I’ve been spending the last few months getting nestled and settle into a new place with my dear Z. Our band, The Dabbers, is one of the best parts. We practice in an industrial area of san diego where we can be incredibly loud and vibrate the walls, with no one to complain. Just try to hit a drum beat more than once in a residential cul de sac. Doesn’t fly with the neighbors, trust me on that one.
Being on stage in a two piece is a totally new experience too. Playing with four people (as I did in Braaiins!) allows one to disappear into the mix more, or if you make a mistake, there is often so much background and surrounding noise that the wrong note can melt in with the rest of the music. Stripping it down to just drums and bass keeps me on my toes much more, and allows me to take up as much space on stage as I want since Zack is glued down to a stationary drum kit. I absolutely love it! I’m having such a great time playing this kind of music, whatever one might define it (I’m not sure what the most current music lingo would want to tag us as), and we also aren’t playing so many shows that its exhausting.
We have finished recording all 12 of our songs at
Archival Recording with Mitch Wilson from No Knife, and are going in the studio this thursday to begin mixing. We’re are trying to avoid getting to tedious with this part. Just as Photoshop can completely change the original photo/art into a fabricated piece of computer genius, ProTools can alter the ‘realness’ of a track, transforming a messy chord into a microscopically clean and precise one. This is not what we are aiming for. We want to keep the grit, grime, and flavor, and thankfully Mitch is right on the same page with us (which I have to mention, recording with Mitch has been amazing, he is spot on to what we’re trying to accomplish, and has the most positively engaging attitude and personality about him).
Phew! Well that’s most of it.
Here are the most recent photos from the Casbah show on 3/7/09:
Photo: Luke Brown
“From the Land of Fear” video:
