The Last Generation Of Fidelity

Events coming up this week.

2010-09-29T08:46:00.000-07:00

Thursday, September 30th.
A pre-noise fest event will be happening at the John Natsoulas Gallery in Davis, CA. The event starts at 7 pm and is FREE. The acts performing are: XOME, Chopstick, Mama Buries, Smite!, Overdose the Katatonic(Seattle), Striations, Hammond/Shawn/Corcoran/Steed Quartet. Should be a good, great set. The acts range from free-jazzy to utter harsh disease inducing noise.

Friday and Saturday, October 1st and 2nd.
Norcal Noise Fest XIV

If you know me well enough you should be familiar enough with the Noise Fest. The title alone should strike enough curiosity in you to spend $10 and 10 hours in a room full of people that want to change your definition of music.

Come out. Visit. Say hi. Buy me a coffee.

In other news, yesterday afternoon Lob and I drove out to Access Sacramento to do a Chopstick performance and promote noise events on the cable access show, Listen Up Sacramento. The show will air on October 21st at 11pm on Comcast channel 17.

Contact Mic's for sale.

2010-09-28T14:24:00.001-07:00

I made a few contact mics for sale at the Noise Fest. Here are the different designs created. Also, I hope to get some paint before Friday to give them some color.

The Tadpole. The Tadpole is good for mounting on an instrument as the jack and mic are separate. ($15 each. Total available: 3)

The Chess Piece. The mic and jack are solid together. This gives less risk of breaking later. These mics will be good for hand held items. ($15 each. Total available: 4)

The Gender Confused. This one is quite confused of it's gender. The design will make the artist think twice about how to use it. ($7. Only 1 was made).

The Corky. This one wasn't designed with a different style jack, created with the "artist on a budget" in mind. ($7. Only 1 was made).

All of these mics can be mounted permanently to an object using JB Weld or mounted temporarily with duct tape. Using epoxy to mount these might burn off the coating.

08-30-10 Psychedelectro Night at the Hub

2010-09-15T20:20:00.001-07:00

When I started this blog it was my original intention to do this sort of thing: A show will happen; I will get a decent recording of it; upload it to a file sharing site; share it with the world.

It's freaking work. I managed to take care of this tonight because someone was really bugging me about it. Granted I promised him I would do it, and a half month has gone by. I'll get better at my turn around production one of these days.

Regardless, here is the recordings I got from the Psychedelectro Night at the Hub which happened on 08/30/10.

Lob had written up a good background story of the night here:
Instagon 545

Get it here

Some music updates for the blog.

2010-03-17T14:19:00.000-07:00

SZR

I found out that the SZR album we recorded wont be released. You can check Blake's statment on his blog: http://blog.superzapperrecharge.com/

Also check the previous blogs there for the pictures of the recording session, which were taken by the talented James Collins.

Night Nurse

After our recent show, we got asked to play picnic day in Davis. All my pages will be included with that information as soon as I get proper confirmation from the KDVS crew.

chopstick

Chopstick is going in a new direction. I've been planning this for a few months now actually. I've been tinkering with programming beats with intention on moving towards breakcore and chiptune writing. Examples of this can be hear at my super deformed chopstick page. SDCHOP is suppposed to be short and annoying, a seemingly retarded version of chopstick.

Last night I started programming music with intention on using it in chopstick, still fitting the dark electronic sound that chopstick has developed into. It's still going to be dark, cuz I'm a dark person and that's how we do it.

Warm Streams

Warm Streams hasn't practiced in a couple of weeks, taking time off until the next gig. I believe stuff is coming up, but I haven't checked my calendar as of yet.

Night Nurse 03/09/10 A Recap

2010-03-17T14:07:00.000-07:00

On March 9th Night Nurse played the Java Lounge / 16th St Cafe. This was the first time I had played with them since October of 2008, which also was at the Java Lounge.

Also, I'm noting that most of the shows blogged about here thus far have been at the Java Lounge.

Does this tell you much about the state of the music scene in Sacramento?

But this helps fanbase, seriously, when everyone just needs to attend a couple places to see their favorite acts.

The first band that played was the Magi-kool Doods. The drummer had gone through a number of costume changes and their style was hilarious with songs about masterbation and pooping.

A band from France came, Gunslingers and really rocked the place. They played for over an hour, however. I had heard something about when bands tour Europe if they don't produce an hour worth of material they'll be boo'd off stage. This made a lot of sense when they did about 6 songs more than I could handle.

Night Nurse didn't play until midnight. With Night Nurse there is never really a set start time or introduction. Once each member has their equipment setup, the sound test is the beginning of the performance, in a sense.

Performing this night was,
Chad Stockdale
Art Lessing
Flower Vato
Nurse Toothtar
Aaron
Myself

We had setup our equipment at different parts of the room. Mistakenly I setup my theremin next to the bathroom, so any foot traffic past it would ruin what I was playing. I have a recording of it which I haven't listened to yet. Night Nurse performed for 25 minutes. If I like it, and it's good, you can have it, just send me an email.

Heck, send me an email anyways.

2010-01-28T22:09:00.000-08:00

Mark your calendars. This Saturday evening will be SZR's last show. The live set will be recorded to be released at a later time.

Thanks!

It's a zoo

2010-01-27T12:50:00.000-08:00

A brief summary of the southern California trip:
Friday evening, after work, the Martin's pick me up and we drive to Santa Nella to have dinner at Split Pea Andersen's.
Continue driving, arrive at LA at 1 in the morning. Socialize with Josh and family.
Saturday morning, wake up late, have a delicious breakfast, drive to San Diego. Original plans to go to the San Diego zoo flopped due to time issues and change destination to the Stone Brewery.
Drink and take tour of brewery.
Drive to Steinhaus, socialize with attendees and prepare for show.
Shit pickle was awesome. Mermaid was awesome. We did great, despite microphone issues.
Left for tacos. Delicious tacos. Arrived back at house to announcement of someone stealing other people's things.
Got stolen items back. Socialize until 1:30 in the morning. Found a hotel room for the night.
Hotel bathroom had cigarette stains.
Sunday morning, returned to Steinhaus for breakfast. Drove to Costa Mesa.
Newport beach, Had a donut. Attacked by seagulls.
Arrived at World Gallery, setup for show. Ran into a few familiar faces. Hit on girl with glasses, tight jeans with sparkly things on back pocket. Her name was Amber.
Drum snare broke during set.
Saw giant projected cock during Cockwind's set.
Drove back to LA. Passed out while Martin complained about a Wii game.
Monday morning drove around LA. Replaced drum head. Ate delicious vegetarian Scotch Eggs. Later ate delicious ice cream at Scoops. Later ate delicious burger at Umami Burger.
Spent $100 at Amoeba records.
Arrived at Pehr Space at 10. Got a free beer from Kill Kill Kill. Lost free beer while setting up equipment. Saw more familiar faces. Met new faces.
Saw giant projected cock during Cockwind's set.
Drove back to Josh's place. Watched last episode of Conan on Hulu.
Tuesday morning, drove back to Sacramento.
Also note that while at the Stone Brewery I bought a 40oz canteen full of Ruination IPA, which I drank throughout the weekend. As for 'partying' goes, that was it. I could (and eventually will) go into further details of each evening. At the moment I wanted to get the cliff notes out of the full weekend.
Getting attacked by seagulls on Newport Beach was quite exciting. Although I wasn't literally attacked. I threw a portion of a donut to a single seagull and within seconds fifty seagulls showed up and started hovering around me. They were following my every move, waiting for me to throw another donut. As soon as my bag was empty they subsided. I kept shouting to my friends, "Someone take a picture!" But they were running away from the seagulls. They were quite pissed once they figured out it was me that fed them first.
The venue we played at in Costa Mesa was a nice gallery, however we had a few snags. There were live caterers that were constantly cooking up food. We kept eating the whole time. Chips, tacos, ribs, steak. There was constantly something available that was delicious.
The gallery had on display a series of photos. I usually enjoy photography, however this series was as if someone went out with friends, took photos, and put those photos that were in focus (or those that weren't in focus but looked 'artistic') on walls in an art gallery.
When we started playing, Martin noticed his snare sounded funny. He reached underneath and noticed that the head was busted. We finished the set with the busted snare and took note to find a music store Monday morning.
We played with Cockwind twice. Cockwind is a gay Hawkwind cover band. They had a live visual dj playing trippy visuals over gay footage. It was pretty hilarious.
Actually I'll correct that, the bands we played with twice were Cockwind, Stress Ape and The Choke.
Stress Ape was a doomy band with lots of synth noise, which I enjoyed. The Choke was heavily influenced by early punk.
In all, it was a very enjoyable trip. There were hardly any snags, and those that we had weren't stressing at all.

12/09/09

2009-12-11T12:59:00.000-08:00

On 12/09/09, this previous Wednesday, Warm Streams played with Reno's Short Hair and local acts Flower Violence and my personal favorite KNIFETHRUHEAD.

The order of the night was

-Flower Violence

-Warm Streams

-Short Hair

-KNIFETHRUHEAD

Flower Violence really surprised me. At first I was mad at how young they were and how expensive their equipment was, seemingly.

Once they started playing they dished out some great technical metal riffs and blast beats. Their singer was tall. Tall singers that scream really frighten me. Also short singers.

While in high school I had a friend that sang in a hard core band. He was at least five inches shorter than everyone else. He also coupled this shortness with wide legged jeans and large puffy skater shoes. This didn't help his stature much.

After Flower Violence finished Josh, our singer was talking with the singer from KNIFETHRUHEAD, Kenny about who should go next. Neither one was going to make a decision. Martin interjected, made Warm Streams play 2nd just to get it over with.

Playing with Warm Streams has been a lot of fun so far. Songs are fast and raw and people respond to it well. It's a good change from performing noise. After a show with Warm Streams people will ask if we're playing anywhere soon, or if we're playing new songs vs old songs.

After performing chopstick people will ask what it was about. But I'll try to not over analyze people's reactions.

Anyways.

Short Hair from Reno played third. They played a really good set. The guitarist would set up some ambient loop that would play either through songs or in between songs. Jim pointed out to me that though he played left handed, he was really playing a right handed guitar upside down. He was GOOD at it too!

The bassist had tattoos of plane silhouette's on his elbow. I don't know why this is relevant, but it's something that stuck with me.

KNIFETHRUHEAD is always awesome. They played for 55 minutes. From my understanding, they played without a set list. They've been local favorites of mine for years and the only band in town I like that I'm not friends with. (Yet!)

I have mp3 recordings of the shows. I may start utilizing rapidshare or megaupload to host the show recordings in the future if people want them.

I use a Tascam DR1 for portable recording. The audio quality is amazing and battery life is reported to be 7 hours. At first I was recording everything at 24 bit WAV, but within the last two months I started 320kbs mp3. I figure, if I'm not going to use the recording on a CD why bother using the highest quality setting?

K, yeah, I'm debating it more as I write. Tonight I'll try to get the mp3 files on a file sharing site or something. I'll try to make this a regular thing.

H.R.S. Benefit Show

2009-11-23T07:32:00.000-08:00

On Saturday evening I was given the opportunity to play at a benefit show. The benefit was for an organization that swaps needles with addicts to help prevent diseases. There was also a bucket full of single use lube and condoms. I had never seen lube in single use packets before.

I suppose I don't get out as often as I should.

Earlier in the day I was scheduled to record with Instagon at KDVS studios. When I realized that I had double booked the day, I told the benefit show that I would be fine playing last. This would give me ample time to travel back from Davis to Sacramento and prepare for my set.

I followed Barbarous Cock, which is an amazing fun band. They stated that they were the headline band. When they finished, everyone left besides a few remaining patrons, people involved with other bands and the benefit.

I wanted it to be romantic to have so few people stay for Chopstick.

I felt unprepared, honestly. Most of my energy was spent in recording. Recording with Instagon was a lot of fun, but tiring. We went through a few repeated songs as well.

The recording studio was a room crammed with shelves of electronics. Not neat electronics either. Like stacks of mail boxes full of tapes and boxes of tape machines and cd players that weren't used any more.

In the corner behind me was a computer setup with the recording software and firewire device. Everything was mic'd up and crammed in this room. Lob will be posting some pictures and a run down of day too. I'll post a link if I find it later.

The lineup for this Instagon was Lob on bass; Dan, Art Lessing, on guitar; Chad Williams on lead guitar; Susan, of (waning), on keyboards; myself on MOOG synth; and someone on sax and someone else on drums. I really should have remembered their names better. The guy playing saxophone only stayed briefly as he had another gig to attend.

Lunch was spent with Dan and Susan at Noodle House in Davis. We all got the Dan Dan Noodle bowl, which is a cheap bowl of noodles in peanut sauce. Very delicious.

Their "imported beer" included tsingtao and heineken.

Playing at the Java Lounge was interesting. With a co-owner passing earlier in the year and friends leaving for other opportunities one can only hope the place stays the way it is. If there are changes it better be for the best. It might go south. I'm afraid of that.

That's another chapter for another time, I suppose.

Chopstick didn't play until 12:00. I didn't require much space, so I was able to play with Barbarous Cock's bass amp next to me. Dan let me borrow his bass guiar, rather Mark's bass, and an extra cable. Again, I was kinda unprepared.

Someone later told me that they left with intention of coming back at my "next song." Most people were surprised I had "one song," which I thought was funny. These people hadn't seen a noise set before.

I got a shirt and a poster of the event. I commented how happy I was that they spelled it chopstick, singular. I had seen a posting online of the event where I was chopsticks, plural.

Through the night, friends of mine were attending a metal show at a pub in town. They were texting me to join them there. I never made it because of how late I got to play at Java Lounge. When I arrived home, I found them sitting on my porch. They were drunk and happy to see me.

Also they left a few drunk voice mails for me. Of which I post as soon as I figure out how to get them off the phone and onto the internet.

Sunday was spent drinking beers, playing nintendo and watching movies. We found Santa's Slay on cable and determined that we needed to find it on DVD and make it a holiday tradition.

With Santa's Slay, Santa was the son of Satan who was forced to do good deeds for 1000 years. The 1000 years were up and now the slaying begins.

**UPDATE**

Link to Instagon's post on the recording session.

1st Posting!

2009-10-21T14:17:00.000-07:00

This is the first posting of The Last Generation of Fidelity, which will be an ongoing music related blog.

My name is Andrew Wayne. I play music. I play noise. I over analyze everything. Now I'm going to start writing about it.