The New (Plastic) World Order

Hey guys!  We have some radical news!  We are almost completely done recording our new, as of yet untitled, ep and we are about halfway through mixing/mastering it.  The ep will be 5 tracks long and will be our very first release.  Expect a new track completely free for download very very soon, with the rest of the ep dropping sometime in early 2012.

The process of making this record has been an odd and very unusual experience for me.  Having spent most of the last 5 years writing almost exclusively with Model-003 in Last Year's Model (and at points collaborating with the Grand High Falsies for a little pop punk girl group action in The Falsies), getting back to writing entirely on my own was scary in an of itself, but doing it all on my own meant that I could realize any odd idea I had in my head exactly as I thought it.  This lead to fears that perhaps what I was trying to communicate (musically) would be too odd or obtuse, but since the purpose in doing ATTACK.WAV was to unabashedly express ideas I hadn't had the oppurtunity to express in the past, I tried to push this thought away.  The motto for ATTACK.WAV, while losing the LYM rock feel, was to do everything cuter and faster and busier.  Crowding everything with as many synths as I could has been a matter of course, but how would this translate?

After I wrote a few songs, I called upon Sine Wave and Tree Wave to back me up in a live setting.  A period of adjustment was to follow.  Some things that sounded awesome in a controled and intensely quantified setting just didn't translate to the three of us playing it live.  So we cut things, and in other places changed parts entirely.  It is my hope that this creates a live aesthetic that, while different from the recorded ATTACK.WAV, will still communicate the same feel, but adjusted to make the most of our human component.  Perhaps the live element makes the whole experience a bit more accesable, a bit less happy hardcore pico pop and a bit more plastic amateur band.  Both are very important influences to me and I hope that hearing our new music will open up a world of music that you may not have enjoyed before.

After rehearsing for awhile, we selected songs for the ep as a band.  I then went back and re-recorded all the audio with my Dave Smith Instruments Mopho and M-Audio Venom.  I took some of the changes we had made as a band into the new studio recordings, while leaving most arrangements in their original form to emphasize the difference between the studio and the stage.  I am very excited to have recreated my original, fully soft synth recordings with some legit gear.  The difference in the quality of the sounds is immense, and added much needed warmth to the songs.

Finally, it was time to begin mixing.  We decided to have an outside source co-produce the ep rather than doing it all ourselves as we had in the past.  This turned out to be the best decision we could have made; the ep will be co-produced, mixed and mastered by Woodie Taylor (Love is All, Comet Gain).  Though his history in arty garage punk may not seem like a good fit for electronic pico pop,  his aesthetic has proved to be a perfect match for ours, and his expert use of analog gear and DAW mixing programs has instilled new life into our recordings and I can't wait to share them all with you.

Sorry I can't let you hear it yet...there are a few things to take care of first.  But allow me to help you enjoy the new record by giving you some of the vocabulary that informed the music in the first place.  and be sure to get stoked.

 Plus-Tech Squeeze Box

Of course this list will be entirely composed of bands I love, but none have had quite the affect on my tastes as Plus-Tech Squeeze Box.  I hope to one day be proficient enough to program like they do...but despite my inability to fully emulate it, their marriage of fast punk sounds and cute cute delivery is the basis of what I am attempting to create in ATTACK.WAV.  Here's "Sneaker Song", from their debut album, "Fakevox".

 Plastics

The Plastics formed in the late seventies and only have 2 albums to their name.  They toured in the US with both The B-52's and Talking Heads.  Initially they may sound like a fluff party band but the tone is actually quite biting and sarcastic.  I think they are a perfect marriage of sarcasm and plastic amateur pop.  Here's a live performance of a non album single, "Pate".  It all seems silly, but the chorus does feature a very angry Tosh insisting that you are "just a passage of time".

 Tribeca

Short-lived early 2000's electro pop side project of Lasse Lindh, Tribeca was described by one of my friends as "Postal Service with balls".  How eloquent!  But is true that while this project has some of the same "play it loud while driving" feel, it also gets far darker and the tonalities used are far more varied.  Plus, Lasse's about to break vocals are far more interesting than those Death Cab For Cutie's dude's lackluster deliveries.  This is "Solitude" from their second album, "Dragon Down".  Totes a mix tape anthem (remember those?!)

Figurine

Even though I am not one to glorify Postal Service, Jimmy Tamborello's project before PS has always been close to my heart.  The band was openly obsessed with early Depeche Mode and the songs they crafted are the number one thing responsible for my current love of synthesized music.  Here's the first track I ever heard of theirs, "New Mate", off their debut album "Transportation + Communication = Love".

Nobuo Uematsu

I can't really talk about the influences of ATTACK.WAV without talking about an influence so great that I can't pinpoint when I even began noticing how much I loved it.  While I didn't listen to almost any pop as a child, I was constantly humming songs by Nobuo Uematsu, the composer responsible for creating the songs behind Final Fantasy VI, the greatest rpg of all time.  These tracks are clearly what gave me my deep love of counterpoint and also of simple square and saw wave sounds.  This is one of my favorite themes of the game...the battle music, "The Desicive Battle"

Okay, I'm glad that we understand each other a little better.  Maybe all this info doesn't mean much cuz you haven't heard the record?  I hope you will enjoy it anyway!!  See you soon.