{This Ain't For Everyone}

2006-10-01T09:24:00.000-04:00

:: PAS/CAL :: DEAR SIR EP :: NOVEMBER SEVENTH ::

]] Cover by Sean McCabe [[

CSMR LSTNS

2006-09-17T10:32:00.000-04:00

// DEAR SIR EP // NOVEMBER SEVENTH //

letzte minuziöse Aufnahme

2006-09-15T09:48:00.000-04:00

Well, we made our way...we Amtrakked!

Panic plays things with buttons, hammers, knobs, ebony & ivory...

>>>>PAS/CAL :: DEAR SIR EP :: NOVEMBER 7. 2006

Fourth & inches

2006-08-15T10:40:00.000-04:00

Dearest Friends,

November 2006: PAS/CAL EP, III
January 2007: PAS/CAL LP, I

la, la, love ya...

{csmr}

inches away

2006-07-25T00:18:00.000-04:00

We are honestly THAT close...

...the plan is for a November 2006 release.

fingers crossed,
{csmr}

Oh, hi there.

2006-06-21T14:12:00.000-04:00

While we may have not posted in a bit, we've been still ever-busy on the full-length. Perhaps Caz could provide our viewing audience with a status report soon.

Oh, we'll be in New York Thursday at the Mercury Lounge with our pals Asobi Seksu. Come give us all your love & all your hugs & kisses, too.

Happy,

Burgundy

Bizee.

2006-04-04T13:13:00.000-04:00

We're busy practicing for our shows. Come see us, lovelies.

Lovin' you is easy,

PAS/CAL

LTD Sans Muscles

2006-03-19T23:14:00.000-05:00

My dearest friends,

Sorry for 2 week+ lag since our last communique. Things have been hopping in ye olde workshoppe as of late and none of us have had a moment to sit down and collect our thoughts (and shots) of the recent sessions.

As was posted a whilst back ago we have completed the musical foundations for the bulk of the material on the record. Thus & therefore, most of the recent time spent in the studio has been to overdub parts such as Gene's & Trevor's bits on the song O Honey We're Ridiculous. Trevor came in first during the week with a handful of ideas he had demo'd at home. He forgot all of his lovely noise pedals, thus we had to create any and all guitar distortions via the olde fashioned way by turning all the knobs of a tube amp to TEN. This did wonders for some shimmering arpeggiated parts he had written for chorus, but the effect needed a bit more for his guitar phrases during the verses...so we called it a night. Adieu!

That weekend Gene flew in from the Big Apple (does anyone call it that anymore?) to record his bits for O Honey and anything else we had time for. Fearing Gene may not be flying with his magic sound box due to New York's stringent flight regulations, I sought to quickly purchase an overdrive pedal or two before he landed. I happily fell upon a forum of folk vociferating about the virtues of an inexpensive line of Danelectro effect pedals. I ever so swiftly googled up a source for these econo-efx and tripped over Music123's site that were selling them for $14.95 each (free shipping!). I took the plunge and bought the overdrive and the distortion boxes and both arrived in time for Gene to crank & wank with them. We used them with great effect (yes, a pun, I believe) all over his tasty bits and never looked back! Sooo, that pedal is all over O Honey and it will be featured a bit on Gene's parts for We Made Our Way, We Amtrakked in which said lead guitarist made like Sterling on the self-title VU record (my favorite of the bunch, mind you). I tracked Gene's and Naud's guitar bits in a similar fashion for O Honey: Gene's homemade Genelectric was plugged into my lil' Gretsch tube amp and was close mic'd by an AT4047 with a Shinybox ribbon microphone about 4 feet back. Trevor Naud's set up went the same way except he played his Fender Jaguar through my Fender Champ. I think for both of their bits I am gonna trash the close mic...the far mic'd ribbon caught all I wanted.

Panic and I had a couple sessions along the way as well recording piano bits for the song Citizen Army Uniform. For the bulk of this song he plays a very distorted (and very near death) Ace-Tone combo organ, but there are a couple of moment that we wanted a lighter sonic scenario for. I didn't like the sound that was falling into the mics above the piano so we pulled off the heavy wooden kick plate in order to get at the strings that seemed to be making the most racket. I used two Oktava MC012s for the task, one to handle the upper and one to handle the lower registers of the instrument. The recorded sound made me smile.

The pictures in this post you are viewing currently are from this past weekend's session. We decided to include the recently penned song I Wanna Lil' Red Radio on this ever-forthcoming album. I made a demo of it where I played everything sans bass (thank you, Burgy!) and the drum arrangement was not so much lacking creativity as it was simply sounding like a very sucky drummer. So, we took a stab at LTD just re-recording the drum track...which is something that I pray you never try to do unless you are going for that Madcap Laughsian oh-so-sloppy-lysergic-muddle type of thing. It was frustrating and it sounded shitty, so we ended the night with LTD being mad at me for wasting his time on a days worth of nothingness. Panic was hanging out at the Workshoppe and him and I went back in to throw down a Juno-driven comfort jam. I felt better. On Sunday LTD came back, we set up some mics, I threw a cloth over his snare (pictured with muscles above), and away we went with the idea of totally re-recording the whole track. We got a scratch Ace-Tone track down and the main drum track done in a lil' over 3 hours. I am very pleased; I have a lot of work to do...I need to stop typing and get back in there.

ta for now,

{csmr}

Jazzercise.

2006-03-01T10:15:00.000-05:00

'Vogues' bassline...done. Caz called me Bootsy Collins & then he sang that mogwai song from Gremlins . It was a beautiful moment.

I'm really excited about this [click it]:

Though the trailer makes it look a bit silly. But they always make good movies look insipid & braindead movies look brilliant in trailers. Anywho, Daniel Clowes & Terry Zwigoff paired-up again can't be bad.

Ever-so-fondly,

Burgundy

Another lil' Status Report

2006-02-27T10:18:00.000-05:00

Studio: Romantic Air Workshoppe
Location: Greater Metropolitan Detroit Area
Date: Monday, February 27, 2006
Re: Status Report 13007B-E

Well, we have made all of our beds. That's right! Everything is neatly readied, that is to say that the foundations for all the tracks to be featured on the album are complete. This next month will be filled with snipping, tucking, overdubbing, and massaging the tracks into a form of earthy perfection.

Panic is due to come in this week to record using our recently fine tuned piano. Photographs forthcoming.

ta,
{csmr}

Gene plays guitar-oh-ar!

2006-02-13T08:53:00.000-05:00

Eugene Corduroy flew in from NYC over the weekend to do some tracking in ye old Workshoppe d' Romantic Air. Good Gene did his homework and had a slew of slippery lines written for You Were Too Old For Me. We started with some acoustic single-note pluckery with a 40+ year old, small-body Gibson acoustic that belonged to Momma Corduroy before him. Although I closed mic'd his guitar, to match my idea of creating some amount of obvious distance in this song, I also set up a spaced stereo pair of Oktava MC012s about 7 feet away and as many feet up in front of him; there are some quieter moments in this track that truly benefit from this. Secondly, we set up my lovely ol' lil' Gretsch 6161 tube amp (late-late-50s era) sitting perfectly perched upon an old dining room chair (appropriately belonging to Casimer, Sr. way back in the day). We closed mic'd the amp with a AT4047, but kept the pair of Oktavas up to capture the room as well. The amp (with the ol' Harmony semi-hollow body) sounds lovely...it breaks up just like you'd hope, but we had to keep on turning the poor thing off betwixt takes since it tended to exhibit a thunderous hum as the tubes glowed wildly.

We worked two days straight (w/o bathing, eating, or urinating) in order to tighten up the bits Gene previously worked out, as well as writing some new gems including a rather pretty "solo" during a poignant instrumental passage...All in all we were thrilled with our progress & sounds we conjured. Until next...

ta,

{csmr}

...outside of the Workshoppe looking a bit miffed for no good reason...

He needs me, He needs me

2006-02-07T01:09:00.000-05:00

I love my arms. Played my drums 'till Caz got sick all over Caz's old velvet sport coat. Burgs was a gentleman this evening and inspired me to cap off the night with a bottle of wine shaped like a kitty cat in front of the fire. Popeye was on the t.v.

LTD2006
p

We Are Making Our Way

2006-02-05T08:14:00.000-05:00

Session Snapshots for We Made Our Way, We Amtrakked (which strangely looks like a song-poem title)

Non-Violent Tae Kwan Do Troopers.

2006-02-03T16:17:00.000-05:00

Caz & I watched this film last night after some cursory cruises over 'Amtrakked' in the studio. Highly highly recommended. I've devoted a good portion of the day to researching the phenomenon of the 'song poem'. It's downright fascinating, I must say. Also, I'm surprised at how many times Mr. Caglar Juan Singletary shows up in a Google search.

This stuff is precious.

Sweetly,

Nathan

Weekend At Bernie's.

2006-01-30T09:51:00.000-05:00

'Bernard Levine' sounds amazing - like a dynamic masterpiece. There's this bit with very muted drums that sounds so remarkably White Album I can't help but be surprised & laugh every time I hear it. Caz said one of my bass bits sounded very Scott Walker or Serge Gainsbourg which made me feel very good, indeed. Come to think of it - who the hell plays bass for Walker or Gainsbourg? Who plays bass on, say, Scott 4 or Le Historie de Melody Nelson? Does anyone know? They were obviously session men, but the work they did was simply amazing. The bassline on 'The Old Man's Back Again' still gives me chills.

Anywho, a nice bowl of oatmeal & Punchdrunk Love capped the night off splendidly.

Hearts & Birds Singing,

N. Burgundy IV

A lil' status report (sans bonnes images)

2006-01-30T09:38:00.000-05:00

Studio: Romantic Air Workshoppe
Location: Greater Metropolitan Detroit Area
Date: Monday, January 30, 2006
Re: Status Report 13006A

The PAS/CALs have been rather productive since the turn of the new year. We have made major strides with Citizens Army Uniform, O Honey We're Ridiculous, You Were Too Old For Me, and most recently, a track entitled, Dearest Bernhardt Livingston. This week we will be refining the arrangement for We Made Our Way (We Amtrakked) and then committing the finalized version to disk by the week's end. Photographs of the You Were Too Old For Me & Dearest Bernhardt Livingston sessions to follow...

Il buon tempo verra!
{csmr}

You Are Way Too Old For Me

2006-01-22T20:36:00.000-05:00

Debo confesar:
I didn't think we'd finish in one day. Feeling rather ham-fisted whilst going over the chords to You Are Too Old For Me, I felt it had just enough twists, turns, and burn outs to mangle our song-a-week plan. I was quite ill on my bits and will have to delete that portion of the session, but Burgs and LTD were like twins separated at birth so that one could play bass leaving the other free to bang skins.

Notas de la produccion:
Burgundy's signal chain for his bass guitar goes a lil' something like this, Fender Precision>>Sansamp Bass DI>>Soundcraft 200VBE

For the drums of Little Tommy I wanted more of the room so most of the kit's sound is coming from two spaced small diaphragm condensers about 6 feet in front of the drums and 10 feet up in the air...the Romantic Air. I also have a pair of large condensers up against the far back wall---behind LTD---in the corners about 7 feet up. I find that when the pres are overdriven on these mics (inexpensive Oktava MK219s) they really pull out the room and make things a bit more lively, y'know?

¿Qué después?
Panic is coming by tonight to work out his piano bits for You Were Too Old For Me (he has already completed a remarkable, slightly distorted, Rhodes arrangement for O Honey) and Trevor will be in later in the week to finish a very MBV-y guitar collage for the outro of Citizens Army Uniform.

El buen tiempo vendrá!

{csmr}

Meanwhile, 600 miles from home.

2006-01-21T20:46:00.000-05:00

Bem presses the record "button" when I ask her to do so. She's good about this, quietly watching Gilmore Girls on mute between takes. And during takes. Caz says I need to turn the delay down on the 'O Honey' parts, so I do. This is the RAR Satellite Workshop in Brooklyn, by the way. 3 more songs to work on this weekend, next weekend and next next weekend - then I'm off to Detroit for a marathon recording session with Caz. Heart ~ Gene

Oh yeah, the guitar is a '66 Univox HR-2.

8-hour Day.

2006-01-21T12:11:00.000-05:00

We're gonna jam all day. I can't wait. I'm at the mall right now dreaming of wild solos & such.

N. Burgundy IV

Postscript. I look sweet in that photo below. Makes me wish I hadn't shaved all my hair off Bob Geldoff-as-Pink-in-The-Wall-style.

O Sonny!

2006-01-16T21:17:00.000-05:00

O Honey Sessions

+many microphones on ltd's drum kit. eleven including beyer m201 on the snare, akg d112 on beater-side kick, cad m179 on front of kick tunnel, oktava mc012s for stereo room mics, oktava mk219 for overdrive backroom mic, akg 1000s on hi-hat, sm58 undersnare, shinybox ribbon microphone as mono-overhead, 3 dynamic mics on tom-toms (switched from using at4047 & at4050)

+ casimer played his trusty gibson rd artist (designed by dr. robert moog, r.i.p.)

+burgundy looking very much the 8 hour session musician he is recorded with casimer's brother's 1970s fender p-bass sans 1st string

Don't let me down!

2006-01-10T23:40:00.000-05:00

Happy this & that

2006-01-05T09:32:00.000-05:00

Now that the holidays are being forcibly forgotten it is time for the employees of PAS/CAL, LLC to get back into the Romantic Air Recording Workshop. The Workshop management has purchased some new equipment including a second audio interface that will allow us to record up to 16 trax simultaneously; we have now entered the 20th century---yes, I said the twentieth century! With this acquisition combined with the purchase of an Asian manufactured ribbon microphone we are totally cutting-edge circa 1968.

Our goal is to have the recordings completed by the 1st day of March (we gotta get it done before the Ides, y'know?!).

There will be frequent updates during the next two months...

Il buon tempo verra!

{csmr}

O Tannenbaum

2005-12-09T23:22:00.000-05:00

{Christmas at the Workshop}

We have been locked in the Romantic Air Workshop over the past weeks recording some newly written Holiday classics that we will debut at our live Christmas Special (on the 17th of December at the Lager House - Detroit).

Organic Panic

2005-11-11T19:43:00.000-05:00

PANIC and I tracked some wonderfully over driven organ the other night. After many failed attempts with his short-circuiting Juno we turned to my old faithful Ace-Tone for the elusive timbre we were looking for. The poor thing hasn't been tuned in years and sounded like Edith Bunker crooning "Those Were The Days". We popped the top and started twisting stuff with makeshift screwdrivers...namely authentic Gene Corduroy brand guitar picks.

One of my favorite lil' tricks with the Ace-Tone is turning it off whilst holding down a key or ten. The notes bend and moan until it wheezes into silence. It is one of those magical lil' things that make digital/soft synths dull in comparison; when you turn them off...they're off, man! Total dullsville. Well, the off-button technique became necessary when we wanted to play a dead A key...Panic found that if he played an A# and turned off the organ just at the right moment it approximated an A. Pretty sneaky, huh?

For those who care about such things, we used a small Fender Vibro Champ (c. 1970) recorded with a AT4047 about 3 inches from the grill cloth into a Universal Audio 2108 mic preamp patched into a Layla24 all tracked with Cakewalk Sonar on a despicably aging PC.

La, la, love ya...

{csmr}

Over his shoulder...

2005-11-08T00:29:00.000-05:00

And Even More Tales From The RAR Workshop

2005-10-24T12:06:00.000-04:00

{my drst cmrds}

He came back...

...and we made beautiful musique together!

Mssr. Naud is a funny man. Funny in that his musical personality mirrors his everyday personality. This is funny because most often you hear about musicians who go from being pathetically passive non-descripts to obnoxious axe-wielding vikings once they leap upon a stage (or enter a funny lil' studio for that matter). This doesn't describe Trevs...he is always a gentleman, always considerately worried if perhaps he might be playing too loud, and never dresses in fur that he has skinned himself.

{csmr}

even more tales from the RAR Workshop

2005-10-19T13:03:00.000-04:00

{frnds}

Over this past weekend I welcomed the ever debonair Trevor Naud into the Workshop. He brought a small arsenal of lil' boxes that tended to make grotesque the signals that were passed through them. We spent hours recording flipped, chopped, stretched, and bashed bits of sound for use on the song Citizen's Army Uniform. Going against my usual method of working on a 5 second musical section for at least 4 hours, we simply pressed record and away we went. He with guitar in hand gently---at some points rather viciously---fingered the strings way up high on the neck of the guitar whilst I manned the dials of the boxes...twisting them back and forth and back and forth again, causing much sonic surreality & a certain finessed filth. I think it will become my job to make sense of the session; Nuad is very much the rock-'em-then-leave-'em type. Please come back, please...

La, la, love you,

{csmr}

More tales from the RAR Workshop

2005-10-03T17:31:00.000-04:00

{my dear, dear people}

Well, I spent a good deal of time in the Workshop last night listening to some tracks that we recorded earlier in the year that we thought would make up the bulk of the album. There is a rather long & arduous tale that goes along with the reason as to why these recordings might not make the track listing on our full-length. It is all very confusing. We are not really sure how to even handle speaking about it at the moment. In any case, I feel we need to do something about these songs. I loved the liberties we took with their arrangements; most were based completely on improvised structures---a definite departure for us. Listening back to the tracks I remember how excited we were by the experience. The spirit of those sessions have actually informed & inspired many of the latest tracks we have been writing/recording. So whether those songs are ever properly released or not...they have value.

We'll figure this all out, I'm sure. Things are just getting a little weirder as I was informed (thanks Missy) this morning that someone from our ranks has apparently leaked one of these songs to a friend who then put it on her podcast. So, I dunno...I'm rambling...it is just all kind of mixed up. When everything is said and done we may have two completely different records on our hands. Ugh!

{csmr}

Coniglio Gigante.

2005-09-27T08:39:00.000-04:00

Okay, so this isn't so album-related, but it was so impressive that I had to share.

http://www.gelitin.net/mambo/content/view/31/71/

Love forever,

Nathan

RAR East Coast

2005-09-26T12:26:00.000-04:00

Ah well, back to old NY for another week of pretending. Spent 55 hours of the weekend in Detroit - just enough for a lotta practice, a little group therapy, another lotta recording and sound sculpting. Highlight: 6 of us back together in one room recording. Higher Light: Betty Marie, Trevor and I [Tara passed out on sofa] watching the video for Rod Stewart's Tonight I'm Yours at 5am Sunday morning. Lowlight: Cops busting up two un-fun house parties. Cops. It was, um, how do you say in American... stupid I guess. Lowest Light: A 6:30am flight back to make work on time... feeling a bit furry as a result ~ Gene

PS - Learned how to cup my strings real good. Like pro. Earned nick-name of Captain Cup'em.

Recording Four.

2005-09-24T23:03:00.000-04:00

Recording Three

2005-09-24T20:58:00.000-04:00

Recording One.

2005-09-24T19:11:00.001-04:00

Recording Two

2005-09-24T19:11:00.000-04:00

Tales from the Romantic Air Workshop

2005-09-19T09:45:00.000-04:00

{my drst frnds}

I could still sense the gritty musk left by young Burgundy from his latest stint in the Workshop as I entered. Whether from his age or from some late night flitting around the city, Burgy tends to get tired swiftly and this past night of recording we didn't lock up the studio until after 2am. The boy was pushed to be a man and boy did he make this man proud. I was so inspired by his crafty, sing-songy bass line that it made me wanna erase the electric guitar bits I recorded well over a fortnight ago. So that's just what I did. I cranked up the RAR recording system, located my tracks, and without thought clicked delete. I grabbed a borrowed 40+ year old Harmony semi-hollowbody guitar, plugged it into my brother-in-law's VibroChamp, set up a close and a far mic, and went right to it. Burgy's bouyant bass liberated my normally stiff conception of what a rhythm guitar track (one that has the rather adult responsibility to maintain the song's chord progression) should do. I found that if the bass decided to build a lil' melodic staircase after a vocal phrase, my guitar was all to eager to climb up it and slide down it's banister. I actually had quite a bit of fun recording the parts! Normally, I will beat myself into submission, torturing myself with the idea that if I record just one more take...this one could be absolutely perfect. Perhaps I just need a lil' Burgy musk before each session to calm me down...

{csmr}

I look fine.

2005-09-17T16:03:00.000-04:00

In my Citizen's Army Uniform.

Well, we're through channeling the ghost of Trevor Bolder - though he isn't dead. He looks pretty nasty & melted, though, from what I saw on that T Rex documentary T Naud brought over the night I was researching He-Man on the internet. In any event, Caz says to call it 'glam' is to do it a disservice. It's better than glam. It's...un-glam? I'm all acrobatic on it, doing flips & twists I didn't know I had in me. It's got history written all over it & in it. I'm excited.

Love,

Nathaniel Francis-Houzenphephire Burgundy IV

Citizen's Army Uniform.

2005-09-14T18:44:00.000-04:00

We're working on it. Good stuff.