Everything Is OK - The video

Halou’s “Everything Is OK” Video has been entered in the “You Tube Underground” contest for unsigned, independent bands.

We’d very much like this video to win and we need you to vote for us to help make it happen.

How to vote:
1. Log into your YouTube account (http://www.youtube.com ). If you don't have one already, you probably should sign up for one anyway. It only takes a second.
2. Paste this URL into the address line of your browser window: http://www.youtube.com/contest/youtubeunderground?v=XleggvyyFso&from=watch
3. Click the "thumbs up" icon next to the video!

Pass it on and have your friends vote too!

The making of the video



REBECCA:
Every once in awhile, an opportunity crosses our path that seems too good to be true. Usually, they are and we are left on the platform, bag in hand. Copious disappointments make the rare success so much sweeter! I am happy to say that this post is the story of one of those sweet, sweet successes.

In fall of 2004, Count got a call from Kelly Tunstall of Reardon studios. Kelly had heard our music at the Quality of Life premiere party, which was hosted at Reardon Studios south of Market in San Francisco. She said that she was working on a video and was considering using one of our songs. She wanted to meet me first (presumably to see if I fit her idea of what the star of her video should look like). On a cold day in September, I walked down to their offices to meet Kelly, an exceedingly fashionable girl with loads of blonde hair and a long, willowy figure, much like the girls in her paintings. She looked me over and we chatted a bit, had some tea, and looked at her storyboard. I was impressed with the drawings and the storyline and tried not to get my hopes up. She told me that there was another song by another local artist that she was considering.

A week or so later, we got a call back from Kelly saying that she had chosen our song and that we should show up to a shoot at a green screen stage in Emeryville. Kelly and I met once before the shoot to pick out a dress for me to wear. The day of the shoot, I met the puppeteers and the adorable beastie puppets featured in the video, made from Kelly’s drawings. The puppeteers had worked on movies such as Star Wars (the cantina scene) and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (a favorite) and were very adept and bringing the little beasties and landscapes to life.



After hours on the green screen stage interacting with puppets and things that weren’t there, I was let go for the day and I went home to wait and see how everything came out. It took a very long time in post production, editing together Kelly’s drawings and animations with puppetry and live action video, but the end result is exuberant and we are thrilled.

As I mentioned at the beginning of my post, we have entered the video into the YouTube underground contest. We’d very much like this video to win and we need you to vote for us to help make it happen. Please log into youtube and go to this URL: http://www.youtube.com/contest/youtubeunderground?v=XleggvyyFso&from=watch
Then click the little "thumbs up" icon to vote for us!

Thank you so much!

Halfbreath Redux

Among the hard drive detritus that piles up, you sometimes find things that just fell through the cracks. For every project that just flowed from beginning to end, there are five or so that just didn't come together for whatever reason. Now that I've been doing this for as long as I have, I know that it's usually just a temporary lack of perspective that keeps something from getting finished - spend enough time away from it and things will eventually come together.

I've recently found an attempt I made at updating an old song of ours called 'Halfbreath'. The main problem with the original - apart from the dodgy recording - is that it just sounds dated. I made some lazy decisions about drum programming on this song mainly because I had considered it a demo. It was never intended to be released. The trick to redoing it is to deal with the 160+BPM tempo. Drum and bass is something that really doesn't interest me at all, and I suspect it's quite out of fashion nearly a decade later. An even less inspiring idea is to cut the tempo in half and end up with some coffee table electronica bullshit.

Listening back to what I've done, I think I was going back to early Warp Records stuff - not all the way back to acid house days, but to Seefeel, in particular. Their album, Succour, still has a lot to offer and, I think, was quite ahead of its time. Anyway, my memory of that clearly drove what I was trying to do with this particular track and I thought I'd just post a bit of it up here. Who knows if I will ever complete this...

Halfbreath (2005) (short instrumental clip)

- Ryan

This Will All Make Sense.

RYAN:

After a couple of weeks away from Halou music, I spent some time today working on one of the new songs. Something we're doing a bit differently these days is recording a scratch vocal quite early on and I appreciated having that to listen to. Typically, I've completed the structure and arrangements completely before any collaboration has taken place. It's taken a lot of time for me to realize that I don't enjoy the process as much that way. The way we're working now feels more human, somehow - more collaborative. I suppose that's a good way to describe our intentions currently.

Speaking for myself, I am finally aware of what I'm doing. It seems that at some point over the last 18 months or so I've learned how to listen in a new way. Being more constructive with my self-criticism has become valuable to me and, I think, improved my satisfaction with what results from my work.

This evening, I opened up a demo we've been calling 'This Will All Make Sense In The Morning'. Hearing it for the first time in quite a while was a relief. I had remembered liking it a lot, but had forgotten a lot of the details. Tonight, I was able to analyse it and make a few plans about where I think the song should go from here. This resulted in some conflict as it doesn't seem to want or need much more than is there. My instinct is usually to layer and layer and layer. Trying to think in new ways. Difficult.

MSNBC - Halou profile

The online site for MSNBC has an article providing a solid background on Halou. This can be found here.

Making 'Wholeness & Separation' ((Part Two))

Rebecca discusses the evolution of the song, 'I Am Warm':

Listen here.

Making 'Wholeness & Separation' ((Part One))

This is the first in a series of text, audio, and video entries relating to the making of the new Halou record by members of the band and outside contributors:

**

Ryan:

Looking back on the making of the record, I sort of divide it up in my mind into two halves - the songs written just after "Wiser", and the more recent songs done after moving house.

Many of the older songs were done in the dark back room studio I had set up in our old place that just felt temporary and uncomfortable. Once we moved into the new house and I built out the new studio, work was much more relaxed and productive. Might have something to do with that floor-to-ceiling window...

For most of this record, we worked as we did on "Wiser": I put the demos together at our place in Marin and we finished things up at Count's in San Francisco. This time, Count took a couple of trips out to Dallas to record drums and guitars which really gave a couple songs the attention they deserved. Also, our new studio in Marin meant the countless trips over the Golden Gate Bridge, the long waits sitting still on Van Ness, and the late night drives home listening to rough mixes slowly became a thing of the past and made way for heightened wine consumption and puddles of DigiDelivered audio files.

**

So, for this part of the story, I thought I would focus on the songs that were near the end of 2001, right as "Wiser" was being released. Though "Wiser" came out in October 2001, it was finished about nine months earlier, so the songs we had written in that time could not be included on the album. Looking back, it was one of our more prolific periods during which quite a few songs came about:

The Ratio Of Freckles To Stars
Ingénue
Night Divides The Girls
One Sunny Day (the outro of which became the track "Separation")

...and four or five others that have not yet been released

It was during this period that we were playing a lot with Greg, our upright bassist, and Elizabeth, the cellist who played with us during the "Wiser" shows. The arrangements of these new songs reflected that lineup and so the demos were little more than bass, cello, piano, a beat, and Rebecca's vocals - occasionally a bit of xylophone or glockenspiel. The reason for keeping things simple like this was (hypothetically) so that we could take each song in a different way once we began 'production' on the final versions.

As it turned out, "Freckles" was the stand-out track of the bunch and ended up being the only one to make it onto the record. Though the others are each interesting and enjoyable in their own way, we chose to omit them for one reason or another - usually to do with the production style. It was important to us to have an eclectic record as opposed to our previous two, which were fairly consistent in tone.


Ryan.

(to be continued...)

Halou Video

tags: halou, ryancoseboom, rebeccacoseboom, count, music, sanfrancisco, wholeness, separation, video

The Separation EP.

As of today, we are accepting preorders for "The Separation EP" on halou.com. PREORDER IT HERE

This EP will be exclusively sold online at halou.com and at all dates on the upcoming Halou US tour. Like "The Wholeness EP", this release features 5 tracks - a mixture of alternate versions and previously unreleased material. Tracklist as follows:

1. Honeythief (Album Version)
2. Everything Is OK (Different)
3. Exoskeleton (Exclusive Track)
4. Far Too Far (Exclusive Track)
5. Tubefed (Instrumental Score from the film Quality Of Life)

"The Separation EP" will ship with orders for the album, "Wholeness & Separation" to arrive on or before the official street date of May 23. Also, remember, the album includes information on how to get a free download of another EXCLUSIVE new Halou track, "Night Divides The Girls".

Thanks for listening!

Begin.

Welcome to the new Halou blog set up to coincide with the released of 'Wholeness & Separation'...