The Old Cliche About Crime

'Tubefed' by Halou was on tonight's episode of CSI:NY. We had very little notice of this being finalized so I didn't mention it before. Not sure what the point would've been, anyway, but seems like the kind of thing one blogs about. There you go.

RYAN

Evidence.

Recording full-on these days for so many different things I think I'm losing track. Below are some very brief samples of different elements I've recorded in the past couple of weeks.

One
Two
Three
Four

Sybil and Caesar

Suffering here in California from hurricane Sybil - the multiple-personality weather thing is utterly baffling. Amazingly temperate here right now. The heat has the corks lifting out of all my Chardonnay bottles, strangely enough.

Last night, Rebecca and I struggled with a new track we're calling 'Lunatic' for the moment. This one is just so different than what we usually do that I think we had no strategies in place to come up with things that worked easily. Every addition was a struggle, but I think in the end we nailed it. Sounds nearly finished and there's nothing on it but bass, drums, guitar and vocals. Something refreshing about that, actually.

All the projects I've been mentioning here lately are going very well, in fact. Finding myself behind a personal goal I've even managed to do quite a bit of work on what I imagine will become the next Invisible Ballet record. Looks like we're about 1/3 of the way there on that one. Possibly 2007, but who knows.

Rebecca and I have been totally swept up in Season 1 of Rome. I'm hardly a historian, but Rome is a dark part of our past I know very little about. This show, though very obviously 'produced', is a user-friendly way to get familiar with the time period. As close as I can figure it based on what I've seen so far, Rome suffered from a duality represented best by knives and breasts. The original sex and violence, I suppose. Captivating.

RYAN.

Saturation.

With regard to musical activity, 2007 is already looking a lot like 2005 for me. Busy.

Rebecca and I are far along on another new Halou track - this one sounding less like any previous Halou material than any of the new tracks. It feels great when that happens. Very much against the idea of repeating previous ideas and goddamn electronic music clichés, though it becomes more and more clear as we go that this is more in the ear of the listener than anything else...

I managed to put together some music for a new short film called 'Sweet Candy.' This project is being produced/directed by the same team that did 'Quality Of Life' and I've contributed 3 songs - one of which is a preliminary version of a new Invisible Ballet track.

I'm also putting together a short release comprised of rethought versions from the 'Beneath Trembling Lanterns' album for Dynamophone. Most likely to be part of the new 'Parcel' series of releases, this will likely consist of around 20 minutes of fairly ambient reworkings of a few of those songs. I'm very excited about the way it's sounding so far and I think it will make a nice companion to the album. The packaging is also going to be something else...

I'm awaiting more tracks from Rigil for production/mixing. I think he's settled on the name 'Concertina Heart' for the album, which just seems to fit so nicely with the tone of the material. This will be a special release, I think. We should see it out in the fall of this year, I think.

I'm also in the preliminary stages of work with two new aquaintances, Yousuf and Amman Abassi, whom I will be working with on their upcoming debut album for Dynamophone. This also promises to be something fantastic as the rough tracks are already favorites.

RYAN

(Short) Films

Sunday night I spent some time working with some filmmaker friends of mine placing music into a short film they had just shot. Ben and Brant are the pair largely responsible for Quality Of Life, a film we (Halou) did some music for a couple of years ago.

I was able to comb the hard drives and find several pieces that seemed to fit fairly well and it looks like they'll find their way into the finished cut. Not Halou songs, but just some things that hadn't yet found a home.

More on this as things progres...

RYAN

Spring Is Here

Call me a dogmatic liberal, but I can't help but feel guilty for enjoying the amazing weather we've been having around here. Tonight, the evening air was warm and fragrant and had me just about convinced I had been whisked forward into early Summer.

Lots of business and mixing and troubleshooting going on this weekend - all of which was rendered trite by the amazing brunch earlier today.

Onto another week!

RYAN

In Multiples.

I guess I've been too busy to write here for the last several days. The many projects I/we are working on have really kept me face-to-face with the computer screen staring at waveforms.

The new Halou track we're working on has developed a little bit. After the installation of Battery 3, I was able to get some really amazing drums onto the second verse. The leap in quality between Battery 2 and 3 is just unbelievable. I'm really loving the vocal melody and the way the track develops as it goes along. I'll most likely record some acoustic guitars this afternoon.

The Rigil project for Dynamophone is progressing well, also. I've dramatically enhanced the track that has been most problematic. The ending now features several different guitar things and I'm contemplating extending the ending quite a bit. We're all very excited about how this release is shaping up. Could become a highlight of 2007 for our catalog.

Last night, I spent a couple hours on 'Cantus' by Evan's Curium project. Essentially, an extended ambient piece propelled by a Latin incantation, I primarily focused on eq/compression and spatializing. The results are sounding promising and this should be finished up and ready for release very soon.

RYAN

New Song Begins.

Last night I put together the beginnings of a new song (finally). I have wrapped up all the software installations and can now get back to making music, which feels really good. As always, I go long periods in between writing Halou songs, but I usually do them in clusters.

This one, for now, we will call 'January' and we will track its progress here on the blog and see how it ends up.

Last night, I focused on coming up with a percussion figure to anchor the track. Once I had that going, it was easy to find complimentary instrumentation and some of the new tools I've been gathering made it incredibly easy. Rebecca, in typical fashion, hummed along from the beginning and had a solid vocal going right away.

Next time, I'll try to get some video of work on the track...

RYAN

ARCHIVE: Building The Studio

A few years ago when we moved house and I built my studio I posted my progress online. I just found the page and you can see it here if you like.

RYAN

Back-end Bits

I imagine this might be as fun to read as it is to write - which is to say, 'perhaps not very' - but I persist.

I have been working quite steadily on Dynamophone-related business for the past week, filling my days with mixing, recording and hypothesizing about how to get the most out of the audio one is given. Thankfully, the audio I've been given is quite good, so the challenge is for me to present it in the best possible light. Prerequisite for this being, of course, that I shall get no sleep - and should sleep come, I must dream of rising oceans that swallow low-lying lands and force one to make tough decisions about what size wooden plank is sufficient to use as transport across the angry sea. The short version of this story is that I'm pleased with where I'm at on the Rigil project and the first 'serious' mixes are sounding good to my ear with mainly small tweaking and fun, creative things left to do.

On the Halou side, I have been editing quite a bit of video footage for various things. Video is strange in that we've all been cultured to expect a certain level of 'quality' (dare I use the word?) having grown up in front of television sets. I guess what I mean is, we all know crap when we see it. I have been exposed to just about my fill of crap video lately and, hence, have been putting in some effort learning ways to navigate around that outcome. More on this as things develop.

RYAN

What?

Is Amazon.com actually selling Wiser for $80.00?

REBECCA

Reissuing

We are in the early stages of planning a reissue of our first album, We Only Love You for its 10th anniversary and I've been spending some time gathering up the tracks to include on the release. Of course, the full content of the original album will be included as well as some additional tracks tbd. The lofty goal is to 're-mix' and remaster each track, as well, to greatly improve its overall sound. As soon as things become more solid, we will put it up on halou.com to preorder.

Slow Tools

Pro Tools is a great application. However, as with most updates, the new version has thrown my system into chaos. So much so, in fact, that I'm reinstalling the previous version. I've got a seriously powerful computer and 7.3 is just bogging it down for some reason. Seeing a lot of spinning beach ball. Unfortunately, right now I've got way too much going on to troubleshoot this problem and 7.2 was so stable and quick.

Not Stopping

Right at the end of last year I took on the project of producing a new Dynamophone artist named Rigil. Today, I'm in the thick of things with the first song nearly done. The songs are quite good and they provide enough interest to keep things interesting as I listen over and over. Each track suggests a lot of ideas and I expect I'll be able to move through things rather quickly.

Next week will bring another round of editing live Halou video. We have talked a little bit about putting out a DVD, but it's early days and things are very much up in the air regarding all that.

In the next few days, I'll begin work on a new Halou track, which I intend to chronicle right here from beginning to end. I'm not sure how that works without posting the audio, but that's what makes this whole blog thing so exciting, innit?

Ryan.

The Long Road Home

Seattle, Seattle. We were hardly there, it seems.

14 hours up. 14 hours back. I think there was a show in there, as well. That's right. A lovely town, as ever, but a few little twists can always change things. I'm not sure El Corazon was the right venue for us and things were definitely a little logistically complex.

Rolling up to the club, we parked next to a rather unfortunate fellow laying on the sidewalk underneath the freeway ramp tucked into layers of blankets and sleeping bags. I continue to be confused about what causes this kind of thing that can't be addressed in a reasonable way. Here's a problem with no politically-viable constituency to raise its profile.

Inside the club, things we're more cheery. All the other performers on the bill were very kind. I'm afraid I didn't get a chance to catch any of the music during the evening. It's always great to catch up with old friends that have been coming to our shows over the last few years and this was a good occasion to do that.

The performance itself was enjoyable. I think we've played better, but I was happy with it. It's hard to play in those starkly-lit venues where there's no 'ambiance' at all. I'm hardly into huge billowing fog, but a little haze can give things a little bit of something that's otherwise just missing. We're all still really enjoying playing the new songs and I think those went well.

So, what's next? There are a lot of small projects we've got in front of us before we really start nailing down the album sometime in March/April. We probably won't be playing much in the next few months for this reason, but things change. As details emerge, we will post them here.

Ryan

Soundchecking

We're here at El Corazon at about 9:20 and just wrapped our soundcheck. Went flawlessly, which is just what you hope for after making a 14 hour drive through the ice-decorated Northwestern highway landscape. Next on the agenda has to be food and wine.

I've never made the trip up here with so much of the terrain covered in ice and frost. You can't help but get in the Christmas spirit as you drive through Tacoma, its countless neon stripmalls glittering beneath blankets of shiny white. Northern Oregon, in particular, was really dazzling with its distant mountains taking on a silvery hue as the shadow mixes with the flecks of white.

More soon.

Ryan.

Order Delay

Normally, orders are packed on Sunday and shipped Monday or Tuesday. Because of our impending Seattle trip, orders placed through halou.com this week will be packed 1/21 and shipped on 1/22 or 1/23. We apologize for the delay.

If you have an urgent need, there's always iTunes!

Thanks!

REBECCA

VIDEO POST: Tubfed Live

OK, so we've finally got the first of the multi-camera live videos done:
(For some reason, there's about a 13 second blank screen at the beginning)

AUDIO POST: R/R Coseboom - 'Untitled'

As I mentioned a few days ago, Rebecca and I recorded a simple live version of an old Cure song called 'Untitled'. We don't really 'do' cover songs for our records, so I figured this would be a good entry for an audio posting here, besides my pocketbook can hardly afford to send checks to Mr Smith & friends...

Bloggers and podcasters, go ahead and play it where you will, thanks:

R/R COSEBOOM - UNTITLED

(written by Smith/Tolhurst/O'Donnell/Gallup/Thompson/Williams)

Show Update

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