You Go Get It, My Friend

It's been awhile. Hi. I'm Greg. This is the Argyles, more or less. And this is how our very infrequent practices have been going. So what's up with the album? I'm glad you asked.

We had a baker's dozen worth of new songs when I decided we might as well record them, but I was still the only one who knew how to play them. Dowling (on drums) learned them as well, but Andrew and Justin were less available, and it was pretty slow adding the new ones into the rotation.

But we managed to get a few new ones in for a gig at Trois Minots on St. Laurent (like we play anywhere else). Ryan (sax) even drove out from Kingston, so we were a five-piece. We wrote some of his parts the afternoon before the show. It was a lot of fun. So I started preparing to record the drums for the album, which we would do at the practise space (when there were no loud bands playing next door).

The first part of this was treating the room somewhat, so I bought a bale of acoustic insulation from Home Depot and built four 3'x4' acoustic panels, then hung them on the wall strategically to minimize unwanted reverb in the room. The room isn't square, which is a good thing acoustically because sounds bounce around between parallel walls. I wound up hanging a blanket above the drumkit to lower the ceiling of the room a bit.

Then I brought in my (not so) mobile recording rig, my Acer PC, M-Audio FastTrack Ultra 8R, and some little monitors. I brought my CAD drum mic kit, and clamped them on the toms and in front of the kick. I used a Sennheiser e935 on the snare, and eventually paired my Rode NT1a with my friend Martin's to use as overheads. The drums (Mapex Saturn series, Alex from Parapraxis's set) sound nice on their own, so for once I felt like they were working with me and I wasn't just faithfully capturing the sound of a crappy drumset.

Then Dowling decided he wasn't going to record drums, which was unfortunate. So I had to figure out how to play all these songs well enough to record them, which took time because I am not the world's best drummer and didn't know how to play what I heard in my head sometimes. I banged out some scratch tracks and then it was days and days of practice, not even pretending I was ready to record yet. When I finally felt ready I set up Andrew's keyboard as a midi controller, so I could start and stop recording without moving from behind the drums, then went song by song, doing about ten takes of each. Then I did a cursory listen and picked 3-6 good takes to keep.

Once I finished, I brought my recording gear back to my apartment and went verse by verse, chorus by chorus, picking the best take for each part. Then I stitched them together, which wasn't easy considering there were as many as 5 takes being used, with 15 edits per track. I haven't processed them at all yet, but they sound good and the edits are transparent. Hopefully, no one will be able to tell they are in fact Frankenstein's monsters instead of the work of a skilled drummer.

Oh, and the title I came up with for the new album is:

Mean Times

It means a few things to me; we've all graduated and waiting for the next phase of our lives to start, so this is what the Argyles are doing in the meantime. Also, many people have left the city and those that stayed are working part or full time, so the hangouts don't push the extremes of Rage and Chill. They're mostly average (mathematically, mean) times. Third, the material and the music is louder, more agressive, and angrier than the first album. Playing them makes me feel mean. So that's why I like it, at least for now.

Keithless Stones

So here we are a few months on.  Rage and Chill is on at least a few shelves, if not in the books.  In the meantime, many changes have come to Argyledom.  We bid farewell to Matt Kassel, our drummer, as he headed back to his native New Jersey to further his writing career.  Check his blog, Cold Jazz, to keep up with his journey.  Our sax player, Ryan Mackellar, moved to Kingston to pursue a Master's degree in History.  Check his blog, the aptly titled Colonial History of Canada.

The remaining Argyles (Matt Dowling, Justin Wong, and me) were excited to play a set at Martin's Space-hootenanny as a power trio, but prospective drummer Andrew Miller (frontman of Parapraxis) instead wound  up playing lead guitar while Matt Dowling took the (drum) throne.  A large part of his brain which had lain dormant since he played drums in high school re-awoke, and he displayed skills heretofore unimagined.  Ryan also drove down for the show, but our set was pushed back several times and the party was shut down by the police before we were able to take the stage.

We quickly found another gig at Gerts, playing pro bono for Borderless World Volunteers.  Our set had a couple of songs from Rage and Chill, but also a lot of new material that I had been working on since we recorded the album.  We have since been practising fairly regularly, and the amount of new material (from both me and Dowling) has become quite substantial.

So substantial, in fact, that we have too much new material for a mere EP.  Which brings me to the main reason for my update: we will be recording a new full-length album this winter.  The sequel to Rage and Chill has yet to be named, although we have already decided against Andrew's suggestion Rape and Kill, concluding it is not violent enough to convey the ferocity of our new material.  But we have a good idea of what songs will be on it, and a much more cohesive style and sound than on the last disc.  I'd like to write at least one song with the band as a group, and possibly get some material from Justin and Andrew.  I hope to have material down by the end of November and the drums recorded by Christmas.

You can catch the new Argyles lineup and material at Trois Minots on November 10th.  And make sure to check back here to hear about the album as it comes together.

(Oh, and the video is from the Montreal-made The Wild Hunt, which I only wish stayed this funny all the way through instead of getting all murder-y.  Still good though.)

Between Loose and Louche

We had the CD release / hootenanny last night.  It was great!  Arthur premiered the music video for 'Headfull' as well, and we were all very impressed.  Watch it here:

AIEEE, NYT

The second day of shooting the music video also went really well, we did many shots of the band jumping in (at least partial) unison in various locations around Montreal.  Arthur edited this week as well, and the cut he showed us looked amazing (can't show you all yet).  He's waiting on a shot of the builders standing around the finished octopus, which apparently requires the use of TV McGill's new crane (!).

We played a show at Martin's place last night.  He's being filmed for a documentary on online poker, and the crew was in filming him and his band.  Our set went well, even considering that I broke a couple of strings and Mott broke one.  We ended it with Dan Mangan's "Robots"; Mott playing Justin's guitar, me croaking into the mic, and Justin in the crowd somewhere.

Here's a pic Carter took at the show.  It's dark but captures the essential oddness of most of what was going on.  Also Laura has posted her behind-the-scenes pics of filming the music video on her flickr account.  Check it out!

Brad Paisley, Semiotician

We shot the bulk of the music video on Saturday, on the roof at 914 Mont Royal and across the street in Kassel's room at 927.  It went really well, a lot of friends came over to simulate a party (which subsequently turned into a real party) and severely flattened the octopus by dancing all over it.  Arthur showed me a few clips and it looks very good.  The night shots of the octopus being 'built' also turned out great, thanks to the exceptionally wide aperture of the lens he was using on the DSLR.  We're shooting the synchronized jumping shots this afternoon (weather permitting), and hopefully we'll have it ready for whenever we finally release the CD.

Here's a shot from the setup, with Kassel adjusting the drums, Ryan warming up, and Mott wandering aimlessly.  And there's the octopus!

Here's a bit later, some more people hanging out, preparing.  We jammed a little after we were done shooting, but got everything down just before the police showed up to stare confusedly up at the roof.

I am yr host

I forgot, we've been working on a music video.  Last Thursday we got together in Laurier park to talk about it.  Arthur, who has been nice enough to lend his talent and equipment to this venture, also showed up and gave some constructive criticism.

Before he showed up, we threw around a few songs, including "Perseus" and "Mixtapes".  I had an idea for the former involving a black-and-white cowboy retelling of the greek legend, which amazingly failed to win a positive consensus.  We finally settled on "Headfull", reasoning that it was an energetic, mid-length song which represented our sound well.  We also felt we could give the video a narrative that wasn't chained (or even necessarily connected) to the lyrics, in a way that some of the 'story' songs like "Red Plaid Shirt" would probably end up being.

We knew we wanted to have a few things going on at once, including the shot of the band playing.  I wanted to have the band on the roof of 914 Mt. Royal, where there is (for reasons unknown) a giant metal octopus.  I had the idea that the narrative of the video would be a few of our friends deciding to build this octopus, drawing up plans, constructing it, and then celebrating its completion with us.  Justin thought that instead of building it, they should summon the octopus by magic, or they should at least be building it as a defence for an alien invasion.  I couldn't see how to show either of those clearly.  I am definitely no visionary.  Arthur said that the story lacked conflict, and so we decided that a landlord would attempt to stop them from building it, and they would have to proceed under the cover of darkness.

The chorus of the song (which, incidentally, you can now stream on grooveshark) has these breaks where, when we play it live, we all jump.  I think Mott (or was it Kassel) had the idea that we could film the band jumping in unison during these parts, so we came up with a list of iconic (to us) places in Montreal to film these parts, including the St. Christophe alley, the line at Romados, and the McLennan Library computers.

We're getting together to storyboard some time this weekend, and hopefully filming next weekend.  I forgot to take pictures when we were planning at the park, so here's a video I took while we were still at their apartment.  Somewhat unsurprisingly (considering his apparel), Kassel didn't make it to the park.

19th Century Notion

Burnt all of the CDs yesterday.  The track names are coming up on Gracenote, which is great.  I got my printer this morning, along with paper for the photo and track listing that I'm putting on the inside of the CDs.  The image quality is pretty bad so I'm going to see if I can get the original image instead of the jpg I got from facebook.  The text looks fine, though.  I finished six copies, with white ribbon, to give to the band.   Once I get the photo thing sorted out I'll do the rest.

So there they are, waiting for the others to join them.