Jealous of all the attention that Laura’s art has been getting her lately, I decided to get off my ass and get back into drawing too. The result is a new tumblr site where I’ll be posting 100 drawings of Batman done on my iPad using various sketching apps and a stylus.
Check it out and enjoy the self-deprecation as I put the caped-crusader through my embarrassing quest to remember how to draw:
The summer gets away from you pretty damn quickly. We blinked and suddenly hadn’t played a show since our CD release party in June. Thankfully, our good friends Tiny and The Mountain, Garbageface and Ryan Ringer asked us to play their tour kick-off party at the Central to get us off our asses.
Oh, and it was Taste of the Danforth in our neighbourhood this weekend, so any excuse to get out of the East End was a good one…we did, however, stop by the street festivities first to get a couple of awesome bubble guns from one of the vendors, complete with noises and flashing lights. Mine instantly started leaking all over my pedals and I managed to zap a friend right in the eyeball with the laser (you can sort of see Laura using hers in the photo above).
All told, we were rough and out of practice, but had a lot of fun and even had a singer or two in the front row during “Southern Ontario.” It was also our first set using a Microkorg we picked up used last week, which I promptly used to completely derail “Laura’s Song” by choosing inappropriately heavy bass patches.
…if you can’t have fun and screw around then why the hell are you in a band?
We played a really fun show at the Central this weekend that saw me screwing up lyrics and zapping people in the eye with a laser bubble gun, but more on that tomorrow.
In the meantime, Laura’s art has been ramping up more and more lately and her latest series is on display at our favourite hang-out, Broadview Espresso. This time around she’s calling out the majestic standing we’ve given to processed food by meticulously rendering various types of junky snacks in hyper-realistic coloured pencil drawings reminiscent of old dutch still-lives. That’s a mouthful (zing!), so just take a look at the amazing image to the left for a better idea…
Remember last year when we released a collection made up of a new song and some covers of tunes written by friends of ours called Hot Air Balloons EP?
Well, it’s finally available on Bandcamp for those of you who want to buy the individual songs (we still recommend buying the whole shebang from Zunior.com for only $2.22, as it all goes to support the Daily Bread Food Bank).
Want our version of The Burning Hell’s “It Happens In Florida” for your very own? Here it is for only $0.99!
It’s been a while since I had any time to build a pedal. In fact, I probably shouldn’t have taken the time to build this one…but I couldn’t resist. A friend of mine recently picked up a secondhand Blackstone Mosfet Overdrive and was raving about it. After some digging online I had to give it a try.
Without getting too technical, it’s basically a “dual channel” overdrive that allows you to toggle between 2 different gain settings in one pedal—pretty useful if you want to dial in a crunchy rhythm sound then punch up the gain for a solo. All told, I’ve been having a ton of fun with this one and recommend checking it out. Of course, for the sake of masochistic exhaustiveness, I’m going to build a similar project by the fine fellas at runoffgroove.com called the Double D (both use the same chip for a similar dual channel idea…) to compare.
That said, this is one of the rare builds where I’d almost have preferred just buying the thing. For one, it’s not just another repackaged Tubescreamer, and also the real deal is about half the size of mine and looks great. Check it out for yourself at the Blackstone Appliances page.
Oh, and I found the awesome tin at Goodwill for $0.99. Those of you who follow us on Twitter know about the excellent records and things I’m always picking up there (got a ton of great stuff today, including The Art of Noise, This Mortal Coil, The The, The Boomtown Rats and more…).
I can’t stress enough just how proud we are of Tortoise. Thankfully, with good press still coming in, we don’t have to shill too much.
Case in point, Chart Magazine* just posted a positive, informative and constructive (all great “-ives,” in my book) review that digs deep to give a quick glimpse at our humble beginnings, a comparison to our debut album, as well as some points that make Tortoise what they call:
“…a fun, rockin’, tuneful album from a band just finding their groove.”
Check out the full review here and get ready for more news, as we’ve got remixes and music videos on the way as well as some more homemade pedals.
*Chart actually gave us our first piece of press. Back in 2009 they briefly reviewed …Makes Ghost Noises, giving us one of our favourite quotes: “Don’t let the cover fool you into thinking it’s louder than it is.”
Here’s another live video from our CD release at the Tranzac last month. This time around it’s for a tune from our first album called “Raise Your Dead.”* We busted out the light-rings for this one too, so I had fun messing with the colours in post-production to give it some psychedelic flair (or even flare, in this case…take your pick).
*Our handful of die-hard fans will point out that “Raise Your Dead” was actually 2 songs on the album. However, it’s always been played as one at shows…
Happy Canada Day, folks. In honour of the Great White North’s big day, Herohill asked us to be part of an amazing collection of musicians paying tribute to one of the nations most revered songwriters, Gordon Lightfoot.
He’s got a lot of material to choose from, so after a few days of listening to the LPs in our collection we couldn’t resist trying our hand at “High and Dry,” from the Sundown album. The melody in this tune is top notch. I hope we did it justice!
Still full of the warm and fuzzies from our recent CD release party at the Tranzac, we’re basking in some downtime while working on a few secret projects and getting ready to get back on the road.
Laura’s art, meanwhile, having already graced the cover of Tortoise, is in full swing. Her impressive collection of “Men with Facial Hair” is on display at The Only cafe, an awesome East-Toronto hot-spot until the middle of July. This series has also recently been complemented with 3 amazing colour portraits of a moustachioed-Laura (one of which pictured above, in case you thought that was me).
Check it out online or in person and show some love for one of the best emerging portrait artists around.
What a way to end a tour…The main hall of the Tranzac has been on our list of “venues to play before we die” since the beginning and last Thursday not only put a checkmark in that box, but filled it full of dynamite and blew it up in a cloud of coloured lights and confetti.
Surrounded by friends, family and other supporters we celebrated the release of Tortoise while Anna Atkinson (who joined us on stage for “Southern Ontario”) was eagerly doing the same for her debut album, Mooniture.
Of course, I could go on and on about how awesome we were, or how much fun the whole night was, but we had a few very supportive bloggers on hand that night whose take on the evening will likely be a little less biased. Here are a few quick quotes, but click through to check out the full reviews:
“Watson and Heaney have a fantastic chemistry on stage.” –Grayowl Point
“Overall the evening had a loose, comfortable feel. It truly was more like a party with friends than a concert.” –Snob’s Music
Expect more videos from the show too, as we had Laura’s sister on hand filming along with our little sports camera mounted at the front of the stage.
Jealous of all the attention that Laura’s art has been getting her lately, I decided to get off my ass and get back into drawing too. The result is a new tumblr site where I’ll be posting 100 drawings of Batman done on my iPad using various sketching apps and a stylus.
I can’t stress enough just how proud we are of 