ADAM N. COPELAND
Recording again soon. The waiting is what is most painful.
Lloyd has all new drum heads coming in the mail. Clear acrylic. Boom. Thwack. Etc.
I have a few new microphones coming in the mail. 3 Sennheiser e604s. 2 Audio Technica AT3035s. Sizzle. Crash. Boom Boom BOOM.
I tend to be a bit obsessive about how things sound, even in the earliest phases. I’m rather glad to be working with two musicians that understand and occasionally encourage this compulsion. I have never gotten good results in my life with anything by rushing through. This is not a criticism of others, as this tactic works fantastically for some people (eg. Jay Reatard, The Cure back in their early 80s heyday).
I would love to just go into a studio and pay someone else to record us - it takes your mind off the technical aspect and lets you just perform. Yet, it has become clear to me lately that none of us are really comfortable in someone else’s digs. While the recording itself may come out sounding great, the performances are likely come out a little cardboard and formless, as it were. This is doubleplusnotgood. To properly record music you must gather and capture the stray demons in the room. You must feel it from you toes to your fingers and back again. You must catch it by the tail as it runs fiery loud screaming from you.
Recording yourself also has a few drawbacks. First, someone in the room has to engineer the session and therefore take on all the pain and tears of which that entails. Also, while I have managed to amass a respectable collection of mics and equipment (for an amateur), it pales in comparison to what a properly equipped shop would have. Third, I am not a professional engineer. Try as I might to religiously read Tape Op or Sound On Sound - and all that good web stuff - there are some holes in my game. I admit there are a lot of things I don’t know about The Black Art.
Yet I hope that the pros outweigh the cons. The pros being a more relaxed atmosphere, not being on a clock, being able to really screw around and seek out some new sounds. I’m of the opinion that songs are never really done being written and it’s worth it to rework them as many times as needed to get the right result.
It may take a couple months. It may take the rest of the year. It may take until next year. We may change our name three times in the process. But God Willing Man We Will Have An Album.
go to asshole school with landlords.
First of all HEALTH are a great band. Listen to them. I am psyched to get their new release GET COLOR when it comes out Sep 8.
I finally got around to seeing a proper doctor courtesy of the lovely people over at Quality Family Practice in Branchville. Very great and laid back atmosphere. I got to spend more than five seconds talking to the Doc about all of my various health concerns and issues.
A while back I had an EKG done as part of a routine check up after some other issues I was having. There was a strange little blip on there that they said I should have checked out by a cardiologist. Unfortunately at the time there were other things I was a bit more focused on taking care of so I didn’t get an opportunity to check up on my heart since then. Good news is what I have is some sort of electrical irregularity that Dr. Saradarian assures me is not a problem. Though, given my family’s history of cardiac problems she said we should just keep a close eye on my cholesterol.
Furthermore we talked about my nagging shoulder pain, which seems to be in my shoulder girdle. The Doc prescribed a session over in physical therapy so they can teach me some exercises to straighten that out (hopefully). Also, they are taking blood from me to get me checked out for lyme and syphilis and the gout and what have you. We also both agreed that Rowlf is our favorite Muppet. The general consensus is that Stress has caused every major medical condition I have had in the last few years.
This is all good. It has been a very very long time since I have seen a health care professional that instilled any amount of confidence in me whatsoever. Usually I’m in the office, they look in my facial cavities hand me some pills and send me on my way are you insured ok copay is 15 dollars thanks have a nice year.
Also I had no idea that Restless Legs Syndrome is real. I swear I am not a hypochondriac.
I’m in the market for a new vehicle. The old van is beginning to show signs of age, and I can’t be using a vehicle that gets 18 combined mpg as my daily driver anymore. Not with a the 40 mile commute that I have. So bearing that in mind, my only requirements for a vehicle are that it gets decent mileage (better than 25 on the highway) and can carry at least 50 cu ft of stuff. This breaks my search down into two segments: the economical small wagon (Honda Fit, Scion xB, etc) and the small SUV (Subaru Forester, Honda CR-V, etc). Also if I’m getting an SUV it might as well be all wheel drive because of the shit weather up here in the winter.
In the past week I’ve driven a few vehicles and thought it would be a good idea to collect my thoughts about them here.
2009 Honda Fit Sport (2nd generation)
The Fit is a fun car. Spacious for a small car (57.3 cu ft cargo), good visibility, lots of utility (”magic seat”), great economy (27/33), and decent pep for a such a small engine (1.8L).The gauges, dash, and interior have a fun, youthful look about them that make me feel like I’m 23 again.
Unfortunately, the seats are terrible and would be hell on my ancient prostate gland, especially when sitting in a car for at least two hours every day. They are molded to appear like racing seats but are made out of the hardest possible foam. Furthermore, the ride was noisy as all hell. I’m sure it was an economy choice, but the Fit has almost no dampening materials in it. Unfortunately the comfort issue is a big thing for me and I’m probably going to have to entirely rule out the Fit.
2009 Honda CR-V (3rd generation)
I drove a base model of the CR-V, which was surprisingly well appointed. The CR-V is like a very large fit. Fun, spacious, great visibility and efficiency (20/26 with all wheel drive). It is significantly more comfortable and refined, what with the bigger 2.4L engine. Tons of safety features. Standard vehicle stability assist, ABS, disc brakes.
Yet, it had some weird quirks that hold it back. For example, the back row of seats instead of folding down, fold forward and flip up towards the front row, leaving a weird lumpy storage area in the back. The center console in the front collapses like in a minivan but hardly has any utility at all because the second row, folded or not, blocks it. While an interesting new approach to cargo space, it seemed a little weird.
I spent a great deal of time a few years ago driving and being a passenger in the 1st generation CR-V. This model has come a long way from it’s boxy, boring, and unrefined ancestry.
2009 Scion xB (2nd generation)
The 2nd generation xB was the biggest surprise. It is vastly improved over the smallish, noisy, underpowered and bland first generation xB. The boxy corners have been rounded out to make it a little less conspicuous. The engine size went up from 1.8L to 2.4L which delivers plenty of power even on hills. The cargo space with the seats flat has gone up from 43 cu ft to 70 cu ft (a segment best) with seats that fold down nice and flat. The ride is very very comfortable when compared with the Fit with a nice high driving position and cushy seats.
The problems with this vehicle are that the styling inside is still really plain (odd for a car that Toyota is trying to sell to hip young folks) and that the economy is not great compared to the Fit (22/28) but is comparable to other vehicles in this segment such as the Kia Soul and the Elantra Touring.
2010 Kia Soul
I was also pleasantly surprised by the Kia Soul. The styling is an absolute riot. On the ! (”exclaim”) trim level, the seats and head rests have a great houndstooth pattern. The interior has a very refined two tone (black and beige) look. It has a 315 watt stereo system with a subwoofer on the dashboard. It has speakers that light up in time with the stereo. It handles rather nimbly on big 18″ tires and the 2.0L engine provides plenty of zip zap. The Kia also comes with that great Hyundai warranty (5 yrs, 60k miles bumper to bumper). Hyundai’s build quality has steadily improved over the years and with the Soul is now beginning to rival its Japanese competitors.
I only wish it had a little more cargo room (53.4 cu. ft to Fit’s 57.3 cu. ft) and got better mileage (only 30 hwy compare to Fit’s 33). Otherwise, it is an almost perfect little car. If I were 21 years old again I wouldn’t even test drive anything else. Scion execs have daydreams that they can make a car half this fun.
Conclusion
I have a few more models to try out before I make my final decision. I drove a Subaru Forester a few months ago and was very impressed, so I would like to revisit it and its cousin the Impreza wagon. Also, Hyundai offers the Elantra in a Touring edition, which is essentially a spacious wagon.
So far the xB and the Soul are leading the pack. The Soul blows away the xB on style points, but the xB is made by Toyota so it definitely takes the reliability points. The Kia gets me a great deal of standard features (315 watt stereo, moon roof, 18″ tires) that would be a small fortune on the xB, but the Scion comes out ahead on comfort and cargo volume.
More to come as I near my final decision.
And lo, the long work of recording an album begins. As always, it begins and ends with the beat. Here’s a bit of Lloyd laying it down as only he can.
That’s a six mic configuration, kick / snare / tom / tom / over / h-hat. It’s nice to actually take the time to do the songs in pieces because the pieces wind up sounding quite good without all the bleed. You wind up sacrificing a bit in the natural-ness of it all, but I don’t have a studio full of gobos and awesome mics, nor do I have the luxury of more than 8 channels.
Should be very interesting to see all the pieces coming together.
Your one stop shop for all things Black Water. Videos, Music coming soon.
Almost makes me want to watch MLS.
Almost.
We’ve been asked to play the new space in Jersey City, IM Automata Chino on Friday May 22nd. It’s Black Water’s first ever gig and we’ll be on at 9:00pm. After that, we’ll be opening up for the Frozen Gentlemen on Saturday June 20th at the venerable Clash Bar in Clifton, NJ.
Come by and say hello.
Nothing fancy, just a couple of honest rock and roll shows. As you can see from the picture above, we’ve got quite a bit of work ahead of us in the next month to make some coherent sense of the immense amount of work we’ve been up to.
This rules.
I’m sitting here at work scouring statistics for our web server, trying to hone in on some problems and I see this list of the top platforms used by people coming to our site:
That’s right, Sony PSPs are the 7th most frequently used platform for browsing our site.