Early Thrasher: The Channel

You’ve been waiting for new video for a while. Well now we are taking off accross the country to shoot a crazy documentry!

The Thrasher Report is heading to Leeds! We will be drinking heavily! Maybe we’ll do a morning show live from Leeds! We set off Tuesday. We return with new video on Thursday.

Stay tuned. Peace out.

John, get Serendipty done buddy. We’re launching the new season!

Where we’re heading… we dont need roads!

I don’t know if its just me. If its some disorder I have. I suspect others feel the same a lot of the time. Some times its hard to combat the immense ups and downs in life. You find yourself expending so much energy into projects, doing everything right, and finding that still nobody takes interest. You can be sincere, well meaning, and not half bad at what you do, and still you accomplish nothing. You find yourself positive, and forward thinking one second and struck down the next. Its not just in activism, but in most things I attempt. It seems like the forces are never entirely in your favour. Some people have to work hard to achieve little more than a trivial or transient gain.

I have a tendancy to over think things.

But there are times of the day when I just think… what is the fucking point. I’ll just leave everyone else to get on with it.

Its easy to get beaten down.

Take my band for example.

Seriously!

Take it!!!!

So I bought a second widescreen monitor yesterday. I hooked it up via HDMI and I now have a 2 monitor setup! I’m staring at it on my desk. I can go full screen with video, another website, messaging service… or anything else in one screen (even play the playstation which is awesome) and browse the web and do anything else I want to in the other screen.

I love it.

I ditched my TV, VCR, and Freeview box for two flatpanel monitors (one of which is also a TV so I can hook things up via scart) and an amazing computer that recieves TV through windows media centre. The space saved is tremendous.

Now if only it played vinyl…

I just saved a new layout on Adobe Premier. I now have a fullscreen video preview of the work in the right monitor, and a fullscreen timeline in the left. Totally awesome, this is going to make editing video so much less annoying. From a shitty low res laptop to 2 high res monitors. Really awesome. Quad core. Dual monitor. What more could I want…

… octo core?

Booking studio time is a nightmare. Just got off the phone with Jase for the second time today. Things are still up in the air because The Plight (you may have heard of them) are in the studio in August recording their album. Their dates are pending so we’ve penciled in the end of August. They’re on tour through to the end of July so I think we’ll stand a chance of grabbing the first week in August myself. Just gotta keep bugging Jase I guess.

Exciting times though.

Its funny how we’re loads more prepared this year, and yet we may be entering the studio later than last year’s unprepared nightmare.

Gives us time to mull stuff over though. I’m glad I checked in with Jase today. I knew I should have rang him in January… although I probably would have gotten the same response if we were looking at August. An October release seems likely… even though its the wrong time to put a CD out… considering if we do get out on the road it’ll be July/August.

Nailed that short song today. Keeping it simple, in the vein of (I hate that phrase) TLA and None More Black with a dark, hardcore edge and a Dearly Beloved drum beat. Nice.

Lyrical miracle. Demoing a tune on Wednesday hopefully. Then another the week after. Then another the week after. Then its lyrics and melody, musical alterations and practice through May and June. Polishing up in July. Studio in August. Pressing plant in september…. collecting the records in October… starting next year’s release in November.

… and maybe we’ll squeeze some shows in, inbetween all of that.

WordPress has admin has had a very nice new look since I last logged in. Awesome.

Spent the day playing Final Fanstasy 7, compliling a CD of songs written by Brett Gurewitz, re-realising how good an album “Generator” is, writing music, cancelling gigs and sorting out schedules for recording the Uni Wrong/Pure Graft Split record.

My life is brilliant.

The celestial imagry conjoured by the lyrics to “Beyond Electric Dreams” is amazing. As is the chord progression to the verse and the barely audible spoken word section. Inspirational, and it leads me to believe that these people are working on an entirely different level mentally to me. That being said, I’m only 20 years old and hopefully these skills come with time.

Take 3 minutes to appreciate that:

I wrote a 1 minute 30 second song for Uni Wrong today. Haven’t done that for… 2 or 3 years. I’m really quite excited at how different this batch of songs sounds. I’ve been in a much better mood than usual, but the music is much darker. I think thats why I’m digging generator today. Its like that album had no sunshine in it… but its just outstanding.

Thinking a lot about vocal arrangements, topics and lyrics today. Thats going to be a big part of our next recording. Also thinking about song titles, artwork and pressing costs for the record. Quite a lot to get done in the coming months.

I do think the vocal arrangements let down the last record at times. Something I am determined to rectify. Certain aspects musically were just lazy and wrong too. I have no complaints with the chord progressions, but some riffs were way too simplistic.

I guess its just what the voices in your head sing to you at the time.