The Blank. The Blog.

Acrocats E.P. Streaming In Its Entirety Until Sunday Night

kris — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 20:43:20 +0000

The title pretty much says it all. We’ve finished the E.P (at least the most important part, the audio), and we’d like to share it with you. This will only be up until Sunday night, so listen early and often.

http://soundcloud.com/rube-records/sets/the-blank-acrocats-e-p

No, We Are Not Sponsored By Mickey’s. Yet.

kris — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 20:16:26 +0000

Earlier this month, we started working on our next E.P. As we get closer to releasing it, we’ll start talking about what songs are on it, etc… but for now, here’s a look at what it looks like when we’re recording.

Looking over the laptop toward the drums

As you can probably tell from the pictures, we’re not recording in a studio. This is actually our practice space. It’s not exactly pretty, but the room acoustics are surprisingly nice, especially for a room in a basement that hasn’t even heard of acoustical treatment.

First we set up the drums. They’re mic’d in the pictures, but we hadn’t actually finalized our mic placement just yet. The laptop in the foreground is what everything is recorded to. For “The Art Of Daydrinking” we recorded everything live, sans vocals, which were added later. For this E.P we used a different method, recording just the drums first, then adding the guitar, vocals, and other bits later on.

Amps

After getting the drum tracks down, instead of just recording all the guitar tracks, we’re actually approaching things one song at a time: We’ll pick a song, then record guitar, vocals and any extra bits and pieces, and basically try to get a song finished before moving on. This is the first time we’ve ever attempted recording this way, and it was a little awkward at first, but it’s nice to see a song come together completely rather than watch bits and pieces of many songs grow in spurts.

I’m actually using three different amps for this recording, which is two more than I’ve ever used before. Only two are pictured, but once we started recording, I moved my main amp over near the smaller two. It’s nice being able to plug into whatever amp the song requires and mic it within a few minutes rather than have to move around the room every time.

Mike, laying down a sweet tamborine track

In addition to the mics for guitar amps, we have a vocal mic set up and ready to go so that as soon as the drums/guitar foundation of a song is laid down we can start recording vocals immediately. It’s a handy set up – we definitely completed at least one song in under an hour.

Our entire approach on this E.P has been very different than any recording either of us has done before. Nothing groundbreaking, especially for studio folks, but for us it’s been a refreshing change of pace. Not only are we really happy with how everything is sounding, but it’s been a pretty stress free recording so far.

Kris, recording a vocal

We’re getting pretty close to finishing up the actual recording. We’ve got one whole song that needs to be finished, then we’ll go over everything and make sure each song is fully completed before moving on to mixing. Once we get that far, we’ll probably let you know.

In the meantime, if you don’t have our first E.P. and want to grab it, you can now purchase it directly from us in the buy section on this very site.

Here Is A Thing

kris — Wed, 12 May 2010 00:37:52 +0000

It’s true. The aforementioned thing is a video of “Black Friday” from our May 9th show with Skeletonbreath, Sod Buster and Pat Burke.

Incremental Update

kris — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 17:22:11 +0000

Nothing big here, just a quick note that we’ve added a few sections to the blog: Listen, Buy, and Shows. It should be fairly obvious what these sections are for. The most notable is the “Listen” section, as the embedded song is much higher quality than the streams on other sites.

Now With Less Physicality!

kris — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 19:18:04 +0000

For those of you who prefer your music in an even less tangible form than CD, we’re pleased to announce that “The Art Of Daydrinking” is now available in pure digital form via both iTunes and Amazon MP3. Expect to see more services (eMusic, Rhapsody, etc…) start to carry it in the coming weeks.

Oddly enough, the E.P. will cost you $9.99 via iTunes (a physical copy through Rube Records is only $5.00), but at Amazon, the price is $3.96, as it should be.

If, instead of using the above links, you happen to search the service of your choice, searching for the album title is much more effective than searching for the band name. It turns out that the word “blank” shows up an awful lot.

It’s Out!

kris — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 19:55:47 +0000

Well, you can now consider “The Art Of Daydrinking” to be officially released. You can pick it up at the Rube Records store, right now, if you should desire to do so.

CD Release

kris — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 20:40:45 +0000

OK, so we’ve got a release date: “The Art Of Daydrinking” will be available on December 9th. If you’re nearby, you’ll be able to grab it at our CD release show at The Red Barn that night. Otherwise you can order it online through the Rube Records website.

That is all. For now.

An Underappreciated Art Form

kris — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 20:38:57 +0000

The above image is the cover of our upcoming E.P. – The Art Of Daydrinking. Everything is finished, we’re just waiting for it to be pressed. We’re hoping for a December release. January at the latest. We’ll keep you posted.