I was out the past week and a half with my band Mittens on Strings.  We made our fourth trip down to South By Southwest in Austin, and played some shows on the way down.  It was awesome to go out on the road again – I did no touring in 2009! – and I was really feeling how we were playing.

We finished mixing the new Mittens on Strings EP right before the tour.  It’s Alex and my favorite thing we’ve done as a band – I’m really proud.  Five songs, all recorded over the course of a weekend, mixed to optimum psychedelic beauty.  We’re working on packaging now – Alex designed an awesome stamp for the front cover – and we should have some sort of release party in the next couple months.

I’ve been hard at work on season 2 of Food Party for IFC.  It’s been a real challenge, in a fun way, to work so quickly and remain creative about the sounds I’m making.  For example, in one episode Thu cuts her arm off to eat it.  It’s so fucking gross, my stomach was turning as I watched it over and over and over, trying to make the right mix of ripping flesh, squishing muscle, and squirting marinade.  I talked with my man Matt Fitzpatrick – who has been killing it with his music each week – and he said he had to compose the score with his monitor off!  This week I’m busting out my synths to try and get some rocket ship noises….  We’re about a third of the way through, but the season starts mid-April.  I can’t wait to see how people take to it!

Project update: CAW! CAW! is having their record release party April 13th at the Abbey Pub in Chicago.  We spend a couple months this winter mixing it just right, so I’m psyched to see this record come to fruition.  Come out to wish the boys “BON VOYAGE” on their tour.

I’m back at work after running in and out of town….

I went out to Brooklyn to visit my friends on the set of Food Party, a show entering its second season on Independent Film Channel.  Created by the awesome Thu Tran, and featuring about a dozen of my good friends on the cast and crew, the series is a smoke-addled, puppet-infested, Pee Wee’s Playhouse-style absurdest comedy only tangentially about food.  It rules.  The set looks amazing, and everyone is totally psyched on this second season, which begins sometime in April.  I’ll be doing mixing and sound design again from my studio in Chicago, starting next week.

Earlier in January, my buddies and I in Mittens on Strings got together at Experimental Sound Studio to record an EP of new material.  In contrast to our last record Let’s Go to Baba’s – with a zillion overdubs, string arrangements, and about a half dozen too many mixing experiments – we decided to do this all live in one room.  A few overdubs and vocal parts later, we had five songs down in one weekend!  I’ve started working on the mixes, and we’ll be hopefully finishing it up in the next couple of weeks.

So in the meantime, I’m finishing CX Kidtronik’s new record for Stones Throw called (I shit you not) Krak Attack II: Back Krak with a Vengeance.  The album is a total mindfuck, bordering old school hip hop, booty house, gabber, punk, and anything else you can shake your ass to.  This dude is obsessed with asses, in case you had missed that.  You might have seen him on tour with Girl Talk or Saul Williams over the last year or so – he’s also Saul’s DJ live.  The record features some really amazing guest spots from Alec Empire, MF DOOM, Saul Williams, and Otto Von Shirach.  There’s a 12″ single coming out soon for “Black Girl White Girl” b/w “Animal Kindgom (feat King Geedorah)”!  ROWDY!!!

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.

My lady and I just got back to Chicago from a Thanksgiving trip down to Texas…. nice drive, y’all.  If anyone has the chance to go to the Menil Collection in Houston, or see any works from Robert Gober, I would HIGHLY recommend it!

Before I hit the road, I got to record two friends of mine (one old, one new) – Jim Elkington and Nathan Salsburg – in my living room.  They’re working on an album of ol’ timey acoustic guitar duos… a great way to spend a day, if you ask me.  Jim has played in both the Zincs and the Horse’s Ha (with Janet Beam and Fred Lonberg-Holm also in the band), and he and I did some tracking earlier in the year for a forthcoming solo record.  Nathan and I bonded over our mutual love of Elephant Micah, and we went to the release party for his new anthology Ouled Bambara: Portraits of Gnawa, a CD/DVD combo of Moroccan spiritual music on Twos & Fews/Drag City.  Pretty amazing stuff, and a good review here: http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13723-ouled-bambara-portraits-of-gnawa/

I’m picking up where I left off, working on the first 12″ single from CX Kidtonik’s KRAK ATTACK for Stones Throw Records.  It’s for a song called “Black Girl White Girl”, with a track featuring MF DOOM on the B-Side.  Pretty fucking banging…. a full length LP and another 12″ single are also slated for early next year.

I’ll also be starting on mixing a record by Chicago’s CAW! CAW! (not to be confused with Chicago’s Cacaw – also awesome).  They tracked the album out in LA this summer, and we’ll be mixing for the next month or so.  The tunes are sometimes epic, sometimes intimate, but mostly rockin’.  It should be a blast to mix this thing.

Other stuff surely coming up, talk at you soon….

Whoa, doggie!!  It’s been a while since I’ve updated this site!

This week I’m putting the finishing touches on a master for an upcoming release by my friend(s) Elephant Micah called Elephant Micah Plays the Songs of Bible Birds.  It’s a collection of four track recordings from a few years ago featuring members of one of my favorite Chicago bands Pillars & Tongues.  Gorgeous songs…. It will be available on CD & LP from Time-Lag Records in the near future.

Also of note, Time Lag will also be releasing a very limited edition of the previous Elephant Micah record The Exiled Magicians – my personal favorite, and another one I mastered.

I’m also wrapping up an EP for my friends Unmanned Ship.  We tracked this live at the Hideout in September, and it’s a beast.  Think Lightning Bolt or blown out Black Sabbath.  We got together over the weekend to tweak the mixes, and I’ll be doing the master over the next couple of days.  I’ll keep posting as things develop, but they’re looking to put out a tape on their own Sparring Records.

And to update my site, over the past few months I’ve worked on a couple of films (Scrappers – a documentary on scrap metal scavengers – and Riot Acts – a documentary on trans-gender musicians); done some tracking with Swiss pianist Hans-Peter Pfammater and an assortment of Chicago improvisers (Frank Rosaly, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Tim Daisy, and many others), as well as an EP with drone-metal band Rabid Rabbit; and some mixing and mastering for a record and some singles by CX Kidtronik & Krak Attack for Stones Throw Records.  Mittens on Strings put out our new LP Let’s Go to Baba’s and the SOUNGS site has been launched!

Whew…. I’ll certainly be updating this more often…

Food Party is a show created by my friend Thu Tran.

She and our friends have been making this show for years now, and a brand new episode premiers Tuesday June 9th at 11:15 on cable’s own Independent Film Channel.

We spent the spring making five new episodes for IFC.  I was working with them doing foley (food-related sounds, setting fires, and an assortment of squishy noises) and editing and mixing sound for each episode.

You can find out more and view early episodes and teasers at these sites:

http://foodparty.tv/

http://www.ifc.com/food-party/

http://www.vimeo.com/thutran

ENJOY!!