. The big dejembe drum, when miced up from the bottom, served as the kick sound. Sometimes, when I got back from classes, Dareck would have this dazed look, and he wouldn’t have have too much to play back on the multitrack. He would just point to the “recording room” (the bedroom in disarray) with an exasperated look. Now that I’ve got my own place, it’s time for the messy bedroom/apartment/basement concept to be supplanted. My place is definitely better than the old basements and bedrooms, but it’s unnecessarily utilitarian. The kitchen cart on broken castors, which formed the hub of our music making system, wants to retire.

So all of January, I’ve just been feverishly working on the environment. My arm has fought back in the form of a squeezed out nerve, but no matter, it’s going to get finished. The process of massaging the equipment, colours and furnishings into a new state is akin to mixing music – much of the intended effect comes down to the arrangement, the focal point and intent. I’ve ripped out cubboards, painted out dark colours (dark things are readily found if you go looking for them – i don’t need them staring me in the face all the time), and refinished/upholstered the greatest of MCM thrifty finds. This weekend, I watched Dareck improvise and build a kitchen island in the same way he might write a song. In his new balance running shoes, dareck trudged up a country hill covered in 4 feet of snow, and we took some 30 year old barn boards from Jen’s old horse barn. We then bought some steel bars from gargantuan depot. Dareck brought his laptop and we streamed lots of music from spotify; but I just remember yoko ono. She’s still at it, which is impressive. While Yoko filled the garage, Dareck would take a piece of steel, or whatever, and would start working on it – if that tool didn’t yield the right result, he’d drop it instantaneously (they are rubber coated, and hence bounce off the floor), and grab the next one on the roster until he got the effect he was looking for. We had to stop a few times to move things when the sparks from the steel cutter bounced off a gas can, or into the electric heater. The nerve in my arm turned me useless – I was an ok clamp though – I just held onto stuff real tight.

Dareck cut the barn boards at the side of the road so it would fit in the toyota. People stopped to see if his car shut down. He said no, im cutting wood.

Cutting out metal for the frame makes for the coolest garage band lightshow…

putting the frame together…

put dowels in barn boards, then push them together…

Before ripping the cupboards out…

just about finished;

We’ve built a cooking nest in the kitchen at Roncesvalles.
After having watched “Julie and Julia” an inspiration came
over the two of us to recreate the warmth of Julia Child’s
kitchen that now adorns the Smithsonian. The freezing
temperatures were the perfect backdrop to bake banana
bread and get the fireplace going to warm our toes.
The bottle of Bailey’s kept the power tools primed and
before long the pots were hanging and the cupboards now
had the room to organize themselves.

Now that the album is out hanging on the Masonite, next
to the spoon and measuring cup, we can finally start
cooking. We can share the creative meal we’ve made with
friends at the kitchen table.

There is one empty chair and a decade of distance
between us. My step-father passed away. Interestingly
enough I learned of his death after building the kitchen
workshop. Neil Diamond’s “Hot August night” on vinyl
was playing. I thought of Reg and the turntable that only
I was allowed to touch. I found the strength to look him
up on the internet. Maybe I’d go visit him. Play him the
record. He’d be proud of me I think.

Reg passed away in April of 2009 at the age of 57.
He taught me how to throw a ball. How to make
a bow and arrow. How to shoot a camera. He taught
me how to drive a car though he clung to the dash-
board. He could outrun me when I was in my teens.

We do things for the ones we love. Sometimes its
not until after its done do we know how it functions
and recognize its purpose.

Don`t scratch the vinyl.

Hold it like this.

Place the needle down gently.

Close the lid.

Lie down
…and Dream.

I’m actually surprised that the neck action isn’t all that bad. The nails work awesome and theres only one spot on the 4th string that needs adjusting. Hmmm. I just might write something with this.

Love D

I was going to write a congratulatory note in here stating all the many wonderful accomplishments we’ve managed to achieve this year but its too soon. There’s still two weeks left in 2009 and I’m not ready to stop just yet.

I’m not all that happy because as productive as we’ve been what with the vinyl and the book and the C.D and the shows, I still feel like it hasn’t been enough. I haven’t written enough. There was a time when I’d get home and just write songs. They weren’t all that great but I was doing it enough that sometimes there would be a diamond in the rough. Something I’d be proud enough to share.

I was really into keyboards. I had loads of them. I taught myself MIDI and learned the joys of sequencing with early 80′s technology. What a nightmare. I did it though. There were some pretty interesting accidents that I know Kris wishes I could remember. Serendipitous adventures in cable knotting.

I’m craving the exploration. I can’t handle the PDF manuals anymore. It got too clinical and too cold.

I’ve got all this wood in my basement. Fragments of discarded shelves and drawers from forgotten dressers and furniture. I’m fastening the pieces together into a voice. Bits of aluminum to tighten the strings, a stained handle is a bridge to grip the body.

The Quattro has a whammy bar. Its fastened to two tongues on the inside of the box. The fret board is completely handmade with finishing nails. The neck is drying now. I haven’t been this excited in a while. Even if it sounds horrible. I just want to write a song. Maybe its charmed. Maybe it’ll come back to me. Maybe I’ll be inspired.

Love D.

- records on etsy -

http://www.etsy.com/shop/lnoyl

ETSY

We currently have our records, books and CD’s on etsy. We chose etsy because a) I lost patience fiddling with the wordpress e-cart plugin and associated html, and b) etsy seems to largely support independent artists who produce their own things. When I took all the boxes, bubble bags and records to the post office to get them weighed and measured to figure out shipping costs, the clerk wasn’t to impressed or as helpful as when he was calculating shipping quotes for the young lady he was assisting. Next time, im taking a blonde chick with me to the post office…

- Free mp3′s -

Our full album is now available as a free download (http://www.lnoyl.com/order/). The mp3 files have metadata, meaning that when you stickem in your ipod, the artwork shows up.

- Live E.P. –

Our tracks from the Nov 28th live show just arrived, and I’ll be starting to get down to business mixing them this weekend. The late night mixing sessions will be illuminated and inspired by the 5 inch black and white TVO radiation…

- Cardboard -

Linda, I don’t live amongst cardboard boxes, really. Every time Linda drops by, which is annually and usually around December, the landing and living room is a sea of cardboard boxes. She must think I am a suburban squatter or shanty aficionado, or an afflicted hoarder. As it currently stands, you can’t walk in here. You can only walk over, through, then shift to the left because of all the cardboard. When my stuff shipped from Vancouver two years ago, Linda dropped by and saw 40 or 50 large cardboard boxes all over the place. I had been living with those Uhual boxes for 3 years. In one place on Vancouver Island, I actually built walls with my filled up Uhaul boxes to construct a make shift studio and living quarters.

I eventually got rid of the Uhaul’s in Ottawa, creating the space that became the breeding ground for all my modernist furniture hunting exploits. Things looked cardboard free, until my sisters belongings were shipped here, resulting room to room cardboard boxes again. I didn’t mind, but it was perfectly timed for when Linda arrived to see them all again the following year. It took a few months, but those boxes are all packed away in a spare room now. This week, everything arrived, within a few days of each other. There is a gigantic box of Unline bubble wrap, record mailers, CD mailers, books, and half a pallet of records. Although I missed her visit this morning, Linda dropped by…

- YOW and the records -

Getting the vinyl records turned Wednesday into a whole day affair of travel, pout and phone calls. My tracking numbers showed that the records arrived (albeit late, thus missing the release show) to YOW. YOW is Ottawa airport. So I went to YOW. Now, before going there, I checked the websites of all parties involved, and no one will tell you anything. The manufacturing plant won’t say where to pick up the records, and nor will anyone else. I figured actually going to YOW would be my best bet in getting accurate information (or any information). I first showed up at YOW cargo. The man behind the counter gave me a funny look, put down his newspaper for a few keystrokes, then said, nope, records not here. Maybe you better check the “airomat” -- circle the airport, then right, then left. I drove around the airport, looking for a sign or something called “airomat”. I checked the YOW website on my phone -- which of course says nothing about anything called an “airomat”. I parked the car, and went to the one and only information desk on the first floor. Interestingly, at YOW, there is no permanent airport information staff. It’s run by volunteers. The very polite volunteer hadn’t heard of the “airomat”, and wasn’t sure where my cargo could be. She told me to call the airline, British Airways in Montreal. We called, but there was no answer (at 10am on a Wednesday!). She then said to try Canada Customs, and pointed down the hall to the ‘going to get into trouble and deported’ part of the airport (its customs and the police office). I walked into customs, and the room was empty. Vacant chairs, and a phone on the counter. I picked up the phone, and up popped the service representative. I explained that I was trying to pick up a cargo shipment -- was it at customs? He said hmmmmmmmm, then gave me a number to call for help. The automated, generic, national Canada Customs general info line was not very helpful. I walked out of the airport, somewhat dejected. There wasn’t even a British airline counter to make any queries at. YOW stands for “You’reOurWhore”, so don’t expect too much.

I drove back home, and called British Airways home office. They told me to call the trucking company (yes trucking, even though it arrived by air). The trucking company transferred me to some other division. The lady at the end of this line was able to give me a phone number for the one and only “airomat”. I asked if she knew where it was, and she laughed -- she was in the US, and had no idea! I called the “airomat” number, and the person on the line answered as a representative for “BD”. I said err..umm…is this airomat? He says, yup, “BD”. He told me he had my records, and gave me the address (it’s in the same vicinity as YOW, but off site). When I got there, I couldn’t find “BD”, so I walked into the main building, and a customs officer informed me that they might be the place near the end. I went to the absolute end, and found “BD” (there was something else on their sign. Im pretty sure it wasn’t “BD”) The guy gave me some paper work, and then said I had to go to customs before I could pick them up. I went back to customs, and the officer, upon hearing my request to pick up 1000 vinyl records, asked If I had a broker. I did not (I guess it’s not like ordering something vie Ebay or UPS, where they do all the brokerage for you). But I did have a business number, so I could get started. She presented me with a booklet, form, and counter with a calculator and reference texts. Ok, multiple choice, just like school, I though too myself, I can do this. I can broker this deal! After close to an hour of struggling through it (just like school), she must have took pity on me, because she came over and walked me through the rest of the form. There is actually a section in this triple phone book sized manual that has codes and tariff’s and all that stuff for importing gramophone records. She buzzed right through it, and in 10 minutes I was paid up, and out the door, heading back to BD-Airomat-YOW. Why can’t all border agents be like her? At BD, we packed a toyota corrola with all the records. 15 cases of cardboard later, the body of the car sunk close to the wheels, but the suspension held up…

- TEST PRESS winner -

To keep things objective and unbiased, everyone’s name who entered into the raffle was assigned to a number, which was subsequently printed on the back of our cards. I randomized these cards on the floor, then went one step further. We removed all human interference from the process. Not by using a computer. No, that would be too easy. We used Felis catus. I stuck on piece of kibble on each card, then released the cat. First time, he flew over the cards and didn’t notice the food, which is very uncharacteristic of him. He must have known he was in an experiment like setting. Scientists would call this biological noise in the data. The second time I released him, Felis catus made his choice:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE8KwQVCr34

#5 is Jeff & Lori -- congratulations -- test pressing coming your way.

- Slides -

I picked up a modernistic slide viewer at the thrift shop today. A few months ago, Dareck and I were looking for older video gear to create some filtered shots. At one thrift location, I picked out this functional metal box. There was a collection of slides inside. They belonged to an Ottawa resident, who took a trip to California in 1959 (there are pencilled descriptions written on the cardboard). He took snapshots from the plane (the plane must have been relatively empty, because he got shots from both sides of the cabin), streets, and buildings. Letting go of unwieldy furniture is one thing. I can’t help feel a little blue for this person, who has probably passed on (why else would his box of 1959 mementos be at the Sally Anne), and no one wanted to keep his photos. Im going to view the rest of them tonight, and maybe bring a few, mixed in with our own, to the next show…

- Next Week -

Hopefully the live tracks from the release event will arrive for mix down. Then, a download link will be sent to all who signed up for the live EP. I’ve got to find places for all these boxes, get some labels and photo’s done, then the records are finally ready to ship. After that, I’m getting back to writing…

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