My buddies and a ton of people I hadn’t seen in years were in Chicago over New Year’s.  We had a Mittens on Strings show the night before NYE, and had 30+ people from out of town ready to hang.  It was a blast of a show, played fast and loose, working out a bunch of new stuff we’ll be recording this weekend (more on that after the fact).  My friend Gregg brought in the new year with a massive Girl Talk show at Congress Theater, replete with a giant replica of a house, a karaoke setup in the lobby, and a few thousand wasted teens.  Check it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdDaoKJqZ4I

Since then, I’ve been working on mixing a record & EP by a Chicago band called CAW! CAW! It’s on a real Mellon Collie tip, with a lot of epic shoegaze-y explosions and passionate delivery…. there are some pretty amazing moments throughout, and I’m excited to see what they do with this record.  We aim to finish mixing and move to mastering next week.

Right before the holidays, I finished a master for the Swiss saxophone player Urs Leimgruber.  It was a pretty mindblowing collection of solo saxophone material, recorded at Experimental Sound Studio by Lou Mallozzi.  I must admit that it’s both refreshing and challenging to work on solo acoustic music like that… I’ll fill in details regarding release as I get them.

Speaking of Experimental Sound Studio, check out their new website at: http://www.experimentalsoundstudio.org/ It’s a beautiful site, full of media and information, and their plans to grow it are truly inspiring.  Congratulations, guys.