sparks are falling

yes, wintertime is in official swing. i actually had to wear a scarf and hat yesterday on my odyssey to beans and bagels to regain my forgotten record. ironically it took me longer to get there via the normal route- which is red line down to belmont then switch to north bound brown line to montrose than it did for me to walk from the montrose brown line station (beans and bagels is right under it) to the wilson red line station (about 25 minutes) then take the red line back up to granville (about 10 minutes including waiting time). oh the irony. i'm simmering in it. even though it was pretty cold i didn't really have a problem walking that far in it because the hat and scarf make a huge difference. coats are for ninnies.
i listened to 'five leaves left' today. i'm listening to the mangled bohemians right now- it took me an obscenely long time to listen to their cd. inexcusable! i am really liking it- not surprising. it's a shame that they weren't around back when we were living in portland- it would've been quite the dream team and i could've played a lot of shows with them (and then we even though that wasn't really the case until we were almost gone). if we lived there now it would be a bit easier. that said it still wouldn't be easier than living here, so don't you get any big ideas. they're not going to happen. now that you've found it... just kidding.
i streamlined our website a bit so some of the more highly-trafficked pages weren't so cluttered. i updated the news. we did indeed get in some recording time last night which yielded two finished tracks- 'ada' and 'willows.' i even wrote a new song last night. terrifying. it is a song that's in the 'angels floating on the head of a pin' tuning. i'm guessing it'll be called 'come to me' since that's the main repeated line. it would probably be smart of me to demo it when i get back. it's kind of a drony semi-rocking kind of song. the idea for the album after 'all hope is blind' was of more of a 'rock' kind of thing. at first i thought that idea was kind of dead until i wrote a song i wasn't sure what to do with. it kind of started a certain way and then sort of evolved with a newish way that i've been playing guitar- which is more with the reverse reverb only and less reliant on the delay. this 'come to me' song works in that way. it's looking to kind of get back to these weird demos i did at the apartment above the congress a few years ago- i did a few guitar based demos with these spacemen 3-like relentless tambourine hits. nice stuff. it's almost borderline garage-y. well, at least for us. i also have that really awesome demo of this song that is currently called 'new order-esque' because it's melodic and droney in the way that a new order song is- think something like 'temptation' or something where it's based around a bass melody line played over alternating open strings. that style that peter hook originated.
today is the day for the 2-track. hopefully it will turn out a bit better than it did last week. hopefully. it would be really nice if i could finally get that shit going. it has taken far too long to get to this point.
today after i get home i think i might attempt a bit of mixing-down. that 'ada' mix has to go out pretty fast. i'd thought that it was already too late until i got a message from the guy putting the zine mixtape together. it always takes some motivation to get us to finish things. always. that's why the new 'christmas song' is coming together so quickly (well, at least so far). i need to get the strings going soon- they are going to be the biggest roadblock at this point. the vocals need to be done next and quickly. the section with vocals isn't really that long per se, so it shouldn't take too long. the 'willows' song needs to be placed in the context of the rest of the ep, plus i have a cdr with some newer mixes that i reconfigured based on my last little listening party that i had. for the most part the new mixes sound fantastic- there are only a few cases where the eq needs to be redone, etc. 'sleep now...' has some really bad hiss problems- it's from when i recorded with billy at his old apartment- the electricity in it was all wonky-like so it caused a lot of hum on his parts on that song. on the other tracks i'd done with him there you couldn't tell so much because there was so much texture that it overtook the hiss. that's one of the bonuses of playing the way that i do- it kind of hides a multitude of sins that occur when the recording is being done. i've had to make myself really conscious of it on the new stuff which is one of the reasons for an upgrade in microphones. so far it's been working fairly well *fingers crossed*.
i've really lost my thread here.
i think that i might have endeared myself to the booking guy at the record bar. nice. i emailed him filling him in on what's going on with the show and evidently kurt hasn't gotten back to him yet about who's playing on that show at all. again. *fingers crossed*. hopefully if we get all the way to kc and it doesn't work out we can do something at yj's or something. speaking of which stefanie and i need to practise for it. we haven't been practising at all lately- not since the tour. once upon a time the concept was to practise every saturday no matter what, but it's translated to only if we are active in the live realm. i guess if we get into sxsw we'd have to start up again. hee hee. if. if only.
so i think i'm going to post something on craigslist in kc trying to get some string players on the hook for that. hopefully that will work out. i'm not holding my breath as i'm sure i've said before.