last two for a bit...

Things have been slowing down a bit on the recording front lately as we've all been getting busy with other things, and now, sadly, we're going to be taking about a month off before we get back to it. Well, it's only sad for some of us, who will be working; some folks are going to be on vacation. But we'll all be back at it at the beginning of August, and we hope to be close to finished by September. We'll see how that goes...

For now, though, we have two new rough mixes, thanks to some essential overdubs we finally got around to doing. First, as promised, we have the nice-sounding version of "one by one:"

one by one (rough 7-4-09).

This one's still in a somewhat experimental stage; we may add some more stuff or take some away. Right now it's only six tracks, and a couple of things are doubled! We think it sounds pretty good, though. As mentioned here before, we used to call this one "melodica song" for good reason, since it features the funny little instrument. And, as it turns out, it can be a pretty funny sounding one, too - it took a lot of work to figure out how to make it sound good. In the end, an omni mic from way far away smoothed out the rough edges. It's still a bit pitchy, though, so let us know if you think it sounds charming or just crummy (we're hoping for the former). And thanks to Matt from the Liverhearts and the Preakness for loaning us those Earthworks omnis - as predicted, they were just what we needed.

Next up we have one of our favorites from this batch. It's been up here before in an early cut-and-paste demo version, which we've conveniently provided below for comparison (there's also a solo acoustic version on the blog, too, featuring Hutch from Cadillac Jones). This new version is all live instruments, though we have done quite a bit of post-production on it. It's still got a ways to go; we have some decisions to make, including whether we want to edit down a couple of sections to keep it moving a bit more (though of course we do love to go on and on). Let us know what you think:

the target (rough 7-4-09).

And here's the original version:

the target (epilepsy warning version).

So don't expect to many posts here for the next month or so, though we may put up a little tidbit or two. There's at least one more song from this batch that hasn't been posted yet, and it's the craziest of the bunch, so you won't want to miss it.

So seeya soon, and happy Independence Day!