No Space is Wasted, Every Trace of Them is Erased

It's DONE!

We changed the name to Zephyr Device. The CD itself is done and available, and all the details are at the new site, with lyrics, commentary, a preview player thinger, and pictures and other goodness.

Check it all out here:

http://www.zephyrdevice.com

Watch Your Lessons Flow Through Me

There are a number of other acts out there right now releasing music under the band name "Departure". At first we only knew of The Departure, but I didn't do enough homework, as there are a few more plain old "Departure" bands who have released music under that name.

So as a concession to ourselves, we're going to call this record Departure, and we spent a whole lot of time in e-mail exchanges trying to kinda post-humously rename this band. We have a new one, to be revealed shortly.

Currently an actual domain name for the band name so that we can link to a site about the record from the record's jacket. More neat news to follow really soon, probably from Adam.

The Poetry that rings out through the Energy of a slap.

With the mixes of "Fugitive Plastic" and "Call" nearing completion (just awaiting feedback from the others), it finally occurred to me what kind of mini-album we made here: a hip-hop album.

It's a lot of words (many more than your typical "rock" album) put to music. Andrew speaks the words (read, "the M.C.") Billy and I acted as the production team (read, "on the 1's and 2's").

However, this particular hip-hop album has a lot more guitar gymnastics (courtesy Billy) than is typical, more straight-forward drums (4/4 the whole time, an uncharacteristic decision on our part considering some of the weird time signature shit we pull off as Meltdowns), has instrumental intros, bridges, and outros, has a light sprinkling of humor and chatter, E-bow, chorus on the bass, hell, we literally recorded The Kitchen Sink.

Bearing that in mind, it's pretty eclectic. I don't entertain the notion becoming wildly popular or wealthy because of it. I don't even think most people will appreciate it, but I'm damn proud of it. I feel like it's the perfect document of our time together and the perfect synthesis of all our disparate influences and styles, and the very very best we could have possibly done given our time limitation together. My only hope is that our planning, our work, and our happy accidents plant the seeds of creativity in the heads of others. That's it.

I expect to have "Response" mixed sometime this weekend. At least by Wednesday, next week. Then, a little more mastering, and the album is in the can, and we could officially give it a title. I know I had mentioned labeling it with the date range it took to complete the album, from the day we started working on it to the final master. That would make it "05/24/05 - 10/05/05". Just over four months from concept creation to full completion. I'm still open to other suggestions, "Vini Vidi Vicious" not withstanding.

Cheers

It's All About How You Got There

So for the four hundredth or so time (but not as many as Adam, I think) I listened through the five songs for the record, and really focused no the last one. I was planning to "finish" guitar parts for "Response" this afternoon, and so I was trying to marry the ideas floating in my brain to the piece itself, especially as the finisher of the record.

The end result: just stop. It's full, it's there already, it doesn't need anymore. It needs to be mixed, sure, but the piece is full, matches the rest of the record really well, and is a great closer. Where I had suspected the piece to be lacking in guitar, I now find it to be strong listening back after leaving it alone for a while.

Which is good, because Adam already knacked a copy of the session to start post production ^_~

Also, after listening back to "Fugitive Plastic", I'm beginning to suspect that the very organic ending we had put on the song ought to stay there. Adam and I were originally following our pop-sense of chopping off the extra, but really the movement ought not languish in obscurity since it sounds great, serves as a nice buffer before "Call" and "Response", and most importantly was part of the process of the song's inception. We spent quite a bit of time developing that movement and the one preceding it so that they would go together but create a particular aural stimulation that we were looking for.

Some now I'm going to head off to a coffee house to sip even more coffee, eat cookies, and think about how we are going to get this record out. Did I mention that the Tank Crash! website is up? That's our label. Self-produced, but we aren't fucking around here, people.

Even If You Forget and Have to be Taught Again

So here are some ideas I was playing with tonight for guitar parts for Departure's Response.

They are meant to be on the disturbing/disquieting side. I have only recorded them out of my amp's XLR Line Out and no reverb, so as to get a dryer signal (as dry as one can get with my boss delay pedal, anyway). Yes, there is much delay.

I learned a special little trick with the delay pedal to make a note sound like it is "growing," which I used heavily. Also a lot of fun with the e-bow, delay, and changing the delay speed on the delayed ebow.

Lots of changing delay speed and then cutting the waves up in GarageBand, or using volume envelopes for really drastic openers and closers.

And there's some actual honkin' tonkin' 'lectrik geetar near the end of the piece.

Tip - Don't skip through the intro.

Response-betafreak

The Change From Slave to Master Happens Faster

Tonite I went ape shit making a bass part for Response. The song is about forcing you to feel things, and because the beat is electronic, I'm going to force you to really feel it anyway with a big bottle of violent bass. Played through The Rat, direct into the preamp, and after maybe six or seven takes, I think I've got it.

It has order which intentionally breaks into chaos, and I really forced myself to write something that is sonically interesting, and then go buckwild and play it so hard that I could barely control it.

And tomorrow comes violent guitar part with shrieking feedback and e-bow. Oh yes. Nothing like a bit of the old ultra violence to make you feel it in the pants.

Gotta Keep Up Gotta Stay Up

More work on "Slave to Fashion" last night, as far as mixing the "bridge" section of the tune, adding new bass parts, etc. I also re-recorded my bass part for the last third of the song. I may have to do that one over again, though as it was getting really late when I made the attempt last night.

I did more mixing work to "White Collar Nomads", based on some suggestions that Billy gave me after an initial mix, and I think that it came out a little better, but there is always room for improvement! (Am I going to have to burn the Masters when we're done with this?)

So as the time stretched to 2am last night, I reminded myself of Hank Rollins and all those before me who worked three jobs and played in two bands and we just flat-out hardcore enough to keep going. Heard on WNYC's Soundcheck yesterday that the lead singer from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah commutes regularly from Philadelphia to Brooklyn to practice with his bandmates, burns, packages, and mails all their CDs himself, and was largely involved in the production of the album. It's this kind of dogged determination that is truly inspiring!

More to Come

Last night I worked on re-recording some of the bass on "Slave to Fashion" and some of the mixing of the drum parts. I think I may in fact need to go back into Reason and re-export them to get a proper mix. However, I'm making slow progress. This week, I'll go back to "White Collar Nomads" and make some changes where Bill had suggestions. It's just been a real dog finding free time lately to work on this stuff and I've just got to be hardcore and force myself. I'll keep you all posted.