release a Synth Club album

And I love it. Hoping to wrap this up in 2 weeks.

Pull yourself together and focus! Get this done and don’t dilly dally. I’m giving you 1 week to make some serious progress on mixing this album.

I’m heading into Steve’s (keyboardist for SynthClub) studio tonight with Sean (laptop drummer for SynthClub) to mix the tracks from the McLeod gig. I hope to get this sucker complete soon so we can ship it off to the world.

subject: 10,000 seconds of your life

Yep, two and a half hours of recording time, only one 7-minute take was without interesting material. 22 GB total, and through the wonders of lossless compression, it all fits on a single 8.5 GB Dual-Layer DVD+R backup.

I’ve been meaning to visit Steve’s studio again, so some time soon I’ll drop by with the hard drive and transfer the files over. I’ve listened to everything several times, and it sounds quite good even with simple mixing.

Brian Willoughby, Sound Consulting

We shall hear. As for the picture, I snapped it when I was setting up my keyboards. There was this crazy art installation behind the band that added to the evening. Leave it to the McLeod Monkeys!

P.S. To my brother Greg – I don’t think you overdid it on the dance floor. Sure, you had several drinks but people loved your moves.

This should be fun if not a bit harried. It’s basically a house party except we’re setting up a 16-track laptop recording rig, a small PA and monitoring system, 5 synthesizers, 1 laptop drummer and a Line 6 singer. I have a busy day ahead of buying cables and setting gear up at McLeod. In the end it will look something like this except less cluttered hopefully.

I predict a stiff drink at 10:30pm after it’s all over.

This time it’s going to be live and at McLeod. Could be mediocre, could be awesome. McLeod has offered to release it as a free internet album so I’m excited.

Not because we’re lame. Well, maybe we are part lame. Mostly because SynthClub is more of an event than a traditional band.

We’ve never had a rehearsal in 2+ years. We show up and improvise dance/electronic music that many people are convinced are structured songs. They’re not. And even though we had a marathon recording session one weekend (which was super cool) we’ve never been able to convert it into an actual recording. I think that’s the nature of this beast. We’re 4 individuals that get together so often to “make it up and make it happen” (borrowing a line from the Robots).

I’m giving up on this goal. If things begin to brew I’ll reopen it, but my guess is that SynthClub is destined to be a sporadic recurring event and not a containable, recordable band. Viva the Club!

Looks like Carlos of Lawn Chair Generals is going to start mixing tracks. I heard an arrangement of a SynthClub song that he and Reggie worked on yesterday. Two words: sweet!

This goal has been sitting dormant for a while but this past Saturday I played a SynthClub gig at Chop Suey and realized that I should push to get the SC tracks out. I had the idea of getting Steve Fisk to mix it and record Reggie’s vocals. That might involve funding. There are other great producers out there, too. I’ll think about this one this week.

I have an album title in mind