BOT

I guess it’s one way of looking at the moment the band is in. We just finished 15 days straight of rehearsals. All in preparation for one gig in Kalgoorlie. Seems rather fickle but the practice has set us up sonically for the cycle of shows we’ve got planned over the next six months. This is especially significant for Glenn and Sparky who have a whole new approach to the live show. Unlike me, haha, still mashing down on the root notes and watching Westy’s foot with intensity. I think I may have been given a microphone… I’m not sure. That’ll probably last one gig! We’re feeling really good about the new stuff in the set. It doesn’t seem as foreign as the album promises to be.

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve been receiving finalised photo’s and artwork from wonderful artists and photographers from various places. It looks so stunning to me and I’m so humbled by the great people willing to work with us. This week we are waiting for the first video edit of the first single, and it’s pretty exciting. I know it’s going to have some provocative qualities to it… Awesome. It’s good to see the band avoiding the performance video thing… Although I’ve never been adverse to them. It’s just nice to try something else. Who knows? The next video will probably be the band playing in a room, with some unrelated narrative that doesn’t really go anywhere. HAHA.

Oh well, we get a week off, and then we head to Perth, fly to Kal, fly back to Perth, then home to Sydney (well for Glenn, Spark and I).

Cheers
Berney.

P.S.

Check out this video, great reverse shot narrative. Gets ya thinkin!!! Reminds me of Memento or Irreversible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVeMiVU77wo

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i spent the morning driving through the woods / mountains up outside of seattle, listening to the first premixes of a small number of songs…for the past few days this has been my “mix proofing office” heh. i can’t tell if the woods are making the music prettier or the mixes are just aiding the mood for what is already a stunning place on earth. the rain helps also. i swear i am going to come back here soon and begin writing a book. heh. everyone has kind of shot off in different directions at the moment. we still have a few more weeks of mixing….remixing….etc etc..back in losangeles. it’d be great to be able to get this record out this year, but you never know what obstacles pop up! still lots of outside creative things to be done. its really comforting to hear the songs tie together through the mixing process, tony (mixer) is really helping give further unique identity to the work that we have spent months and months working on with dave (producer), hugo and doug (sound capturers & fuck-uppers!).

our aim is to have a lot of visual art to accompany this work. there are some songs which we hope to make mini movies / videos for, purely for art sake and some sort of proud interpretation. the idea of engaging with others to spin ideas around the soup bowl with is really interesting to us. we really hope to be able to bring all of this to a really modern and bending live show once we are ready also. I’m not even sure when the live world will scoop us up again yet. again, hopefully this year! out of the end of a process of making a record, begins a cycle of further interpretation, presentation and engagement in the big wide world. we want to make the 2nd half of that equation as special and unique as possible from here on in. given that the underlying theme of this work at the moment is all about communality , connection, disconnection, spirituality, internalising, externalising…we would be fucking ourselves and cheating others if we didn’t practice what we are preaching yah?

more soon.

adamspark

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With the album tracking completely finished. We thought there’d be a stillness present after the final day. But it seems drama never knows when it’s a good time to shine. Sparky woke up with a massive stomach pain two mornings ago, walked up the stairs to the kitchen and politely requested a lift to the hospital. As we scurried to the car things went from bad to worse when he descended the stairs, fainted and fell. He collapsed onto the hard pavement head first, and gashed his head. It was such a loud thud that I thought he was dead. He woke up and we walked him to the car and raced to the hospital. If you haven’t heard what the american public hospital system is like then this will surprise you. With blood gushing from his head, he was asked to fill a form and wait on the chairs provided. It didn’t seem like anyone else in the room was in dire need of attention. Strange. After some kicking and fussing he saw a nurse, and then a doctor. The good news is, he’ll be fine. Vicodin week! They let him out of the hospital later that afternoon.

We went home and spent the rest of the afternoon experiencing the effects of Vicodin together (rather smooth, a little floaty, not overly interesting) and discussed various nitty gritty moments on the record that you the listener will never ever notice. An interesting day, to say the least. We’re hunting for art directors now. Sexy people these artists.

Berney

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the work load is starting to ease up a bit now. we have finished aloooooot of work. kenny will prob be singing the last of his main parts tomorrow or the next day. we are still holed up in a cool little space in eagle rock, ca. monday was set aside for a huge day of group vocals at another space, but a sore throat derailed the singing train…which really sucked, so we have to go back in over the next week and get the chorus line going again. although most of the material is recorded…soon begins the process of sorting / editing / agreeing / disagreeing! we have more songs than we need and more “material / ideas / parts” for each song than we need. not a bad problem to have.

i literally started working on material which has now become this body of birds work over two years ago…there was no intention of necessarily becoming a birds record…more a process of free thought and exploring many different avenues of writing / creating. its so cool to see it become a band thing and the band has certainly made the music its own. the band started working together on it around early 2011…at the later stages of a project like this, its always super cool to have some nice left field surprises pop in when you aren’t expecting. a piece which was basically just chords called “irish” which we have had knocking around for quite sometime has finally found its place in this lot of material in the shape of something we are calling “boy”. a delicate and melancholic childlike ode to lost youth. the music has been floating in our creative ether forever. it was nice for kenny to find some resonance in it after this time.

on another note. one thing we are really taking our time with is our interactivity and connectivity with the presentation of this “project” (i am kind of loathe to call it a record, as we feel we can reach a lot wider with how we can communicate together with these little pieces). the record itself has a language, an ambience and a real purpose….both communal and internal. existential in a way i guess, both in lyric and also in the “sound” of the songs. and by that i am not talking about the chords / music etc etc..but the actual environment created around the song itself. so whilst we are careful to avoid the dirty words of “concept record”, we need to have everything around the music to adhere to its purpose. no one makes us do this right? so if we are doing this again…we really want to heighten the experience for you and also the band.

so, the talks about artwork, photography, types of media / multimedia / interactivity, delivery, videos , alternate artworks / items / pieces etc are well underway. it takes a long time to work all of this out properly. in the past we have tended to do it late in the game and thus we always find ourselves under pressure to just get the job done. we now the time time and focus to explore this intensively. its all about creating something that hopefully has a really meaningful and sincere connection with people.

this is on the brain after nearly a full day of looking at artwork after artwork…book after book and looking at creative folks more and more…

thats all i can think of right now (back to some horrible yet sickly delicious communal donuts)

thanks for reading :)

adam.

the magic doorway:

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back in tune again,

a few paragraphs of rambling thoughts…

its been a really busy month…hence the lack of updates. its getting nice and warmer here in la now which is most welcome after having a pretty dreary summer in sydney. it keeps the energy up. we’ve been going on this thing since early feb and its really starting to feel like it! we have been working in a studio over on the eastside of la, since we moved out of another in mid / late march. alot of the main keyboards are done….alot of the main guitars are done. on this material we are kind of trying to treat keys and gtrs as one spacial element as much as we can….they are very integrated. glenn and i move into yet another studio space in a few days for about 2 1/2 weeks of sprinkling sounds and icing all over the songs so they sparkle! kenny has started his vocals and is working with galaxy, just the two of them all day at the moment…its really cool, they are working on new approaches and subsequently he’s finding new tonalities in his voice and delivery etc. really cool stuff!

its feeling like we may make this record work…given that there are new approaches to alot of sounds / aesthetics, i’d have to honestly say, we have all been slightly unsure of how its going to end up. having said that, there is something inspiring about being out of your comfort zone while taking a new creative path. i think that lack of assuredness kind of helps you gain back some naivete in the record making process. its very easy to resort to comfortable tricks / methods. some songs have undergone quite seismic shifts, purely because we felt they were a bit to “us”. ornament hill, which started as a huge sweeping mellotron anthem, has now melted down into a super low end and mercurial sounding, almost old trip-hoppy drone…

blume / white leaves is sounding so stunning…kenny sung really gently over this gazey/postrock-y giant. personally, i consider this song closer to me perhaps than the others, as it had to really fight for its place..gtrs and keys etc, all had to be pretty much done in one tack due to the nature of 8 second reverbs/delay fx etc..a whirlpool!! hopefully it makes the record, we’ve never recorded anything like this…8 minutes of sheer radiance and positivity. either way, we’ll get this one out!

we bought a bunch of new toys to play with also which have been really inspiring..and have developed (hopefully) a couple of unique ideas to breathe some beautiful modern life into some classic old organs / keyboards etc. lots of drones on these songs. kenny was singing on a really milky black night sounding texture piece today called c-waves. looking forward to heading over in a while to take a listen.

thats all i can think of for now.

have a beautiful weekend.

ajs

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We’ve been in LA for just under a month now. We had a week to settle in before we jumped into Oceanway studio. Which we’ve already mentioned, was rather overwhelming and frankly an intimidating place. When you walk into a place that has birthed Tool – Aenima, Radiohead – Hail to the Theft, No Doubt, Sum 41, Ice Cube, Greenday (this list goes on forever) you kinda realise, oh shit we’re swimming with the big sharks, this isn’t gonna be a joke. Not to mention a certain genius surf pop band in the other room asking me to hold off on bass for 2omins so they can record some iconic harmonies.

Nonetheless, I think we captured a drum sound that surpassed anyone’s expectations. Our producer certainly thinks so, and in Galaxy we trust. After a week at Oceanway we took another week off, to allow our producer to comp down the drums. This week we relocated to Kingsize Studios, a more humble homely type studio to track the bass, guitars, keys and vocals. It was interesting week for me as bass was the first task to complete. I came out the gates like a pompous greyhound. Tracking 9 songs in two days and assuming that Armageddon wasn’t occuring the next day I would be finished in 3 days. Then Armageddon kinda did happen, except in was in my guts. That morning, around 6am, my body decided it was apt timing to shut down into furious food poisoning mode. I’ll spare you the details but lets just say… I think I saw satan in my toilet bowl. I actually amaze myself with how much I hate the world when I’m ill.

After three days, I got out of bed and finished my bass parts. Now Glenn and Sparky are having a blast putting all their crazy layers upon the foundation Westy and I have completed. Kenny stays at home tearing his insides out working on lyrics. His LA ‘tashe makes him instantly 25% funnier. Which is always great. There’s lots of great food in LA. I wish I had the appetite for it.

Soft Guts Berney.

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hi,

last night we finished the drums for the record at a place called oceanway, which was a really beautiful experience…so much history. still, we made it our home for the first part of our puzzle. there are a couple of rhythm parts songs still to put together, which we will touch on in a few weeks…now that we have recorded the “real” drums, we can totally fuck them up to suit the spatially dreamo-scopic world we are trying to build here. two songs in particular…salt and ornament hill have taken big left hand turns right down heroin avenue…i dont know if we could make them dreamier? speaking of dreamier…we have met and made some new friends here which has been really cool, especially with regard to finding deeper parts of the city that have kind of been hidden to us in the past. a great friend once told me “surround yourself with inspiring people”. wonderful words. it really does help and we certainly are surrounded by inspiring and “inspired” folks. a few days off now before we begin all the space and texture building, a couple of us may go up into the woods around big sur, there is also talk of rollercoaster trips and snowboarding (which is all great until someone breaks a wrist…im looking at you berney. heh). we are circling a title for this project also, which is pretty exciting as we feel it’s going to really help focus the shape our vision even further. a good paper needs a headline right?

we just bought some orchestra bells for the record and a $99 guitar just recently. so it’s off to go screw around with them and east pasta and possibly hit a warm spa to end the night.

yours in a western haze.

sparkledragon

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hi hi,

we are about 2 days away from finishing pre-production…for about 3 weeks now we have been shaping up the record…song by song…line by line…note by goddddddam note! haha oh man…boy, are our noggins tired. we’ll rehearse again tomorrow then go and record all of the songs live in a bit of a last demo batch before taking a week off…then shooting to the US to begin the 3-4 months of recording / mixing.

sitting today, feeling pretty relaxed at home here in sydney, while the seemingly unstoppable rain aims for our hair and clothes in its usual downward annoying fashion!

our producer partner has really helped us find a totally new level of creativity and connectivity as a band. we’ve never sounded like this…so the producer “Galaxy” as he prefers to be called…has become somewhat of a sagely friend / mentor and incredible respectful bouncing board to the band…im not selling that lightly. its really cool to find simpatico with a like minded soul.

plus…galaxy is a cool name…hah.

so, anyway today i thought i’d give a tiny insight into what we have to show for it thus far, in the form of working titles and succinct description. (in no particualr order).

here is the short list that has been cut down for the record (remember these are working titles..hence they are usualy complete RUBBISH!):

some of these won’t survive :(

——–

sawtales: short, swelling majestic ambience, very pulsey

motionless: suspended, haunting, texture instrumental piece

boss: modern field song, a huge building droning hymn

salt: a fuzzy, stylish look at the end of the world

irish: whisper quiet, watery, choral + mallety music box with huge weight, very spiritual

marrowing: ostinato driven exposition of dealing with the inevitable

redefining: lurchy, fuzzed out bass and drum driven modern gospel mountain

chestnut: fast, falsetto-ish, aching train ride of a jam..

this fire / with fire: our marching cultural campfire theme

copper: we have tried capturing the sound of the night and compassion…really pretty rolling drums and bass interconnectivity

blume: a blitzy, nearly 9 minute long, almost shoegazey  / post rocky ode to reconnection…

blue lincoln: named after a hire car…really washy / ambiguous mess of stomp and distortion

ornament hill: slow, quasi-fuzzed out mellotron laden 100 tonne pendulum swing

hornets: very dreamy sounding, city-esque modern look at “now”

circular/waves: another very ambient / textural number…lots of loooow piano over feedback and bass

deadpoets: a 2 part look at ourselves…part 1. dream-like mantra. part 2. its time to yell and make alot of noise.

lets see if that makes sense come record completion time.

thanks for listening. dinner time!

adam.s.z.s.z.s.z.s

ps. hoping the album sounds like this looks….

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greetings from within the rehearsal fray :)

ok, so pretty sure its sunday…and we have a day off today, so while i watch radiohead live on ABC i figure it’s a good a time as any to add an update.

we have been in pre-production now for about 12 or so days…we are still here for another couple of weeks with the producer re-writing, refining, rehearsing the songs, to be ready for tracking next month across the ocean. the producer has been really instrumental so far in pushing us and helping us focus on the important details…

some of the tracks have been given radical overhauls. we are down to the final 17 or so tracks newer ones with typically lame working titles like “salt” and “irish” have made their way to the top end of the list with some re-invention… at this point in record making, you find that songs are kind of jostling for position into the top “x” spots. we have been working a long time on one called “redefining” which was a big slow moving kind of spiritual sounding piece (at this point…to avoid offending any people one way or another…it should be noted that my usage of the word spiritual is purely a secular thing ;) )….however now the song has become some sort of lurching, distorted, choral singalong styled angular anthem…its sounding huge. (a week ago it was destined for the b list!).

there are some really beautiful musical themes centred around the various workings of humanity, death, society, care, examinations and the end of the world. however, as glib as that may sound…its such a positive sounding body of work.

the band has become very rhythmically driven, as opposed to the wall of guitar chords of old…every song must have a unique identity and pulse… gtrs and keyboards have integrated more than we have previously explored, with glenn and myself almost becoming one big wash of beautiful noise. kenny is exploring, exploring…settling then re-writing melodies…(even the good ones! hah)…

this record is all about exploring and reinventing all the things we have done…for some of us this is becoming a deeply thoughtful and quite the brother to brother spiritual process…sometimes it’s almost as if, the music is kind of incidental to the energy and feeling that we are trying to posit…this requires alot of listening, listening and talking.

i am certain a few of us will barely make it out of this…haha

yours, with sore head and happy ears.

adamjohnspark.

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