excitement runs high!

well, we're getting pretty giddy over here at the modlins camp. last night i went to Fry's to pick up a new external hard drive (currently the 3 sessions for our album takes up about 75 Gb) and we had no back up of it. so, out of fear the hard drive would crash rendering the album unsalvageable and causing matt and i to go into a bloodlust rampage, we picked up an additional external hard drive.

if you're in the market for one, Fry's has a 320 Gb, Maxtor one for $99.99. it's pretty sweet looking, has both firewire and "hi-speed" USB.

... and while i was down there, matt had told me he was getting me Guitar Hero 3 for my bday last month, but it just wasn't out, so since i was down there i could go pick it up. and i did. and thankfully backing up the files took a little over and hour. enough time to eat dinner, take a shower, and get in a couple games of guitar hero. yeeehaaaaah! My name is Jonas and Cherub Rock!

but yeah, another long night. we were up til just after 2pm, organizing, picking takes (yeah, we're still doing that), getting levels right. it's exhausting. stoph stopped by to pick up some intial mixes and he's diggin' in. so far, on my CD of initial burns today I have:

Bad Night's Sleep
For The Good of The Armor
For The Good of The Armor (alternate arrangement w/ different back up vocal pattern)
Her Political Heart
She Won't Miss Me
Warm Up (Or Say Goodbye) (new recording!!)
We're Not Quite Through
We're Not Quite Through (alternate arrangement w/ piano and more handclaps)
and Intro to another song
With Friends Like These
You Said

it's been very exciting to start listening to the new songs finally come to a near completed state. I won't really be working on the album tonight as i'm 1) driving up with dee to LA to catch kevin drew and the "broken social scene presents spirit if ..." tour and 2) i have to run a conversion this week for a client. tomorrow's gonna be a busy day. probably no halloween festivities for me and if i get done with work at a reasonable hour tomorrow, more working on the album. surprise, surprise.

a preemptive thanks to Patrick Hruby

though the whole cover art/layout has yet to be completed, before i forget i want to say thanks to patrick hruby, yet again, for letting us use his artwork to (most likely) grace the cover of our album. if you guys aren't familiar with his work, you should check it out here: http://patariku.deviantart.com/

he's an amazing artist based out of los angeles and a really good friend of ours. if you're in LA (and i think arizona too!) his artwork is on display in a few galleries. He also has some prints for sale online, i believe. lovely lovely stuff ..... he did this one that you might be familiar with:

this album may kill us

time for another "look what we did/why do we do this to ourselves?" comment.

Friday night would've been a great night for music. a few good shows around town, we really wanted to head out the Ken to catch Red Feathers and Vision of a Dying World, but alas, the album is like an evil girlfriend that demands all of your time. but you love her so much, you don't mind it. though you may be further distancing yourself from your friends, but right now the love is too new, and the possibilities seem endless, so you are hopefully and maybe further down the line you'll find time for both of them.

in short, we didn't make it to the Ken. we instead went to Kyle's place to do the initial mix session. it was VERY initial as we realized we were giving him an audio mess that he instructed us properly how to clean up. thanks kyle! so yeah, then we went home and beat ourselves up in a closet for the rest of the night. saturday was more music. i demo'd two new instrumentals for gen's film (maddie said) and when matt got off work at 4 we worked 'til 8:30. some friends of ours were down to hang out, dress up and karaoke (a couple are leaving to go work in costa rica with sea turtles. jealous?). sunday, resisted the urge to go out and buy guitar hero 3, and matt and i worked on the album til 1:30am. yes, in the morning. BUT!!!! .... we now have listenable versions of 5 songs. i haven't told the boys yet, but stoph and al should be getting some CDs to listen to today, to assess the arrangements and such. the levels are all a bit off, but that will come later.

.... so what does this mean? well for starters, that we missed Anna Troy last night (insert sad face here). we'll probably be missing Swim Party at the casbah tonight (sorry guys!). hopefully we can catch the Secret Apollo/Swim Party/Drowning Men show at the tower bar on friday, as long as we have a productive week. it means, we have many more songs to get to a listenable state.... but it also means that there should be a new song or two debuting in a week or two. excited? i guess the nice thing about being an unsigned, "recording at home (sorta)" band is there's pretty much zero time between the song being done, and the sweet tune hitting your ears.

lastly, i know i promised pictures but, well, you're a forgiving bunch so you won't mind a few more days of just text eh? ...... thanks, i knew you'd understand.

another late night and a busy weekend ahead

last night was a bit of a doozie (sp?). i got back from work at 5:45, al pulled up, we ran through a few more patches he had to fill in. wrapped that up around 7:15. then matt and i hit it hard, filling in any spots where we'd missed vocals, retrying a few new parts. all in all, we worked with almost no stop (minus a 20 min break to make and eat dinner) til 1am.

foolishly, we followed it up with an episode of six feet under (only a few episodes remaining in the last season for us, exciting, but sad).

but the songs are sounding great, it was exciting to hear all the vocal parts and percussion on songs like "she won't miss me" or "with friends like these" ... they're really coming together.

today, we're meeting up with Kyle Thompson after work. he recorded our last album, and he'll be helping us again to do some initial mixing (we'll also be bringing him in at the end to master and make sense of the audio mess we've made).

the forecast for this weekend: Mixing and more take picking. with a slight chance of resings. she's gonna be a busy one. more pics of us messing around in our "recording quarters" to follow this weekend.

san diego fires

as i'm sure most of you know, the san diego fires have been the number one priority, and on everyone's mind this week. our work office has been closed (and probably will reopen at the earliest on thursday). schools across san diego county are closed for the week. the estimated count of evacuees is up to 500k. in mission hills, we've remained mostly unaffected. friends and familes have come over to hang out, or seek refuge for awhile. our friend dan is currently storing all his musical equipment at our place (makes our living room look like a recording studio now ... i guess with his and our stuff, it basically is, well, since we are recording, both up and downstairs). there's not much more i can say on the matter except that i hope everyone is being safe, and all works out in the end.

i've been having to work from home most of the time, keeping up on the news, a friend of kevin's came by to pick up donations to drop off at qualcomm yesterday, so we went to the store about bought 4 cases of water, 2 8packs of gatorade, 2 24packs of chips, Kool aid "bursts" and some soup to take down for kevin, deb, dee and I. hope everyone else is doing okay.

on a lighter note, we've had a busy weekend. won't go into the nitty gritty too much as to what all was record and which songs, but we've been chugging away. we also took a break on saturday night to check out Scolari's office, hosting an excellent line-up. The Shrines played first, and though we missed them, we heard good things from the crowd and look forward to catching them next time around. we caught the minor canon, larger horned pop outfit from LA. matt talked to them for a bit. next up, secret apollo who tore it up with a great set through the classics. lastly, beta lion had a rough start (i blame myself for the power brick i let opie borrow) but they overcame that and finished off the night extremely strong. all in all, a great night. beta lion and secret apollo never fail to disappoint so if you haven't had a chance to check either of these bands out, well ... time to right that wrong.

this week holds a bunch of work as we have to give the rough mixes to kyle so he can do an initial mixing pass on friday, so matt and i are gonn have to pull some "MIA" time to accomplish this. i think we'll also be getting Al back over here for some more vocals.

and if that all wasn't enough, i've been working on the soundtrack to my friend gen's film "maddie said" .... i made 2 songs (1 of which i was told would work quite well for a particular scene, perhaps i'll post the song) ... and last night, kerrie, dan and kevin (all formerly of sinfonia antartica) were playing around working on some stuff for the film. i think dan and kevin recorded a few things today ... we'll see how they came out ..... though this is a modlins blog, so perhaps i should keep to that, but when you're recording this much stuff, it's hard not to go "hey mom look what i did" ...

my room's a mess .. and i still have a bit of work to do today, so i'll end this post now. just letting you all know the fire hasn't got to us, and the album is still on schedule ....

time to buckle down

thanks again everyone for coming out. fans and friends alike, it was good to see you for our last show for awhile. always good to see the swim party and secret apollo kids. and nice anna and bart stopped by as well. so thanks again. and if you haven't been to the brass rail (last night was my first time) ... it's an ... interesting venue. the stage set up has this tier kinda thing. stoph was off to one side. matt, al and i were in a line facing out. hopefully someone took pictures of the show, so we can post something up. but yeah, it's kind of a cool place. perhaps if they got a bigger/better stage set up it might be more suited for live bands. but we still had a good time.

but now it's time to buckle down. aside from an art gallery show in long beach in november, we've got a clean slate until the CD release show, which we're about 98% sure will be dec 14th at the whistlestop.

i've got the night off tonight, but matt's probably gonna be wading through some tracks while i'm out being irresponsible. the weekend holds many hours of take picking and harmony singing. we're hoping to have everything laid out for mixing by the middle/end of next week.

so the next time you're sitting on your couch doing nothing, or out at a bar livin' it up, just think ... "those poor modlin kids are meticulously crafting a delicious new LP for me" ... cuase that's what we're doing. for you. cause we're nice like that. really.

clap your hands say record?

we just didn't get enough with our last studio session, so we're going back. and we're were bring some friends like ... these? i dunno it's early. i've had my coffee but it's doing nothing.

anyway, we're gonna pop in briefly to record some claps with a few friends. then, off to get some grub at Devine Pastabilities (Torpasta!) .... if you've never been, do yourself a favor and head down there. not only are torpastas the tastiest pasta meal ever, but Damien is the nicest guy you'll ever meet. check it out here. i highly recommend the Eggplant Parmesan or the Veggie Meatball (close runner up is the Dayna's Vegan Special ... mmm garlic!)

after that, off to the casbah for Two Gallants and Blitzen Trapper. should be a most excellent night.

sinfonia antartica breaks up!

sad news, just heard that sinfonia antartica is breaking up. this will be their last show together (the one on thursday w/ us). they will also have free burned copies of their EP they were working on. come out, support, and wish them well in future musical endeavors.

the long overdue studio pictures

check our website for the complete set of pics. but here's a couple highlights.


where the magic happened

grandmaster al


learning the new dance steps "1 and 2 and 3 and 4!"








matt hides behind a giant microphone
































stoph in his cubby

a good night's sleep

yesssssssss! last night (i, alex) left the killian-sheridan abode at 11:15pm after finally completing, fingers crossed, the last session of my vocal takes for the album! ate some Chipotle (burrito-bowl with rice, black beans, steak, mild tomato salsa, medium corn salsa, sour cream, cheese, and lettuce), drank a little scotch, and laid down/retouched vocals/backups for pretty much every song on the album, except for a couple songs which, in retrospect, probably means i'll have to go back sometime...


still life: Bad Night's Sleep lyrics, scotch, water, Daniel EP og artwork in bg

but its not too bad if i have to go back, because while i was hard at work, eric was hardly working, going to the store to get ice cream cones, and he came back with Blue Moon's winter beer, Full Moon!



so i'm thinking we'll probably need to get them to use our own Full Moon in all kinds of commercials, get them to sponsor our CD Release Party, and get free beer for life. seems reasonable, right?

ooh, also i just updated the 'space with our two December shows, which just might well turn into the Pre-Release, and Actual Release, for With Friends Like These. pretty exciting!

what a weekend!

so last we left our fearless heros they were holed up in the studio thursday night. Well, it's official. WE ARE DONE ... with the instrument tracks. we're excited, i think they came out better than expected. matt and i then spent a good 5-6 hours on saturday (nothing like singing in the upstairs hallway at midnight) doing vocals for these last songs. sunday was more take picking, and stoph came over to lay down some percussion ideas (shakers, some tambourine, you know .. the good stuff)

schedule for this week?

monday: Al's coming over today to put down the last of his vocal tracks.
tuesday: a practice, little band meeting to prepare for all the albumy details.
wednesday: ... some hand claps and what not .... party times. but we're taking that night off to hit up the Two Gallants/Blitzen Trapper show.
thursday: ya'll should come out to The Brass Rail for us, Sinfonia Antartica and Frantic Romantic. shows gonna be CRAZY good times.

barely a free moment. but .... on the plus side, we've managed to tenatively secure some dates for the cd release .... what's that? did you say Dates? why yes i did ... there will be a pre-release show up in LA the night before the official Release show down in SD (for all those people who complain it's too far to drive to SD, well, we'll do the driving for you, except with our car.. to your city.. not your car to our city, cause well, that's physically impossible, well it's possible, but it would require us to come up to your city, and do it for all of you, you the whinners, which is a lot of you, no i'm not being insulting, just calling em as i see 'em ... oh come on now .. it's okay ... we still love you ..... cheer up. there, don't you feel better .... now where was I .... ah yes ...). so 2 release dates! 2 chances to catch all the new songs. it's gonna be EXCITING. expect the release to be mid-dec, most likely Dec 13th/14th (don't quote me on that) ... and we've got some exciting people to be playing with as well. oh it's all so exciting. i can barely contain myself.

photos and more concrete album release details as they present themselves.

'til then. heads to the grindstone?, and eyes on the road. we've got work to do

and so it is ...

... that our final session in the studio has come and gone. between the many cans of coke and pabst, the half eaten box of hot n' spicy cheez-its, and the busted amp fiasco, we've laid down the final tracks and are happy (er, content) with them. we'll probably all get together to pick the best takes this weekend hopefully, start laying some vocals down and see if we can't peicemeal something together here.

i also felt a bit ridiculous stooping to paparazzi levels with the camera, but i got a few shots of the studio and us playing around. to be posted soon.

off to the studio

quick post before i jet. we're all meeting at the studio at 6ish ... finally! quite excited. wish us luck. hopefully we'll have good things to report in the next few days.

last week, this week

last week was a blast! thanks again to roxy jones for inviting us out for their CD release (and if you haven't already pick up a copy of their new CD "wasn't tomorrow horrible?", pick one up! out now!) thanks to squiddo for the support that night.

and thanks to everyone who came out for the gig show (you know who you are). Hot TV was simply amazing, and Sons and Lovers provided the perfect night cap. if you guys haven't already, go to the gig's website and click the Watch Now icon, you can stream the whole show.

as for this week ..... well, it's already begun. after practice last night, matt and I spent 2 hours picking through more vocal takes of "you said" and "she won't miss me" ... as tedious as it was, i think those two songs might be nearing a finished state. madness, i know.

and .... argh mayhem, we got bumped from our timeslot yesterday, so our NEW AND IMPROVED recording date is this thursday (tomorrow). hopefully this one will stick and we'll have some pictures of the studio to share with ya'll.

in other music news, tonight from 6-8pm at the whistlestop, Secret Apollo is gonna be screening some of their new music videos, and some old ones. it's free and should be a good time.

and sunday, be sure to make it out to the zombie lounge for swim party and the henry clay people. should be an amazing show. we know swim party will tear through their set (hopefully throw in a couple new songs, as i hear they're deep into their next recording at the moment) and henry clay are one of those LA buzz bands we catch wind of. don't miss it!

this sunday, don't forget

flyer by kay lee

broken record?

okay, i'm sure these posts are beginning to sound like a broken record (which is ironic since it's actually completing a record that we're talking about, is that irony?) .... but mr. alex came over again last night, a few more takes of a few more songs. we're the tortoise here ... but we'll win in the end.

practice tonight in prepartion for this weekends up coming shows, but afterwards, matt and i will be back at the computer hitting the takes hard to find the best ones.

as for our last recording date ..... OCTOBER NINTH! ... that's right, the modlins take to the studio one last time to finish off the last of the instrument tracks, officially 3 more to do, unofficially 5 more, whatever that means.

and what are these last 3 songs called you might ask (you meaning .. um, the text window, since i'm sure there are zero readers of this blog):

- her political heart
- bad night's sleep
- for the good of the armor

the next couple weeks will prove to be interesting, and our progress will ulitimately make or break our december release (yes we realize that we're attempting to cram a lot into a little bit of time, but you know what, we're here to make lots of music, not spend years on one album, we'll get to that stage in life at some point) we're doing the instruments live, we're having fun with it, trying not to over think it, so hopefully you won't either. you, the text window, who's stuck with me through this entire post, and who's been there for me for many posts before, and many posts to come. you understand me, you know my strengths, my weaknesses, my loves, my unloves .... your tolerance is high, patience consistent ... unconditional. we should run away together. tell no one ..... i have friends in new mexico. no one will find us. we can live up in the ......

what was this post about again?

phew .... who needs a nap?

so we've been brainstorming how we're going to get this all done. we want to have the album out by the end of the year (clean slate, fresh start for '08) so we're frantically working on the album. matt and i did more vocaling on monday and mr. smith will be swinging by to put his sweet pipes to tape today. we're also working on securing a venue with some local favorites we've either enjoyed or been meaning to be playing with. all in all, things are good in the modlins camp. we just played the tower bar with anna troy, which was a blast, and an acoustic set for loverlee's CD release which went really well. check out loverlee's new CD "musical chairs", it's pop goodness.

this weekend is another busy weekend, saturday evening our friend Emma Goo is having a solo art show down at the magpie boutique/gallery in south park (across from the whistlestop) from 6-10pm. That evening we'll be playing at The Ken Club for Roxy Jones' CD release show. should be a hoot. with squiddo to close out the night. then, the following day heading up to LA for a show with compilation-mates "sons and lovers" at the gig. Hot TV to support. check it.