music, and the making thereof with limited time available.
In February a bunch of friends decided to do the RPM Challenge. It's the musical equivalent of nanowrimo: you give yourself a month to write and produce an entire record. Which sounded like great fun, but when could I possibly fit that in? I resisted until the last day of January, when I finally walked into the kitchen and told Bradee "we're making a record next month". She was game (of course), and off we went.
We failed.
But not for lack of trying. We wrote about a dozen songs (half of them at the breakfast table, after Saturday pancakes, with the kids running around), we worked and recorded every night that we could, we had friends do guest spots, we blocked out a day and tracked drums. We named our band, we shot an album cover. We just didn't finish. Which makes sense: we didn't shut off any of our lives for February, we just stacked the record project on top of everything else we already do.
So on March 1, we admitted defeat, put the record project down and started catching up on the projects we had let slide. We will finish our RPM record, I just don't know when.
But I do want to point out a few records that my friends made, which I think are pretty great. My favorite is Leatherback - H is for Hospital, which my friend Sean did more or less on his own. It's a mostly instrumental wide-eyed take on King Crimson and lo-fi pop, and I really love it. Also notable is Horse Blankets, a sloppy Motown-inspired joint from our hero (and KWC guitarist) Jason Pace. And a shout to KWC bassist Ian Miller's Lath & Plaster.
As for me, in the last few weeks I mixed Replicator's farewell EP. It sounds great. There's one song on their myspace page, and I think they'll make the rest available soon.
As soon as I finished that, I started mixing a full-length for [mandelbrot set]. They live in Croatia; they mailed me 20 gigs of basic tracks on DVDs. Go brave new world!
Lastly, KWC is playing tomorrow night. (it's Replicator's final show.) If you're in the Bay Area, come out. It should be pretty loud and disastrous.