Hi there.
It's been a while since I've updated anything. I try to do this at least once a month, but I got kinda bogged down. At the moment, I'm still recovering from some pretty nutty dental surgery I had to have done. It's amazing how much a goddamn tooth can hurt. But I've been getting a lot of work done (well, excluding this past week and a half). The start of Summer is always a time when I tend to rearrange everything, make plans for the coming months, and gather up where I'm headed. Mental spring cleaning, perhaps. But over the past couple years, I've come to really hate Summer. Since I'm generally always working on a project of some kind, and I most often work on projects in my tool shed, it gets really uncomfortable during the Summer months. I sweat pretty easy, and I get to where playing guitar is tough simply because my hands are so slippery, among other issues. Usually my productivity drops to half, my tolerance for experimentation goes to shit and I throw away half of what I make. I turn into a grumpy bastard. But this year I cut it off. I decided to rebuild my recording space.
I removed everything from the building, patched all the cracks in the walls and replaced the rotten boards, rebuilt the south wall (semi-sound proofed it against cars, too), redid the floors, put in new shelving and storage, installed new lighting, and put in a window-unit air conditioner. It was a lot of work. I'm not the handiest of people, but thankfully my brother is, and together we got it all done in about 10 days. It has almost twice the functional space now, and it's reasonably cool even during the day. And since everything was either used or on clearance, it didn't cost much at all. It's still the shed, and it still functions as a laundry room, but the difference is pretty drastic. Here's a pic of the new space:

Also, I don't know if I mentioned this, but Morr Music recently released a compilation. It's a tribute to the independent music scene of New Zealand during the 80s and 90s, for bands like Tall Dwarfs, The Cleans, and so on, and it's called "Not Given Lightly". The first disc is made up of covers from various Morr artists, and the second is a disc of unreleased songs. I contributed a Radical Face song, and Alex and I did one up for Electric President, as well as contributing a cover. If you'd like to hear them, they're in the players below. I don't know how many were printed or where these are available, but if you can get a copy, it's worth picking up. The packaging is really great.
Electric President -- Cover of David Kilgour's "You Forget":
Radical Face -- "Wandering":
Electric President -- "White Noise":
As far as progress goes, I'm still knee deep in all these current records. I'm really happy with how these Radical Face records are shaping up. The system I came up with for these new records is paying off, and I'm really happy with how all the production is working out. I still have a lot of work to do, but I've got more than half of the first record finished, and another 10 tracks under way for both the first and the second. Beyond that, Rick and I have made a lot more progress on Clone. Act 3 is all tracked now, musically speaking, and we've got most of act 4 planned. I think we'll be done this Summer, as long as we can work consistently. And I think we may have a way to get this released as well. It isn't a very traditional record, but we're both really excited with how it's turning out and are gonna do our best to make sure it becomes available somehow once we're done. And the B-sides for Sleep Well are still coming along, albeit slower than the others. That'll likely change over the next couple weeks, though.
I've also begun practicing with a friend of mine in an attempt to get a live show together. If all goes as planned, I should be playing some shows again this year. I never hold my breath on this, as something always seems to go wrong with live stuff, but it's underway, for whatever that's worth.
And I off and on have people ask me how to play certain songs on guitar. But since I write everything down in this little shorthand that helps no one but me (I've never learned to write music properly), it's always tough for me to explain just how to play everything. I've never used tabs either. So I filmed a couple quick videos on how to play the ones I get the most questions for, and once I figure out how to edit them down properly, I'll upload them here. Hopefully within the next couple of days. Stay tuned for that, if you're interested.
I had more to post, but it's escaping me right now and I gotta make dinner. More soon.
I hope everyone is well.








More news to come soon. I hope everyone is well.









