electrologue

San Antonio’s GIRL IN A COMA have left a permanent tattoo on the hearts of music lovers with their piercing songs and nuclear performances. They’ve blazed a singular trail since Nina Diaz joined the band at age 13 and have found champions and comrades along the way including Joan Jett who signed them, Morrissey, Sia, Tegan and Sara, The Pogues and Amanda Palmer who have hand selected them for tours. In addition, Robert Rodriguez asked them to compose one of the key songs for his film Machete last year. 

the church’s 30th Anniversary year has taken the band all over the USA and Australia with the induction in October 2010 into the ARIA Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame. In April 2011 the band played their “A Psychedelic Symphony” concert at a sold out Sydney Opera House with the 70-piece George Ellis Orchestra.

To conclude these celebrations the band are pleased to announce the Australian “Future Past Perfect Tour” in December 2011. The band will perform an album from each decade of their existence – the critically acclaimed Untitled #23, perennial fan favourite Priest=Aura and the iconic Starfish. In America the shows were rapturously received and reviews were outstanding. As this tour comes to Australia it is an opportunity to experience the past, present and future of one of Australia’s best and most intriguing bands.

Untitled #23 released in 2009 is widely regarded as a modern classic and has received glowing reviews from the music press, including an unprecedented 5 star review in Rolling Stone magazine. Priest=Aura (1992) has constantly been voted as a favourite of church fans over the years and Starfish (1989) is the album that put the church on the map in America. Starfish features along with The Blurred Crusade (1982) as one of two entries by the band in the “The Best 100 Australian Albums” book published in 2011.

The ticket price includes an exclusive A4 program featuring album and single sleeve artwork, selected lyrics and photographs of Steve Kilbey, Peter Koppes, Tim Powles and Marty Willson-Piper. This seated show will include two intermissions and will last for three and half hours with no support. Playing the albums in reverse chronological order the band ask you to simply close your eyes, sit back and join us on this special journey through the decades.

the church
“Future Past Perfect Tour” December 2011
Performing three classic albums in their entirety

SUN 11TH DEC WAVES Wollongong NSW (On Sale Thursday 13th October)

SAT 17TH DEC THE ENMORE THEATRE Sydney NSW (On Sale Now)

FRI 23RD DEC THE POWERHOUSE Brisbane QLD (On Sale Now)

THU 29TH DEC NORWOOD CONCERT HALL Adelaide SA (On Sale Date TBA)

FRI 30TH DEC THE FORUM Melbourne VIC (On Sale Saturday 15th October)

On the web: thechurchband.com

In the advent of the Nirvana 20^th Anniversary box-set and the resurgence of vinyl, New York City based Nu-grunge act, Baby Teardrops, are set to re-release their latest album X is for Love on vinyl November 15 through Kansas City, MO based label, Golden Sound Records.

For Jerad Tomasino and the rest of Golden Sound Records, it is critical to sign a band that will aid in shaping the label’s image and mission. Upon hearing Baby Teardrops live and listening to their record, the crew at Golden Sound Records had determined that there was something special about the band.

“Baby Teardrops had the perfect aesthetic to balance our artist roster,” Tomasino said. “They have a sound unlike any of the other bands, yet they fit into the puzzle perfectly.  In the digital/disposable age, anyone can make a noise, but with X is for Love, Matt and Baby Teardrops have created art,” Tomasino said. “It’s not high-brow, inaccessible music; it’s fun, well-crafted music done with care and intention. It is an album with excitement, intelligence and depth that we couldn’t be more proud including it in our catalog.”

The respect is mutual. Matthew Dunehoo (vocals, guitar), who has written an album’s worth of songs that themselves harken back to an era when vinyl was king, appreciates Golden Sound Records’ focus on the quality of music and packaging. “Jerad and Ross have a great vision for the label” Dunehoo says. “They’ve got a strong center of label/musician employees, and the focus is on high quality presentation and product.”

Listen to music on Baby Teardrops Radio

For Ashton Tremain it all started out with nothing more than a pen, some paper and an acoustic guitar, piecing together songs in the comfort of his bedroom. As the songs fell into place Ashton made his way out of the bedroom and onto the stage, spending the last few years honing his skills and defining his sound.

What transpired was a melodic blend of acoustic driven roots, folk and reggae to create a unique sound that connects to audiences of all kinds. With a handful of songs and many late nights in the studio comes Ashton’s debut album ‘From The Ground Up’. Recorded and MVM Studios (Angus and Julia Stone) on Sydney’s Northern beaches and mastered by Ian Pritchett (The Beautiful Girls), this first installment provides an insight into Ashton’s journey that many can relate to.

After the release of the first single “Better Light” earlier in the year ‘From The Ground Up’ is now ready to hit the airwaves and along with it comes the second single “Temple Times”. A feel good track written from experiences we have all had. Setting the scene of a household of mates and the non-stop good times and parties that became their lives behind the walls of the place locally recognized as The Temple.

October 15th – SYDNEY, The Gaelic (Upstairs), Surry Hills

October 22nd – ROCKDALE, St George Tavern

October 28th – AVALON, RSL

November 20th – NEWPORT, Newport Arms Hotel

December 2nd – NARRABEEN, The Narrabeen Sands

Laura Imbruglia is back to offer a taste of the new material she’s been working on since moving from Sydney to Melbourne in late 2010. This comes in the shape of new single – “Why’d You Have To Kiss Me So Hard?”.

Following on from 2010′s critically acclaimed “The Lighter Side Of…”, this new cut is a psychedelic about-turn from Laura’s recent alt country explorations.

Produced by Liam Judson (Cloud Control, Belles Will Ring) in the Blue Mountains, NSW, and backed by a smoking hot band featuring members of Talons, Songs and Jewel & The Falcon, Laura shows yet another side of her unique versatility.

Whilst her trademark lyrical wit is retained,  this time it’s given virgin subtlety treatment- the line between literal and figurative blurred.

Having undertaken national tours in the past year with The Eels, The Gin Club and Adalita, and recently hand-picked by Sebadoh to open their sold out Melbourne show, Laura is primed for the stage.

Those eager to catch her with a full band will be given the opportunity as she launches the single in Sydney and Melbourne over Oct/Nov.

Listen to the single on SoundCloud

Toy Bombs are serious about music. Their fun, garage pop sound may seem to belie this fact, but making music is not a whim for Cole Barnson (guitar, vocals, bass, percussion, harmonica) and Brandon McBride (guitar, keyboards, vocals, bass, percussion, drums, harmonica, effects), who manage and book shows for themselves as well as run a label, Flat Top Records, and live in their own recording studio. “We simply have the same work ethic anyone else would have in their fields of work,” says Barnson. “We want to be in music because it is what we are good at, not because it’s an easy way to money and fame”. It should be no surprise then that their second EP should come with the tongue in cheek title, Will Work for Free. “Now days, especially in the music industry, people expect things for free,” says McBride. “For some reason it is deemed socially acceptable for people to steal music. People want music, both recorded and live, for nothing. We are asking the questions, ‘Is this really what you want from musicians? Is what we have to offer really worth nothing?’” Will Work for Free is worth paying for, with songs that manage to cover cowboys, parenting, addiction and the degradation of society equally well and in a package that is bursting with energy harnessed from their always worth catching live show. Will Work for Free will be released nationally November 15, 2011.

Listen to music on Toy Bombs Radio

Melbourne-based post-hardcore band, Aural Window, will be hitting the road in the coming months to promote their cover of Britney Spears’s smash hit, Till The World Ends.

Johnny Rock and The Limits release their much anticipated EP, ‘Highly Likely’ this September. Following their single, ‘Give You What You Need,’ being featured in the summer Cornetto TV ad campaign early in the year, and touring their hit single ‘Shoeshine’ in June the band bring their fans what they’ve been waiting for. Produced by ARIA nominated, Steven Schram (Ground Components, Little Red), the raw energy of Johnny Rock and The Limits live shows has been captured and distilled into a 4 track set of all killer no filler EP. Bursting out of your stereo like a freight train with it’s non-stop, energy-driven pop, ‘Highly likely’ is rough around the edges, yet powerful in its conviction.

Will it be the soundtrack to your summer? Maybe.

Will this be your new favourite CD? Maybe.

Will you turn it up to 11 while tearing down the motorway? Highly likely.

Look out for Johnny Rock & the Limits bringing their explosive live show to Sydney, Melbourne and Wollongong from September.

You can also visit Johnny Rock & the Limits on Facebook.

Over the years the studio of the same name (that be electrologue) has traveled quite extensively, and along the way has known many different configurations and capabilities. Back in the meh old days, we had ye old electrologue-ey goodness:

Control room in Wheatland, IN

O, yes. Wheatland, Indiana has rarely, if ever, seen such an audio palace. That desk is a fancy 24-channel Spirit somethin-or-other and — let’s face it — it looks mighty impressive (it was on extended loan). I was into the Mac G4 tower and an M-Audio Delta 1010 audio interface at the time, I still use both brands but not the same products. We’ll get to that later. We also had the option of analog in the form of an Otari 1/2 inch eight track machine or the trusty Tascam 388 1/4 inch eight track (or even the Yamaha MT4X cassette four track pictured to the left of the desk, on top of the custom Leslie speaker).

Huge recording room in Wheatland, IN

This location had the additional benefits of large recording spaces that we were able to keep pretty much wired up and ready to go at all times. The main room, shown here, was a good 24 feet by 12 feet, and there was an additional octagonal shaped room with superbly high twelve foot ceilings. Talk about acoustics, that’s what you want. During this time there were some fantastic recordings made of the Raydons and Jupiterboy, but amazingly not much that’s in any wide circulation.

Electrologue in the 'Boro

Unfortunately, that era of Electrologue was short-lived (and incidentally at the time the studio was known as Organic Audio, but it’s still mostly the same gear). I shipped off to Atlanta and spent a while working with a friend for a few months, and then somehow ended up in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where I went to college. It was another remote location, not as much space but then space is only valuable if you use it… like we did in the ‘Boro. As you can see, this one had a more “lived in” feel, or maybe the term is “smoked out”. I like that the Crumar Performer is so prominently featured, and durn do I wish I still had that sucker. Some incredible tracks were born here, most notably Polvo es Rojo, but there is also the sad fact of certain recordings that were lost due to “I thought I backed that up” syndrome. And so it goes.

Take a close look at that picture, you’ll also see the world-famous cat Nurf asleep atop the Tascam 388. And the author is behind the kit, in a manner of speaking. Also there amongst the gear pile is the Tascam US-428, some Spirit Absolute Zero monitors (still use those), a Mackie 1204-VLZ mixer (that too), an Alesis QS6.1, Ensoniq ASX sampler, Alesis Quadraverb, Yamaha and dbx compressors, and some Røde NT3 condensors as overheads on the kit.

Control room at Evansville location

Moving on, and I did, there was another house located in Evansville, Indiana where I was able to again enjoy a multi-room setup. Not much changed from a gear standpoint, although here I was much more able and motivated to use that tape machine. Really, I was much more apt to be messing around with tube amps and vintage speakers at the time, and although there was plenty of rocking out to be had, I can’t honestly recall much more than Mike Johnson’s (kingsizemidget) quartersizedoublealbum being mixed here. We also laid down some overdubs for the follow-up to that one, Azimuth, the majority of which was recorded at the Wheatland location.

After that, it would all seem to go downhill – to the untrained observer, that is. But there comes a time when occasionally you have to simplify. And simplify, I did… a great deal, in fact.

Electrologue Sydney, v1.0!

Moving to another country generally enforces a certain bit of austerity upon one with respect to personal possessions, and such was the case when I moved to Sydney, Australia. Still with the Mackie, I had a borrowed M-Audio Ozone keyboard audio/MIDI interface and not much else. Well, I can’t discount the beer and Beatles’ Yellow Submarine vinyl, but it’s obvious there was a lot of slimming down in the gear department at this point. Amazingly, many of the tracks for the eventual Sleep-ins record Songs About Girls & Outer Space were written using this exact setup.

Thankfully, it wasn’t the last incarnation for Electrologue. For a while it was called Belmore Studio, located in a row house and adequate for overdubs, although rarely useful for anything too loud.

Belmore Studio (Electrologue) in Sydney

That’s Ryan Adamson of Regular John jamming there, and hopefully enjoying the luscious Yamaha NS-10 tone. Also we see here the first encounter with the MiniMoog, just peeking out from the right side there. This was mostly a demo and overdubs facility, but still a nice chapter in the story. It was shortly after this time I started using the M-Audio USB Quattro, which was my main audio/MIDI interface until 2011, when I switched to the Tascam US-1800. I do still use the Quattro from time to time, however.

Eventually, I teamed up with Stefan Pope, Angus Baker and Charles Smith to open the Routine Studio on Foveaux Street in Surry Hills, just two blocks from Central Station and across the street from the Australian Institute of Music.

Control room in Sydney @ Routine

This warehouse location afforded us many luxuries, including lots of space, two recording rooms and a purpose-built control room. We also were sporting a Mac G5 tower and ProTools Digi002 (when it wasn’t in the shop). Again with the MiniMoog, twin Mackie mixers, and an array of mics that would make your head spin. Many, many tracks were done here, including mixing and overdubs for the kingsizemidget Azimuth album, lots of tracking on the Sleep-ins material, and various other bands that also used the space for rehearsing. This was certainly one of the ‘Golden Eras’ of Electrologue history — one of those moments when you only realize what a unique time it is when you actually get the time to stop and think about it. But things were going so fast…

The Lounge @ Routine in Sydney

Would you believe I moved again? This time to Franklin, Tennessee. Can’t say much happened here, although I did master the second Titans of Ahm! record, Torpor. Also recorded some tracks that may see their way onto a future album. Or might not. One thing I did accomplish at this time was building the Curious Audity One Recording Amplifier. It’s basically a heavily modified Kalamazoo Model Two, 8W tube amp with a ten inch speaker, tremolo and nice break up from two 12AX7s, one 6BQ5 and a 6X4 rectifier. Loads of other stuff but that’s something for another article.

Franklin, TN apartment studio

The apartment setting is usually about my least favorite to deal with, but as you can see I tried to make the best of things. One of the advantages of this photo is it shows some of the interesting vintage tube gear I’ve picked up over the years. The foremost of which is the green Altec 438C tube preamp/compressor in the gray rack case on the floor next to the custom Leslie. That’s a 1930s model RCA tube amplifier (2x6L6) I use to drive the Leslie, and also occasionally bigger speakers for bass guitar and keys. The Kalamazoo Model Two is on the floor in front of the partially-obscured Fender Vibrosonic Reverb amp. Another oddball is the Washburn PR200 “Prairie State” acoustic guitar, a squashed-body Jumbo with an oval soundhole. Rounding out the gear here is the Alesis Micron (not vintage but still loads of fun). I haven’t mentioned them much, but sometime I’ll write an article about microphones I’ve used. But that, again, is something for another day.

And here comes the cliché — what a long, strange trip it’s been. But rewarding, frustrating, enriching, educational… etc. It’s hard to believe how many times I have built, torn down, and rebuilt this studio in its many forms; and it’s hard to believe I’m destined to do it again, probably multiple times more.

It’s a testament to creativity, but it also bespeaks something about what I consider normal. A normal house, to me, has at least one place, one corner, dedicated to making music and recording sound. Often it isn’t all that fancy or hi-tech. Nevertheless, it is an essential part of my living space.

The rough cut, Asheville v1.0

When I first got into our house in Asheville, I quickly set up my studio, as I am wont to do. It doesn’t look like this now, but it won’t look like it does now for long, either. In some ways, having the studio put back together in whatever way possible is the first sign that I’ve moved into a place. Certainly, it will change, maybe move to another room. Some gear will get bought and sold. However, the soul is always there.