Still working.

Esozone 2011

For the people who missed it, The Steven Lasombras was added at the last minute to the bill at Esozone 2011, along with Cult Of Zir and Soup Purse.
The event itself was very cool (Tom Henderson's talk on Friday night was especially enjoyable), and the performances went well. I uploaded video of a few of the SLs songs here. The camera's mic was shit, especially frustrating since the two-amp setup I was trying sounded really nice in the room (if you turn the volume on the video way down, it almost sounds "really bad").
Still, it might give one the general idea of what was happening. Next time, better mics!

Summer ended.

This is where the magic happens now. (Not pictured: "the magic".)

Hello, friends. It appears that I managed to go all Summer without posting any updates here. MY APOLOGIES. Since last post we've been working, recording, moving, painting, setting up new studio space, rehearsing, more recording... It's been a busy time.

ANYWAY. The new SLs record is almost done, still on track to finish by the end of the year (factoring in time for mastering and finalizing the drawings and layout for the book, I believe we're still looking at an early-2012 release).

ALSO, I've been painting more pedal enclosures. A handful of these are for sale now over at Old Town Music, a few more are available now through this Etsy site. These are two of them:



You should buy them, or recommend to someone else that they should buy them. The point is, they should be bought. That is all.

More updates soon! Probably.

A few updates...

There's now a Facebook page for The SLs and a To The Neck twitter page. You should go "Like" the former and "Follow" the latter, if you go in for that sort of thing. [I promise to try and keep both interesting.] While updating website stuff I also uploaded a few old SLs and Animal Beard videos to Vimeo (you can also refer to the VIDEOS tab on the left side of this page for links). I think these two hold up pretty well:

The Steven Lasombras "The Country/The Mist" live at Holocene, August 13, 2008 from To The Neck Recordings on Vimeo.

Animal Beard "Activity Summary" live at the Indigo District, 2004 from To The Neck Recordings on Vimeo.

Recording for the new SLs record continues. As usual, the more I get done, the more there is to do... Still, it's getting there. More updates soon!

Custom-painted pedal enclosures!

Hello, friends. Just a quick update - if you're in the market for a new fuzz pedal, Portland-based pedal builder Devi Ever has a new system for accepting hand-painted pedals where an artist paints an enclosure, sends it to Devi, then you special-order one of Devi's two-knob pedals in the custom-painted enclosure of your choice.

I did ten of these and they're available NOW through Devi's Etsy store! I think they turned out really well. Go buy one.*

*Personally, I would recommend the 90 in a Total Recall enclosure, or the Torn's Peaker with Tommy Wiseau screaming "YOU'RE TEARING ME APART, LISA." The Bit is also a winner - I use the Bit side of my Bit Mangler all the time on SLs recordings, especially with keyboards.