Speaking of the new Explone record, I spent some time last weekend putting together "YouTube singles" (for lack of a better term) for each track of our forthcoming Telescope + Satellite EP, and I figured, why not do Dreamers/Lovers too. So running up to the release of T + S I'll be posting a few of my favorite tracks from Dreamers/Lovers here.
(YouTube perplexes me. Tons of people use it for music discovery, and it seems the easiest way to embed songs anywhere without requiring listeners to have a Spotify or Rdio account. Way to drop the ball, everyone (Except Bandcamp! (and SoundCloud!)!))
"Girl w/ A Black Eye" is one such favorite, and showcases Pat's talent for mashing up Cheap Trick vocals with Hüsker Dü power chords. I always thought this tune never got the love it deserved.
I never stopped playing live shows, and never stopped writing, but I stopped doing the business side of it, and stopped that cycle of finishing a record and having people say, Well, now you have to do something different to maintain our interest. I was relieved to step away from that craziness.
Finally kicking this guy out the door! Telescope + Satellite will be available everywhere on September 4th. Our release show is October 4th at the Sunset Tavern in Seattle.
We want to spread these songs far and wide, so if you'd like a review copy for your blog or podcast, or know someone who'd like one, email me or Patrick and we'll set you up.
Seattle-based rock band that refuses to acknowledge the irrelevancy of electric guitar in modern music. We won't stop believing. We still love Cheap Trick, Queen, Husker Du, Nada Surf and the Pixies. Conservative Christians can have our Judas Priest records when they pry them from our cold, dead fingers.
Now that Gotye himself has created a mashup of all those Gotye covers on YouTube, there's no reason for anyone else to ever cover this song ever again, yes? Yes.
I was reading the Penny Arcade Report story on Slender, a tiny indie game that has you running around spooky woods with a flashlight, when this sentence jumped out at me: "Slender is a successful debut from someone who only wanted to learn how to use an engine." And I'm like oh really? What engine is that?
I can't quite see myself actually making games, but I am intrigued with virtual worlds. I'm the guy who's still scaling every mountain peak in Skyrim because hey, the makers put these rocks and trees here for a reason, so hell yeah I'm gonna try to get up there. My ideal "game" isn't a game, but an enormous landscape to explore. (Alone. Which is why WOW is a non-starter for me.) But anyway, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to make something myself, so after a few days reading Unity tutorials and messing around, I got my first "level" up to explore.
I think I'll call it "Scottopia."
The primary actions in Scottopia are: run around, look at stuff, and plummet gracelessly off the edge of the world. Otherwise, there's not much else to do. That said, the moment the screen filled with the landscape, I experienced that fist-pumping horns-throwing emotional rush you get -- to riff on a Ze Frank chesnut -- from "moving from zero to one." Victory!
Any software -- or tool, or tutorial, or anything that is structured to help you make things -- that gets you to this YAY ME state quickly is doing something right. It's one of the reasons I still dig Garageband, despite its narrow feature set. It's designed to help you make something awesome quickly without making you feel bad about how little you know about recording. Likewise, I was able to get excited and stay excited building a 3D landscape, even as my mind was swimming with terms like "mesh renderer" and other unfamiliar bits of moon-language. That momentum is so crucial; you want your users to ride that wave on to the next challenge.
There's a huge yawning abyss between making a little 3D game world, as I have done, and making an actual game, something "playable" and "fun." I'm not sure I'm up for such a project, but it's kind of exhilirating to know that it's possible at all. By the way, Unity is free, so have at it.
I lucked out today and got to see The Fixx up close and personal like. I must've been in my early teens when the band was at their peak, and their ubiquitous hit "One Thing Leads To Another" is still one of my favorite tunes from that time. I can't even begin to describe the weird emotions I experienced when those opening chords started ringing out, not six feet away.
I didn't get the chance to meet the band, but did get to talk at length with one of their label guys about cloud streaming and the challenge of working with Triple-A heritage acts in the indie world. So that was cool.
