how to fake funk-soul power

designdesigndesign

2011-05-25T05:31:00.000-07:00

ideas don't have a very long shelf-life in my mind, so unfortunately if things don't get nailed super-quickly they have a habit of disappearing into piles of paper in the corner of my room...the two latest creations took differing stances on this argument but i'm pleased to say that weeks down the line i'm still pretty damn chuffed with my handy-work. here's how they both came about...

as detailed below in the initial plan for the inlay, I had an A3 sheet of space to play with and a vague idea of what I had in mind. i was still feeling love for the "triangles" logo, so pushed the boat out with regards to drawing this out in that arduous style also detailed below. the idea for this inlay is that i draw it all out on A3 and can then just easily copy it myself on any old photocopier - keep it simple, keep computers Out of it!! of course, this means that the previously drawn-out "triangles" logo in the previous blog entry wasn't useable, needed to be done out again. this took fucking hours. well, maybe 3 or 4.

as previously detailed, I used a lamp and a sheet of glass to drawn over a projected outline, but this time didn't outline the actual finished work as decided that felt stifling in the design

i'd worked out the folds and roughly where everything was going to sit, so was fucking rad to see the big ole logo in pride of place atop the A3 sheet waiting for its content to be filled in...

toyed with the idea of switching pens, compared a few, but stuck with the Mitsubishi Jetstream i'd used thus far

i've always loved using my typewriter for inlays, especially for lyric sheets, but for this I was wanting to challenge myself and try something a bit new to me so decided to trace out the lyrics from a typewriter'd source. if i'd have done this with my head firmly screwed on i'd have no doubt used some lined paper to make sure these words were all put in straight, but...yeah...so that was an interesting part of the project, and the wavey left-hand margin was an adaptation after i saw i was screwing the damn thing up!

as i said above, after the initial explotion of momentum the energies start to wane, but for whatever reason i managed to bring myself back to it across a month..probably because it was sat in my livingroom taunting me as the unfinished challenge the whole time!

and after the masses of effort getting the sheet to this stage, it was weird then just simply being able to duplicate the whole thing at the push of a button and having multiples of this headfuck...

So, inlay drawn out, the next stage was to sort a back-print. as below, i'd initially thought about a big live photo, nice and easy solution, but the kid who's pictures i wanted to use didn't get back to me, and by that time i was already more siked on using multiple pics across the back, 18 or so...this proved a headache for my technological limitations (crappy office computer and MS Paint!!), so decided to go with a modified version of the "dots" shirt design, which was by this time now sorted...some printing jiggery-pokery later and BAM i've got myself an inlay! there was lots more tiny incidental stuff along the way, but without waffling too much (!) that's how it was cobbled together. and on some lovely slightly off-white 120gsm card no less. here's the finished thing, got the front-side unfolded on the left, the back-side unfolded on the right and the inlay at various angles!

and by way of stark opposites, this next design was an absolute dream to do, the whole process was so damn easy! it was a doodle that had no intention of being a shirt design, but by the time i'd finished drawing it all out it was fairly obvious it had to go that way..basically, from our "lines" logo i wanted to plot it out via dots on graph paper and play with the idea.

once the rough idea was scribbled down then worked out on the graph paper (best paper in the world!!) a flash of a concept came to me - Repetition!!!

so, back to my tracing technique and across an A3 sheet i drew this out :

it was only once i'd surfaced from the dazed hypnotism of my muse that i realised the design, though rad, wouldn't really work on a shirt due to the proportions involved...some basic computer duplications of parts of the design were made to facilitate its crossing over to the cloth medium, and it was looking better, but still somehow unfinished. a signature at the bottom was something i'd toyed with for another shirt design idea, so decided to try it with this and seemed to be the thing the design needed to pull it together.

took a few attempts (and an embarassing mis-spelling that our lass revelled in!) but got some scrawl i was happy with after a few attempts so scanned and chopped this together...2 days later the damn thing was a real life teeshirt!!

and that's it.....oh, and also the dumb flyers....

buy things from us!!!

http://antares.bigcartel.com/

steve

new design.

2011-05-24T03:17:00.000-07:00

once I get the photo's off my camera a full blog on the inlay and shirts design will surface, til then here're pics of the designs I've got on the office computer...

the inlay..this took Bloody ages - the thing was drawn out onto an A3 sheet directly as I didn't have a computer to lay it all out on, the main logo at the top took 3hrs+, no idea how long the rest of it took but was started at 7pm on 6th April and finished at 12midnight on 5th May..the text was typed up on my typewriter then I traced the text through onto the A3 sheet and sorta laid it out by eye. nothing was measured out before-hand, so was a bit hairy at times, but overall I'm happy with how it's turned out. the reverse print is the "dots" shirt design, but an expanded pattern to fill the sheet (the design as it is on the shirt was too small for this reverse-area) and the inlay is printed on a slightly off-white 120gsm card..folds down to a 6-panel fold-out

the shirt..in stark contrast, this one was a breeze of a design to get knocked together. The concept came to me in a flash at 7pm, and by 9pm the whole damn thing was drawn out (again) on an A3 sheet. within 3 days we had the shirt screened. the "enjoy antares" embellishment was added at the final hour as the whole thing just felt incomplete to me. just having "antares" didn't feel right for whatever reason, maybe because it had been said over-and-over-and-over throughout the design I felt it needed a re-phrasing?! who the fuck knows, but think it was a good idea..we've limited numbers of Small and X-Large, slightly more in Large and most in Medium. Heavy Gilden shirts. this is the design :

BUY!
antares.bigcartel.com

steve

i < 3 spreadsheets

2011-05-23T02:10:00.000-07:00

Wow, starting to feel like we're a real goddamn band, here's what's shakin..

We're now 3 gigs into having Jamie on-board filling bass duties, and he's fucking Owning it (check the video from that recent Tomassi gig, first few songs of the set and he looks like he might take someones head off with the moves of rock!). Jamie's been a friend of all of ours for many years, I first met him back in 2001 when his band Purple Sticky Punch (later PSP, then Errander..) played Royal Park Cellars and he's been a sterling gent of a dude for as long as I've known him. Oh yeah, and he drives. And he loves Downset and Madball. Lets face it, I'm in love with Jamie Silver..there, feel better now that's out in the open..

Ahem. And another shock revelation - we now have merch! Our friend Tom Pratt of Printshop screenprinters (and We'll Die Smiling) kindly facilitated my want of 30 shirts - a design appeared out of nowhere on Sunday night, and by Wednesday the thing was an actual physical entity. Have re-designed the CDr inlay..was a monolith of a design, took Insane amount of hours (well, maybe 10-ish?) but was fully worth it (well, for me!! blog entries on this and the shirt design soon..), and hopefully people will dig it. Just took receipt of a stack of the Rolo Tomassi split 7"s , so we'll be selling these at gigs from now on, and we've still got pin badges and bottle openers, these we seem to give away...I've also done the original lyric sheet poster on A3 card, in case anyone ever wants it (I think it looks pretty good, but then I would..!) and, well, there's lots of other fun / weird / pointless things but those you have to come to the gig to see..if you're an e-buyer, we now have a Big Cartel page :

antares.bigcartel.com

I've never done one of these before, so we'll see how it goes, but the page is up so can only assume that orders work, you can give me money over the internet....this is a Massively bizarre concept to my backward mind, we'll see....oh, and gigs..

So yeah, we seem to be in the middle of a right great spree of gigs - not that everything before wasn't, but y'know..the Easter Sunday alldayer with Amen Ra and a shit-stack of other awesome bands was one of the best days out we've had in a long time, Rolo Tomassi lent us their fans for one night only the other week so we got to play to a full-ish room of people who might actually dig our sound, so that was a thrilling experience (people danced, they actually danced!!), and the next thing we've got is an alldayer which has this beaut of a flyer attached to it

then this with our awesome friends Lavotchkin, Crocus and Run,Walk! :

..and gigs with Crocus are being sorted for mid-July, these are down South (more info soons....) and....well, there's more but nowt fully sorted yet.

for now, enjoy the first two songs of our most recent set - am starting to think a live stream of future gigs might be something to sort out :

Steve

new inlay, part one

2011-03-16T09:57:00.000-07:00

With new songs come new releases, and as we've just had a couple of songs surface on a split 7" I figured it was time to give our self-release inlay a check-out, over-haul and update. With the need for a new inlay (always looking for an excuse!!) fresh in my mind, I happened across a supply of lovely off-white rough feeling A3 paper which set my mind racing to what would be possible with a Huge surface-area of inlay to fill...here's my blank canvas

Straight away, the idea to fill up one side with a live pic, maybe use several different ones at this large size so you don't know what poster you'll get...luckily, we've got a handful of good large-format pics to choose from...MS Paint and a minute of playing and this fella is now one side of my planned inlay :

Next up, the actual work begins! I was still wanting to stick with the previous inlay idea (seen in background on next pic) but crank it up a notch, so in classic texan style I just made it bigger! and in following with the shirt design (http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y9/art_is_ego/goldprint.jpg) I thought I'd try the angular thing again. Got the dimensions sketched out whilst at work, looks like it might be OK, not giving much thought to the content at this stage but have roughly laid out where it'll probably land and this'll probably end up being the overall look :

Now I need to re-do this logo Texan-style! First step is to get the thing drawn to the correct lengths n that, next up I do a rough trace of this..my whole thing with this design (and without wanting to get too pretentious on this!!) was the juxtapose of the precise angular against the more organic elemental sketched style, in the same way my vocals in the band act as the more human element against the almost overly mechanical music..to this end, a sloppy trace (within reason!) isn't to be worried about, but the hand held relatively steady so we were all good there.

And now the part I was dreading, the Real work of the piece...but, no point putting it off, and a few hours later (and a fairly cramped wrist!) I had something I was quite liking..

The next stage is getting the text sorted, then cobbling the whole damn thing together...I think there's about 4 hours of pen-to-paper work in my near future, then we should be done with it so should hopefully have this thing released by the Hull gig next week..we'll see..

spin spin, spin the blue (or clear) circle..

2011-02-07T04:08:00.000-08:00

So we can now proudly announce that our next release will be a split 7" with Rolo Tomassi through Holy Roar Records..been sat on it a while cos don't like to count them chickens too early, and we're prone to last-minute disasters! You can get it pre-ordered here now : http://holyroarrecords.com/album.php?id=821
Not yet out for another month though..a choice of either blue or clear vinyl, only 250 copies of each colour so get 'em early.

It's about a month since we recorded and we all seem happy with the songs, now it's just the count-down while I can lay that slab o'wax on the turntable..always sounds best on wax. Still feel too close to the recordings to have an opinion on them, but still feel the vocals are the weak point of it all

Next up, we need to sort more shirts..self-screening was fun but having a decent cache of the bastards, we feel, is the way forward. And with this in mind, a friend of ours has recently started up a screen-printing service, so give his site a check if you're in the market for new band shirts or printed matter : http://thisisprintshop.co.uk/
Will possibly be the same design we've been peddling thus far, though might be something else..we'll see.

And on the gig-front, we're off upto Glasgow for Saturday 9th April, hopefully Newcastle the night before and triple-fingers-crossed, both will be with our brothers Galleons. Talk of more gigs in Leeds, Cardiff, Barnsley and one booked for Sheffield, think we might be over the dry spell! Oh, and hopefully a return to Hull soon.

That's it...be sure to add the Twitter if that's how you roll - antaresfilth - is mostly updated by me whilst at work, is hopefully relevant to band stuffs though!

catcha, Steve

split seven inch release

2011-01-14T07:49:00.000-08:00

Jase has done his magic with the mixing, we've asked for our respective changes to the mix and the tracks have been sent over the interweb to label bossman, now we just wait...I feel like maybe I could've spent a bit more time on the vocals, they sound rushed to my ear, but everything else sounds bloodygreat. guessing that the release might be ready for mid-March..

Studio day 3

2011-01-11T07:49:00.000-08:00

Guitars still need sorting, this took most of the day. vocal o'clock was 6pm, so with took 3 days to just record the tracks looks like we're going to need at least another day for mixing this beast.

Studio Day 2

2011-01-10T03:47:00.000-08:00

They clearly weren't going to need vocals laying down today (tonight is a possibility..) so decided to come to work and earn some money today, the others hopefully busy beavering away on getting the guitars nailed. we've only got today to record the rest of our stuff, so we'll see what happens. Tomorrow we need the day for mixing, and the tracks need to be with the label for mid-week, so fingers are crossed..

Studio Day 1

2011-01-09T03:47:00.000-08:00

A 10am start, drums set up and then the arduous task of nailing these drum parts...a blast part in ZvA proved to be the only major issue, but this was finally sorted and..day 1 was all drum. I left for Leeds at 6:30pm, the others left with the all-nighter of sifting through the drum takes and sounds to do whatever it is they do. The only other thing worth mentioning are the spectacular buys from the local 99p shop - jases flat ain't ever seen so much crap! Can't wait to get back there & watch Transmorphers..

Studio -1

2011-01-08T03:46:00.000-08:00

Last night was great, Danny's fully nailed the NewNew song so I got a video of the new ending part (an extra minute+ of music!), put it to cassette when I got home and had one last blast of Repeat Play brainwashing. New ending = King Crimson meets Messugha!

Spent my last day gathering supplies to help the throat during these taxing few days, then headed across to Barnsley by train in the eve for a last practice. Vocalised my lyrics over the new song for the first time, was super easy so confidence was further boosted and nothing like the anxious mess I was going into the studio last time!
Only a short practice, danny & calvin disappeared into the night, and me, theo and jase chilled with a Nicholas Cage film..tomorrow we drum.

Studio -2

2011-01-07T04:11:00.001-08:00

The lads finished learning the new one last night, slapped in some crazy riff at the end and connected it to the other new one we're recording, ZvA (for the sake of 7" continuity, but am thinking it might be a cool way to kick off the set..). Tonight I'm across to Barnsley for my first practice of this new one, same again Saturday then we hit it with Jase and the mixing desk on Sunday/Monday/Tuesday.

I'm fairly happy with the lyrics, both content and placements, so we all seem to be on the same page of thinking these are going to be our best songs yet..our side of this 7" is gonna be fucking Rad.

Studio updates next I guess...exciting times!

- Steve

[update:leeds just got snowey-as-shit, hopefully we're still on for praco tonight..gonna get a video of our first run-through of the new song, should be interesting!]

Meeeeeeerry New Year.

2011-01-05T05:02:00.000-08:00

So we're into the studio again in 4 days. Being laid down are Zanussi vs Ant and an as-yet-unnamed. We've got 3 days, so hopefully this'll be enough time and this time next week we'll have 2 new recorded efforts. we've had ZvA ready to record for a while, and i've already demo'd the vocals, so am fairly confident with this one (aside from theo and calvin wanting to change a few riffs..), but the other...the other is like a tazmanian devil (the cartoon version) - small, ferocious and very fast. all lyrics are placed for this one, but we've not had a chance to demo it yet, and theo wants to add another part to it so I guess we'll see what the hell happens.

we've only got one gig coming up, an alldayer at The Well (leeds) on Sat 29th Jan. It's a benefit for a cancer charity I think, our friend Paul from Curses is hooking it up, so hopefully it'll be a fun busy one and we can get some money for a good cause. but yeah, that gig aside, Nothing. so if you're reading this and fancy seeing us, bug whoever it is who books gigs in your town, we wanna play Everywhere!

Nothing else sorted yet - hopefully when we're all together in the studio I can nail the other guys down to dates they can tour, and we can get something booked for maybe the Easter break, and I need to get on with screening more shirts, but we don't have anything else on the cards...we've still got limited number of the CDr version of our EP, get in touch if you need a copy (antaresbanduk@gmail.com)

And that's pretty much it..so in closing, expect new songs soon, big news on the release soon after, shirts and CDr requests to the email address, and gig offers are most definitely wanted.

- Steve

The Weather Outside is Frightful..

2010-12-09T05:37:00.000-08:00

December's here and things done got crazy-hectic! I'm back to Cardiff twice this month, our Danny is moving house, Theo will no doubt be down South for Xmas, we've got Zanussi Versus Ant to record Immediately, a new song to learn and get recorded and a bass player to get trained up in the subtle arts of antares.

And the Holy Roar 3" CD release of our l'esprit de l'escalier EP has sold out...was only 100, so no biggie, but still. Think we might try get the EP online for free download shortly, but that's several discussions away. We've got CDr copies still, and these will always be available to curious parties, but these aren't available as conveniently as our Holy Roar version..gizza shout if you want one though.

In other news, Theos other band (Cyvoid) should hopefully have a rad release out on a rad label and are continuing to slay-the-fuck out of the select few Leeds audiences who've been privy to their live outbursts - the Saviours gig last week was Sick!

2011 needs to be a year of many gigs, it's fully dumb at the moment just not playing gigs. Hopefully with a few new songs next year we'll be wanting to hustle for more gigs a bit more.

- Steve.

"Weird..."

2010-09-07T05:50:00.001-07:00

The hangovers are starting to subside, the memories are slowly filtering back in and antares got their Festival Cherry popped - Offset Fest was a total fucking blast this weekend! And, hey, things seem to be turning a corner with regards to our general luck as (pretty much) everything went to plan..

I only arrived on the Sunday due to my brother getting married the day before in Cardiff (4am Megabus after a day of red wine, great!), but from what I hear Rolo Tomassi and the dance tent (seperate entities!) were the Saturday Highlights..oh, and the vibrant colours of nature after psychadelics.
We hit the stage before the bars even opened, I'd had borderline No Sleep and everyone else was dealing with the previous nights excesses, so needless to say it wasn't the tightest or most energetic we've played but people seemed into us and we gathered a healthy crowd for Sunday Openers.
Most else of what I saw was from the Holy Roar stage..
Dead In The Woods followed us, and I was super-glad I caught them - 3 of them are back-in-the-day friends I didn't realise were in the band, and their sound was awesomely crushing, definitely one to check out.
Deal With It were next. Wasn't expecting to be too down with what they're doing now - after their demo, the recordings all sounded too Danzig for me - but Mike's a great front-man and took the piss in sterling fashion so the Glen-isms shone through with their intended shades of sarcasm (to me at least!)..also helped that they shredded-the-shit outta the set, Strife seems to be the keyword right now for 'em - no bad thing!
The bands that followed didn't really pull me in, and other sets I saw across the festival were equally unaluring, until Brontide landed back at Holy Roar - easily the best band I saw that day. Wacky young hipsters in the crowd did their best to steal attention from the band, but after the initial bursts of their ego-fuelled faux-dance maneuvers things were rightly all about the music again. Much credit to Jase Sanderson on the mixing board, as they sounded massive for a three-piece. I won't attempt a description as, like Dead In The Woods, there was much to the sound I was digging and for me a mere "Great" will suffice. Check them.
After this, our party were wanting to leave - our Danny was starting a new job at 7am the following morning, I was back to the office for 9am, Jase was getting increasingly annoyed by the overwhelming out-of-control fashion and bass, and our driver Jamie was wanting to tackle that beast called Road earlier rather than later.

Was great to see some old friends, and make some new ones, hopefully we'll get to play a few festivals next year..

As for the here-&-now, the list of things that needs sorting seems long as ever. We need to following sorting...UK tour, shirts printing, inlay idea (foil-blocking, yeah!) then CDr release for "espirit..", website overhaul, new bassist (Mr Waters, please stand up..), new recordings (Theo's currently putting the finishing touches to a second new song) and..well, all that's left is World Domination I guess. But that can wait..

- Steve

Playing to the Festival Crowd.

2010-08-30T04:38:00.000-07:00

We've had a slightly quiet one but still the year has shot along, and all of a sudden we find ourselves in the death-throws of what's called itself a British Summer - as fitting a time as ever to make our Festival Debut then.

http://offsetfestival.co.uk/

We'll be gracing the Hardcore Stage on Sunday 5th Sept, I believe we're first-on at 12noon. Nice and easy to remember.

We've possibly sorted the bass issue, but more on that next time..

And we've currently got 2 pretty great sounding work-in-progress songs, as well as ZanussiVersusAnt finished..should hopefully be booking time with Jase as-soon-as for unknown releases.

There's some random merch pieces of ours waiting for collection from Awesome Merchandise, and I've recently made some tentative forays into the world of Shirt Design - some "properly" printed shirts to follow in a few weeks, here's a red-print shirt I did this morning:

That's probably the lot for now, out into the Bank Holiday sunshine for me..

British August, lush.

2010-08-04T05:41:00.000-07:00

So, what's new then...

Well, next week we're setting out on the road on something of a tour - initially a three-band tour, unfortunately We'll Die Smiling had to pull out..then some dates didn't get filled. As far as we know, we're hitting up Wolverhampton, Barrow-in-Furness and Southampton, though fingers crossed a few more dates will be pulled out of the bag at Zero Hour!

We're still no nearer to getting a man with a bass to play the low tones in our ramshackle band of reprobates, though a few potential individuals are in our sights..news when it surfaces!
The whole Can We Get A Bassist issue has dragged out for so long now that we've seemingly cemented "our sound" to the degree that people have even started to polarise towards one of the two mindsets regards even getting Bass involved in the mix, so now the issue has metamorphed from Can We into Should We...
Many interesting and surprisingly opinionated comments have been fired at us from a range of friends who's opinions we trust, and at present I think we're willing to sacrifice our existing "live sound" for the sake of potentially Huge-ifying it up, just gotta find the right chap, but still, who'd have thought the Absolute no-brainer of a band question, To Bass or Not To Bass, would cause so much contention.

We've started playing out a new song, Zanussi Versus Ant, and Theo's got another two doozeys for us to learn - one breaks the 7 minute mark I believe..here's a video of the new song getting it's live debut recently:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxapC_j0Fs0

Merch?! Not yet..who knows! Can't think that there's much else to report..here's to hoping next week is a Win!

- steve

Up with hope, Down with dope.

2010-04-09T02:18:00.000-07:00

Another awesome few days away, another reminder that we really need to get a full tour booked!
We'd had these dates with Betty Pariso booked for a fair while, but our (my) continual Fail on the Merch front was yet again held up..if we had ethics we'd no doubt call it "our stance on anti-capitalism" but unfortunately those were lost when we were stolen from the DIY scene to the heady heights of rock stardom at Casa Roar.
Practicing was also something we had plenty of time to get sorted, but life got in the way, and so this got relegated to the night before Nottingham.
The third in this chain of Leaving To Last Minute turned out to be Betty Pariso parting ways with their drummer as we were practicing (pieced together in retrospect, not co-ordinated as such). We're going it alone boys..
Next Fail? The turbo on Danny's van had died a death, so Scott Smith stepped up & offered to drive us in his car..Danny was dubious it'd work, and with every corner taken or road-bump causing the car shell to scratch against something I also had my moments of doubt, but it held together..

Come On, More, We Can Take It!

Cue : Galleons pulled out of the Nottingham gig due to a poorly drummer.
And : Nottingham gig cancelled.

Marty, who was organising Nottingham, managed to get us onto a lineup at an opening night of some metal club/bar, and Crocus had recently been added to the Norwich lineup so it was a strong enough bill so as to not be too damaged by BP lackage. We're still on track for a Party weekend!

Nottingham - Oranjeboom supplied courtesy of Mr Bell, we bounced and scraped our way down the M1 & arrived with plenty of time..the barman is working his first ever shift and is a friend of the Galleons boys, good stuff, everyone seems nice & the sound guy seems a total dude.
Fastforward a few hours, we're all worse-for-wear for the beers, first band Karhide (Martys band) were instrumental OK-ness, struggling to remember much about the sound other than liking it at the time, we were next..fuzzy blur..then some terribly dated-sounding metal band. The only 2 girls in the place then turned out to be Pole Dancers and went about constructing their little stage and pole..we had to leave before their debut spin, I still resent the others for this.
The rest of the night is a blur to me, I peaked too early, and after a KFC (the advertising works!) I remember Nothing except vague flashes of being ragged about the Galleons flat in my sleepingbag.
The others Partied the Shit outta their place, the highlight of which was most likely our Danny tattoo'ing "BARRY" onto his leg. It was underlined as well.
I woke at 7am, outside the flat and surrounded by pornography...
Spent the next few hours searching the flat for a lighter, got high, got lemon&ginger&honey teas sorted, got the gang together and got a Full English Breakfast at some place. Oh, and then got matching jackets!
Peaced Out with the Galleons boys (cheers for sorting us out again lads, much love!) then hit the road for Norwich..again, Scott did us proud & we got there in plenty of time. Tour Drives can be such a Vibe Destroying shitter, it's awesome when everything goes smoothly..
The Marquee in Norwich, weird little place. it's like a dungeon at the back of a pseudo-rock pub. the promoters, Mikee&Emma, had done kick-ass screenprints of their kick-ass flyer (see below entry..), and some vegan pasta&veg eats, so we were happy. also, tinnies were seemingly allowed in the dungeon!
Another awesome sound guy (actually, the one in Notts turned out to be a douche, but this one was totally cool)..Crocus are a mad powerhouse blur, though I did get the impression their guitarist lacked that basic Scene Essential of a perception of where people were stood around him as he flailed his barbed plank of wood wildly around himself. i watched from the back. he was hitting his notes though, so fair play to him in that respect!
Temptress I can't fully remember, but remember thinking they were kinda cool in a retro sorta way, guess I'd like to see 'em again to firm up that opinion! i proper Loved Throats when I first saw 'em, but after that first time (they had a different drummer after this) they just seemed more of an average d-beat band than i'd realised before..the CD's meant to be good though.
We played, I was too high and so the wit and sparkle of the on-stage banter was unfortunately left in the alley outside where I poured the bong-water...some little bastard filmed the ordeal and put it on Youtube. I will find him, oh yes...
Maths played last, kid shoulda filmed them cos they were frickin Yesville!

Scott wanted to beast the A-roads and get home that night, we all fell asleep and he scraped us back North and to our beds..

We don't have digital cameras so you'll have to use your imagination for the visuals..
The Good - The Marvelous Marvelous Scott Smith, Marty, Karhide, Mikee&Emma (and all who helped wi Norwich), TomOne&TomTwo of Galleows, Tom @ The Central, Maths, Crocus & The Temptress.
The Bad - SoundGuy in Notts
The Ugly - Theo after the DeepHeat attack!!

Visuals.

2010-03-03T04:30:00.000-08:00

I'm a fan of these two flyers, upcoming gigs....

we're taking March off, hopefully more to report down-the-line.

For good times, make it Antares times.

2010-02-25T03:55:00.000-08:00

One of the many awesome new friends we made when down in Nottingham the other week wrote this article/took these pics. After crashing like a zepplin fireball in Harrogate last weekend it's nice to remember that crazy night..

This Saturday we're playing another of PaulieP's shindigs at TheBassment in Leeds (edge of TheMerrionCentre), it's with these two metal titans..

Lordaeron - www.myspace.com/kingdomoflordaeron
Iron Void - www.myspace.com/ironvoiddoom

I'd tell you what they sound like, but Myspace is currently being a massive shit bastard and not letting its totally amazing musicplayer work..with this in mind, i'm updating our Virb page & guess will be referencing that one more for letting folk hear shit online.

oh, you can also hear all 4 tracks from the EP for free on the label website :

http://holyroarrecords.com/album.php?id=65&shop=1#/album.php?id=139

and also buy the 3" CD for a handful of e-pounds...i got a copy the other week & it actually looks pretty damn rad. only 100 are ever going to be in existence, hurry while there's some left [/salespitch]

so, in conclusion, fuck Myspace, all hail Virb - virb.com/enjoyantares - check it!

You don't like how i'm living well fuck you.

2010-02-11T04:28:00.000-08:00

Am just about recovered..last weekend was Exactly what this band is about - great dudes, great gigs and crazycrazy nights!

We'd not managed to practice for a while, so before Saturdays Nottingham shindig we met in Barnsley to kick out them jams..I found my dole cheque had landed a few days early so knew it was gonna get messy down the line.
The gig was a free-entry EP release show for the guys putting this thing together, Galleons, and we'd be pegged as headlining! We eased into the night with smiles and beers, Calvin discovered the venues OutRageous JagerBomb deal (one for £3.70, two for £3.50..yeah), banter with bands, first band (Royalty Must Die) weren't my cuppa tea but were definitely good enough at what they were doin to hold my attention. mainly due to a cool-as-shit guitarist & decent drummer.
Next were Hex from Petersborough...line-checked their way into the set with some Sabbath before tearing into some crusty fastcore fare, perfect! was expecting some metal pap with a name like that, but was Fully good-times..and seemed like nice dudes as well.
Galleons were next..none of us are hugely into the tech-metal thing in a "this is what i sit at home and listen to" context, but when a band does that shit good live it really smacks you about & forces your attentions. not sure it'd be the same on a larger stage, but in this small pub room they pretty much Dominated!
By this stage me & Calvin were firm friends of the JagerBomb scenario, and the beers were reasonably priced n'all so to say we were a suitably lubricated machine might just be understatement, though thankfully this didn't mean "Slurred Stumbling Steve Destroys Set Again" but lead to a fun set wi plenty of between song banter to pad out our Headliner set-length expectations!
People seemed to dig us, and the limited CD's we had were promtly given away..so much for "We'll sell the CDs for petrol money".
Then we hit Rock City which..was messy. The walk back to Tom Galleons' flat was messier..cock or balls?!??!?! just don't ask...

I woke at 8am naked on a wooden floor unsure at to the bodies surrounding me..we all slowly woke and eventually left Tom to his Sunday.
Galleons were all Stirling dudes, Tom especially, so hopefully our exploits didn't burn that bridge!
Got ID'd at a service station whilst eating our BurgerKing meals...

After brief SundayAfternoon chills it was back to the rock - tonights was another free gig with label-mates (!) Maths, though after the fact felt a bit of a dick when I realised I'd not really said Hi or anything to 'em..don't know 'em, like, but figured we could make friends with 'em and kinda felt rude after-the-fact for not doing so.
But anyways, yeah, free gig, arrived to find Jameo at the bar and Rats For Candy just about to start..I think they're still to "eclectic" for my tastes, but hopefully down the line they'll refine their craft a bit further.
Lots of good folk in the house for the Freeness, Red Stripe mass consumption and then Knee Deep In The Dead. Again, not my cuppa tea, watching that band felt like I was watching a Battle Of The Bands audition or summat. Definitely good at what it's doing, that whole deathy metalcore thang, just not for me.
We'll Die Smiling next, and knew I'd love their set..TheWell had a particularly strong bass'y sound that night, so WDS sounded hella Mighty! Easily my favourite band of the night - incredible energy, ambitious songs, awesome dudes!
Had only heard a few Maths tracks off their Myspace, wasn't sure what to expect, expectations surpassed! bad band-energy aside, these guys have a Killer sound, really pushing the envelope with regards not so much What they're playing but How, and that The Well's sound guy was on the money that night (well, off-stage anyways, had Zero vocal in the stage monitors when we played..) fully delivered their sound with the gusto it needed.

Was all set to walk back to the hood when i'm told there's a lock-in at Santiago's bar for Superbowl Sunday..umyes?! Got to bed sometime after 4, what a fucking great weekend!

Words are all I have.

2010-02-04T06:43:00.000-08:00

Just knocked up this lyric sheet, tempted by the idea to either get it screen printed onto some tasty large stock or as a back-print to a shirt..we'll see..

This weekend = Free Gigs Weekend
Saturday at The Speak Easy in Nottingham, Galleons EP release show
Sunday at The Well in Leeds, Maths headlining (sweet gig poster by Tom Pratt below)

Harrogate always shines.

2010-01-27T07:44:00.000-08:00

Jus did this for our gig in Harrogate late next month..

I think I'm right in saying that Harrogate gigs hold a special place in the hearts of most of the bands involved. Roco Lampone features an old Chronicles of Adam West band-mate of our Theo's, me & Lewis from The Plight were in a band together (Broken Access) who seemingly played the'gate on a fortnightly basis, as did our other old bands (Indicator & No Excuse), All Them Witches are ex D-rail dudes who also cut their teeth on many a 'gate gig as well as touring with Chronicles, and with a few local bands chock-full of Harrogate scene stalwarts, it's shaping up to be the Mates As Fuck gig we've all been waiting for..this is why we do this shit!

Gigs are our life-blood.

2010-01-18T07:00:00.000-08:00

Got these gigs in the coming months...

Sat 6th February 2010 - Nottingham (The Speak Easy) wi. Galleons (it's their EP release gig), Hex + Dead Spex
Sun 7th February 2010 - Leeds (The Well) wi. Maths, We'll Die Smiling, Knee Deep In The Dead + manymany more
Sat 20th February 2010 - Harrogate (The Little Wonder) wi. The Plight, All Them Of Witches + more
Sat 27th February 2010 - Leeds (Subculture) wi The Gold Coast + more
Fri 2nd April 2010 - Nottingham (The Speak Easy) wi. Betty Pariso + more
Sat 3rd April 2010 - Norwich (The Marquee) wi. Betty Pariso + more
Sun 4th April 2010 - ??? - Need one more date for our weekend stint with Betty Pariso - get in touch!

As ever, looking for more gigs so give us a shout if you fancy it..and the EP is available from holyroarrecords.com - there's still copies of the 3" CD's, but these are super-limited never-repeated things so get it quick!

It's Here ! ! !

2010-01-12T05:12:00.000-08:00

click these clickers and buy this fucker !

Lyrics and meanings.

2010-01-11T20:12:00.000-08:00

With the release due out any moment, and the HolyRoar inlay not having a jot of lyrical content I figured it'd make sense to put them up here, along with a few words about them.

High Function
There's no way I'm facing it through clear eyes today, and no way i can deal with these pricks today - load it up, blaze it up, let the good times roll - my morning just turned a corner, commutes immersed in my thoughts and sick reality staved off an extra few hours. "Why don't you blaze it up there brother" "I've never been this thirsty in my entire life" - inner dialogue morning entertainment.
EXP:I'm sure Society was a nice concept at some point, but nowadays it's mostly a sickening mass of idiots who i mainly try and avoid. Nice and upbeat to get us rolling...!

Dancing Blind
I'm afraid it's a necessary evil to snap us out of the zombie-walk, the sniffing-salts of consciousness so to speak. And it's what happens next that'll really get you, cos you'll see no really gives a fuck what's actually going on, as long as they slip the leash on soft and gentle everything will be a-ok.
Comfort-zones must be left behind, cos it's only when you've done this you can smuggly sit there and say We're Through The Looking-glass Now..the twig on the shoulders of the mighty river, it's all we've been and all we ever will be so just shut up and get back in line.
EXP:It may be true that "none are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free" but there's also something to be said for the supposedly enlightened..

..but I'm not sure about Singularity
Living on the edge of the craziest of times, bring on the nanotech..and bring on my three sea-shells, hover-boots and time machine - the future is a joke? but still no to ID chips - at least hypocrasy can still raise smiles, you roll with change or get left behind. And hey, life-extensions about to be the New Cool, just keep eyes on the A-listers for the clues - you not seen 80's sci-fi classic Inner Space? This is gonna be rad.
EXP:OK, so this is the big one, insane technologies that are *supposedly* due to come crashing around our lives in the next 10-20 years! "The future is a joke" is a reference to a song by old UK hardcore, Imbalance, where the singer opined his cynicism about the lack of the amazing futuristic lives we were all promised by Media as children, be it The Jetsons or Tomorrows World..the point i'm reaching for here is the impatience of us in assuming it'd be Our adult lives that'll be graced with these advances.
Next we have to deal with the inherent trade-off's that come hand-in-hand with such great leaps forward in our lives, and essentially at some point things such as the NOID campaigns may well find themselves as out-dated as the privacy laws our governments continualy circumvent at our expense. The hypocrasy part was self-reference to when I was thinking about possible trade-off's, my own stance on the ID Chip issue and the sudden realising that the beliefs would very soon be something of a joke.
Didn't really go into it cos figured the lyrics were already getting bogged down with ideas, but was then wanting to touch on the concept that if future technologies are things we wouldn't naturally know to expect (eg. life extension) then the trade-off's we'll thus be expected to accept will also be a host of things we're utterly unprepared for, which is super-fucking interesting to me! I'm an adaptable sort, but society in general ain't - how long did it take for people to get sold on Conservationism? Would've taken even longer if they still used such hippy-tainted vocab!

The Devil Drives
Thank fuck it's that time, at the end of another long night and it looks like I'm living off tips again..but I'll get by, just like I always do. Tonight I reached new lows and I goddamn feel like death - taped up hands with the back-room boys! It's fat-lip smiles tonight, and bloodied hand-shakes, but those fat-lip nights and glass-kissed hands, there'll be some explaining to do at the office tomorrow - living like scenes from Fight Club! Fuck just "both ends" lets burn the bastard whole..no rest for the wicked, I'll serve my time.
EXP:This was written whilst I was juggling an office and a bar job, life was hard but y'know, reap what you sow n that so can't really complain.

-steve

Lord of the gods.

2009-12-26T20:12:00.000-08:00

I love the Xmas good-times (free eats, new pants & old friends) but it's frustrating that this holiday season has landed just as our momentum was reaching all-time high's..bloody sun-worshippers, eh?!

With this in mind, hopefully once NewYear lands we can hit the ground running, but aside from aspirations of activity there's nowt to report back...oh, except Theo might have found a man who plays bass well enough to join our ranks. Another friend of ours also asked about becoming an Antarian, she's a keyboard type with piano-grade credentials, so we'll see. It's like waiting for a bus & 2 coming along at once.

The immediate plans once TwentyTen's here will be :
2 shirt designs - one simple idea that can be knocked up in a few days, another which we might speak to some friends for help designing..
2 more weekend tours to organise and Sunday date of our Betty Pariso jaunt to be nailed..
Cornering 2 different labels about their kind offers of vinyl and cassette releases..
Getting a decent batch of CDr's sorted, cos it's sucking not having music to give people who ask..
Getting Song6 gig-ready, it's salvia-tastic!
New songs need writing - once Theo's got time I think we should be able to get to Song10 by the summer, but then I'm the useless non-music guy so it ain't really for me to say..
And of course the ever on-going battle for out-of-town gigs.

That's pretty much it, i'm getting back to my Boxing Day, hope your Christmases are all rocking.
-steve

Good things come...

2009-12-15T20:12:00.000-08:00

Phew, it's been a while!
Since we got the recordings back from Jase things have been moving at a stellar rate..well, in comparison to our existence thus far anyways! We put 2 of the 4 tracks up on Myspace and our November filled up nicely with decency.

So where are we now?
Theo's studies are taking priority for us at the moment, brother's in 3rd year of an insanely demanding course, our shit can wait, but things are slowly pottering forward...

The eagle-eye'd amongst you might've spotted us on page 21 of this months issue of Terrorizer magazine. Only a pic and a few words from us in a side-column, but was a weird trip getting to see us in a mag, and totally cool getting to show me Mum something in print after years of hiding away under the radar of Mainstream Press! Many thanks to James Hoare for approaching us out-of-the-blue for this.

Holy Roar Records have kindly offered to release the 4-track as a limited 3" CD and handle the e-store side of things, which will most likely happen in the first few weeks on January - if you're unfamiliar with the label you could do a lot worse than check out their roster.

A short weekend stint with Southern loud bastards Betty Pariso has been all but booked, and plans are afoot to fill up many more weekends in this way, hopefully hitting up as much of the UK as possible before a proper full tour can be sorted for the summer.
We've been talking with our friends in Tangaroa and Executive Distraction Tasks about a dirty weekend in Scotland, so keep 'em peeled for this, promises to be immense.

I'm in the final stages of getting our dot.com up & running. It's been hell on earth dealing with various idiot companies but enjoyantares.com should be a part of the world wide web in the next few days..planning on using the highly recommended Indexhibit platform, my first foray into the daunting world of websites, wish me luck!

Also on the releases front, the 4-track will be seeing the light of day as both 7" and cassette, these being handled by 2 labels we're still confirming all the details with. Inlay design ideas for the 7" are currently the most exciting thing in my life!

We're hopefully gonna be unleashing a new song on our live set soons...there were plans to get us onto an Xmas compilation with a demo recording of the track, but this fell through at the last minute when we realised that having now recorded with the mighty Jason Sanderson, our usual demo recordings just don't cut it anymore! But the positive up-shot of that being that it forced my hand to write/place/learn a buncha new lyrics. Danny hates the song...it's an absolute Bastard to play. You'll no doubt hear what i mean soon.

And that's pretty much it i think..as ever, on the look for more gigs (so if you or someone you know can help, get in touch).
-steve

How to fake funk-soul power.

2009-09-04T20:12:00.000-07:00

The band antares are still without record.
I recently got credit-crunched out of my job.
My housemate moved to Brighton.
And the Singularity hurtles closer with every second!
-steve

Plunge the depths....the depths of Hell.

2009-04-30T20:12:00.000-07:00

Day One
The lads hit the studio with gusto today, I’m in the office

I believe they’re starting with drum recordings. My day is all about my evening – The Plight are off on tour with Cancer Bats tomorrow, so we’re gonna have some party drinking fun..there’s talk of fire.

I imagine much of today will be spent getting tiny details right with drum stuffs, I’m sure Danny’ll be reet though.

Day Two
Fuck, last night made today feel like a bastard.

It took me a bong just to get out of bed, another so I could get to work but even this usual Hangover Killer didn’t stop the vom from making an appearance. I told my boss I was really anxious about going into the studio, and had also had a bacon sarnie that morning, and don’t really eat meat..like, once a month on a pizza? So that's why i was sick..anxiety and an irregular food.

So, office job done, 3 vomits later and I’m on the train to Barnsley to see what they’ve gotten done so far.

God, Barnsley’s a bleak place – the sort of place where everyone’s got a car cos if they didn’t they’d go on a postal-style killing spree. Best £-Shops I’ve ever seen though, and the accent is funny-as-shit!

On arrival they were in the thick of guitar stuff, the drum work is done, the vocals we might’ve done later in the night once Jase got back from a gig, but instead we went out drinking.

A band from Doncaster, Revernance (sp?), were practicing as we were recording, so got to chatting with them, OK dudes, so when Jase + Gib (Jase’s flatmate) said they were all out drinking at a bad dance club we hit that shit!

Not even gonna go into details, but was a messy night.

Day Three
Bloody gorgeous day, this wasn’t going to be a day for vocals, and as I had work that night I decided to just excess it up. Me + Danny hit up the local Iceland for cheap bulky eats, then got really drunk, really high, went the Tops Off direction and hung lots on the sun-drenched roofs around the flat.

Popping into the studio occasionally to catch up with the silliness, and its sounding huge already. Clearly the best environment you’ll ever hear anything, but being able to hear so much depth to it is I guess a good bet it’ll still sound relatively phat on a my CD player.

I napped, Theo violated my sleeping self + will get his when we go on tour..

6pm train back to Leeds, home to ditch my bag and change out of the clothes I’d been in since the previous morning, shower and out to Jakes Bar for my evening shift. Again, I’ll skip the details, but things got Raw tonight.

Day Four
The shift didn’t finish til 4am, train to Barnsley 10 hours later.

Its Sunday. I believe 90% of the guitar stuff has been done and today they’ve been playing around with various technologies for the synth tracks, its sounding Ridiculous!

Theo keeps telling me I can’t smoke a bowl before doing vocals, but I know otherwise.

I suggest that we should record in order of song number, eg. 2, 3, 4, 5 (we’re ditching our first song!), mainly because songs 2 + 3 are easiest! 4 is a hard slog, and 5 is just insane. Fuck them, they can wait.

Theo demo’d me over these first 2 songs the week before we hit the studio, so I pretty much nailed it. 2 took about an hour, 3 a little longer, then my throat told me to chill out, so we left it at that for today.

Not soon after me + Theo got the train home.

Day Five
Work all day, then back across to Barnsley from work. Picked up some new shirts from Primark on the way so I’d have summat for the office tomorrow!

Studio was filled with good folk, the air heavy with self-satisfaction. And rightly so, the newly added synth parts (we really do need a keyboard person now, holler if you can help!) sounded frickin sweet up in the mix with it all.

After a quick beer run, I hit to booth to tackle my nemesises(?!), 4 + 5, a hard hitting double-whammy of the fast and the furious.

Jase thought the vocals were sounding even better than the day before, and he was really into those. Working with Jase has been amazing, the fact that he’s seen me in bands over the past bunch of years means I totally value his opinion on what the voice is doing, and I think I’m surprising him + Theo (no-one else in when we did the vocals) for the sake of pushing myself a little harder with these recordings. Got a much stronger idea of what direction the vocals should generally be in + totally can’t wait for the next gig!

Worth mentioning at this point that my voice was partially fucked from the day before. Meant my voice only had a limited time for this session. We got all of 4, and the bare bones of 5 nailed, the plan is to return one night next week to finish 5 then go over all the takes and sort the vocal sound out.

Me + Theo got the early train back to Leeds the following morning and harsh days of office life and Uni deadlines inflicted themselves on us respectively.

Jase put a Very rough mix of all 4 on my laptop so I could listen over it before going back in, and even this is sounding pretty damn good.

There’s a whole lot more mixing to do, but there’s every chance we’ll have something of a finished article in time for the gig next Friday – I turn 30 the day before, so think I’ll be getting very drunk.

I totally can't recommend Jase' studio enough, he's the most awesomely laid-back guy but at the same time fully Owning the production process. And drinks his tea in pint glasses.

www.myspace.com/jasonsandersonrecordingmixmastering

Right, best bounce - Leeds' newest supergroup, Black Fang, are playing their first gig at Bassment, and Lewis just text'd saying he can get me into the CancerBats gig..there's an afterparty at Santiago's that i'm clearly gonna end up going to if i get to the gig, but work is gonna be so painful tomorrow..then got a bar shift later that eve..i doesn't stop, i tell thi.
-steve

Quest for the perfect logo...Part One+Two.

2009-03-16T20:12:00.000-07:00

Being a band is awesome for manymany reasons. I've worked in a few offices over the years where the "lad" element of the places have been more than certain that these perks involve nubile young virgins throwing themselves at me on a nightly basis, but for me the one consistent [as well as finding humour in the assumed Rock+Roll Lifestyle!] has been the design opportunities it can afford.

I've had some fun with this latest band, mainly because we could easily settle within many different camps aesthetic-wise - the spazzy nature of the music could land is in Wacky Neon Land, the death metal leanings putting us in The Land That Common Sense Forgot, and i quite like playing the anonymity angle with flyers in that as we're still a fairly young band, people seeing the name for the first time don't have a pre-conception as to what the logo should look like for the sake of genre.

But, alas, now we're getting more gigs and recording properly, i guess it's about time i grew some balls on the issue and took a stance on one design as something we could settle on.

After a bunch of crappy idea's, i kinda settled with the security-blanket of a Sans Serif, and just slightly editted a Franklin Gothic variant to give this eunuch of a logo :

It was mainly about the "es" at the end, obviously, and in retrospect i think it all should have a lot more of a dainty look, but meh, i'm done with that now..as i am with this dumb idea i roughly drew out in MS Paint :

Two things i've seen that've got me liking recently are lines and triangles, and after a few sketches decided to get it onto computer and this thing surfaced :

The "es" also unintentionally ended up as a sorta focus on this one due to their floating stature, which later facilitated the thought of clearing vagueness of the word with a complete rendering underneath.
Problems here were that, aside from pussying out with regards the original abstract "fuck 'em if they can't read it" sentiment, the spelling would point out the "e" as the only lower-case, as well as the letters looking too tall [disregarding that its a free-hand line-drawn thing, so all proportions are clearly off!].

Darren was into the idea, so busted out the ruler and knocked together this thoroughly more precise [and E-Problem-Ammended] version :

Now we're wondering if further elaborations on the thing will add to it, and if so where to stop! Our good friend Will popped into the office today, and suggested that once the first few letters of the thing are clear it'll give the brain a bit more to work with to decipher the rest, which led to this :

and then this :

I'm unsure if the "S" works, so tomorrow i'll try a few different versions and hopefully settle on one. One of the absolute Positives of this design is the ease with which it could be used as a stencil, and as Will pointed out earlier it also has a hint of the Alien/Aliens opening scene's to its form, which could lead onto some cool GIF action down the line..we'll see, all i know is that for today the logo rests, i'm off home!

THE FOLLOWING DAY....

Last night Revelation hit me - the "A" + "R" in the middle can be mirrored in the same way as the "e" + "s" in the earlier design, solving the "Ugly R" problem as well as balancing up the 2nd half of the word.
So, with this idea realised, it was the final furlong of resolving the "E" + "S"

Here's the basic idea at the start of Day Two, with the mirrored "A" + "R" :

The next issue is "E" - the original lower-case thorn-in-my-side.
Two idea's with this one, one that stuck and one that i was unsure about but Darren No'd..

..and now the "S"..

..meh..

Darren hadn't been happy with the flick of the "N", and so i gave him the rest of his body. This gave us the unexpected "middle bar" [created by the bodies of the "N" + "T"] and so then had to stay, even though i'm still unsure if it looks better without.."S" also given this cheeky extra which seemed to sort it out [as well as giving it a similar inversed end-of-word angle to the start of the word, if that makes sense!] :

I think this is The One so far, and until i can show the others in the band incase they think owt can be changed, but just because we'd not tried it thus far Darren suggested completing the middle-bar's to the "A"s + "R" :

The next stage will be doing it again a Lot more precisely and on a lot larger scale..and That has been the over-analytical approach to an antares logo design!

[UPDATE]
Haha, had an idea for a silly shirt design + quickly knocked it together so thought i'd put it here.

PS. doubt we'll be able to afford gettin shirts done for a while, proper expensive!
-steve

"I have a microphone, and you don't, so you will listen to every damn word i have to say".

2009-01-07T20:12:00.000-08:00

Last night we recorded vocals on a song of ours that Theo's using for a university project. We've had the means to get full recordings done for a while, but I guess it's been the impotus of impending course work deadlines that got me screaming in a spare bedroom at 11pm on a Tuesday night ["We have to do this tonight!" - Theo's reply to my informing him of an impromptu hangout with Jameo], and finally have a proper track to show to the world as Us, albeit electronically.

I left the session relatively happy with it all. The first bunch of lines sound a bit out of time, and some distortion will be needed, but it sounds a lot better than most of the stuff I've recorded before, and was a lot trickier than anything I've ever attempted - both in fucked-up time signature stakes as well as just pure vocal stamina!

Up until this stage the lyrics were still fairly interchangeable - if something sounded stupid on retrospect it could be rephrased or taken out - but now I've committed myself to these words.
I know that with the insane amount of terrible lyrics out there I really shouldn't be anxious about putting mine into the world, but whatever. Maybe because recording vocals has been such a long time coming, I've gotten too precious or something!

I think of all the bands so far the best stuff I've written was in Duckstab. The disjointed nature of the songs meant not having to stick to the monotony of the verse-chorus-verse-chorus norms, and opened up a whole new world of lyrics to me - i could just Spew and not have to worry about fitting some restrictive structures.
The new band is kind of 80/20 on the disjointed/structured lyrical approach - it's hectic-as-fuck meaning i've got space to just flow when I want, but there's also occasional moments of normality where a catchy chorus-part fits right in. Overall, it's a lot of work but listening back after all the vocals had been laid down was a good feeling, can't wait to hear the final mix.

We've got 4 other tracks that also need my vocals, but these we're recording with the masterful Jason Sanderson at his studio in Barnsley, booked for some time in February.
I think this course work track we'll give out on CD-r's to folk who want to hear us, and the other 4 we'll send around labels to see if anyone can help us in putting it out. I'm gonna start getting inlay ideas together in the next month, so once someone says "Sure, I'll put your record out" we're ready to rock with getting it to pressing.

Also to do with the band, think we're gonna get some shirts done. Not sure what design it's going to be, but i might play with this idea a bit more, and have it as black on white.

We've got our third gig coming up in the 30th of this month, and it's with a few friends bands, Chickenhawk and Lavotchkin. Playing with mates bands is always cool.
After that I guess we'll just be concentrating on recording with Baby Jase. Fingers crossed, by April we'll be getting in more peoples faces and raising hell further afield than The Fenton.
Lates.
-Steve

The morning after the night before.

2008-11-30T20:12:00.000-08:00

Antares played our first gig last night. Think I was to stoned to really let it get to me too much, but was fairly terrified and I wasn't best.

The whole night up til that point was a chore. I’d volunteered my band-food cooking services, and so had cooked up a decent amount of foods expecting 4 hungry men at 5pm.

Oliver, who’s gig it was, turned up some time after 6pm, sans band, saying everything was running late + we’d need to get the food to the venue. They went away to run some other errands, giving me time to strategise the packing up of it all.

That minor stress sorted, I sent them off with the food and began the journey to the venue, already running late. Stopped at the Kit Kat shop for Double Dutch, Al’s house to pick up a snare drum that The Plight had accidentally taken from our practice space, then venue bound.

Arrived before 8pm, said all the “Hello”s, then got my drinking head on..realised I only had 2 tinnies left after power-walk-drinking on the way.

Theo gave his effect pedal a blast at full volume and almost gave Lecky a heart-attack, so we couldn’t use samples in the set. That sucked, but was a fair one.

I fell out of time more than Marty McFly in the 80’s, and Theo had a little electrical problem..oh, and when a song went wrong and had to stop, Theo insisted we re-start from where we stopped. Which we Won’t be doing again. Didn’t even realise they were doing it til a few seconds into it!

Kind comments afterwards from Carrie and Arike took the edge off feeling The Suck, and I think the other guys in the band were more frustrated about Theo’s mistake, so hopefully I didn’t look too stupid.

Can’t wait to record in February. My vocals always come on lots more when I’ve got something with vocals to listen to.

Next gig is a fortnight away, so reckon I’ll get to a few practices before that one, and hopefully things will go a bit better! Well, it’s the first gig out of the way, it’s seldom gonna be a good or fun experience, not if you’re taking it seriously enough anyway.
-steve