Let’s hear if for 2011!! I’ve already had some friends and my sister in from out of town, been to both the Brooklyn Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, and been to Fat Albert’s warehouse twice!!  Plus, I’m starting of this year right, finishing up a couple of amazing projects.

First is the record I began a whiiiiiile ago with James Elkington (of the Horse’s Ha, the Zincs, and more) and Nathan Salsburg (solo artist and head of Twos and Fews).  It’s an album of instrumental folk songs played on acoustic guitars in the style of Bert Jansch, Leo Kotke, and John Fahey.  We’ve been working on this off and on, getting together to record in my old living room in Chicago when Nathan was in town, and adding overdubs and field recordings here and there as I’ve mixed.  It’s been a pleasure working on this record, and I can’t wait for the world to hear it. I have my fingers crossed that it will take less time to release it than it did to make it!

The other really exciting thing I’ve been working on is a new television pilot with some of my pals from the Food Party crew.  I’m not sure how much is under wraps, but I can say that if you were a fan of Food Party, you’ll be right on board with this one.  We’ve been going nuts with the sound design – it kinda blew my mind to hear all I had done leading up to the holidays – and the art is pretty out of this world.  Check out this clip from an old Food Party episode to get the gist of things:

porridge sequence in FP4 from Thu Tran on Vimeo.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!!!

xo, twoeyes

WOWEE!!!  The reception to the new Girl Talk record has been phenomenal!  If you haven’t gotten a chance to listen to it, head over to the Illegal Art site and check it out: http://www.illegal-art.net/allday/

Both Pitchfork and the Onion AV Club gave All Day great reviews – full of praise and very astute.  Check them out too:

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14899-all-day/

and

http://www.avclub.com/articles/girl-talk-all-day,48376/

Before I go any further, check out this wicked photo spread my friends Thu and Josef made for Flaunt magazine (see sick image on your right):

http://flaunt.com/features/112/eating-out

I’ve been keeping busy since, going down to Tennessee for Thanksgiving, and tackling a few other mastering jobs in between.  Illegal Art – the sample-addled record label that brought us Girl Talk, Steinski, and Deconstructing Beck – has a new release coming out soon by People Like Us called Welcome Abroad.  It’s a dizzying collection of classic pop tunes, javanese lullabies, marching band standards, and probably a million other things I missed blended into a staggering series of bizarro sound collages.  Coming soon.

The other big project was an anthology of 80’s Nashville recordings compiled by my friend Jason Henn (formerly of Elephant Micah, the Red Queen Hypothesis, et al).  Entitled Always on My Mind – The Ronnie Henn Story, the album traces his Dad’s journey through the Nashville studio system in the mid-80s as he attempts to make good on a contract signed at the Hoosiers premier, so crazy it must be true.  Ronnie’s baritone croon graces all sorts of country standards, from classic ballads like “Always on my Mind” and “Crazy” to more upbeat banjo thumpers like “Rocky Top”.  This CD will be distributed through the Numero Group, which is great news!  Read more about this crazy trip Jason’s Kickstarter page for the project: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/468130542/always-on-my-mind-the-ronnie-henn-story

Other tidbits: mastering a single for Brooklyn-based Special Envoy; finished mixing the I Ching Quartet record These Dreams, to be mastered at All City Mastering in Chicago; and some other exciting stuff I’ll talk about next time.

until then,

twoeyes

Go to the Illegal Art website to download the new Girl Talk album, free of charge: http://www.illegal-art.net/allday/

All Day is the new 71 minute epic by my buddy Gregg Gillis.  This is the third record I’ve mastered for him, and I had the pleasure again of assisting (along with his Trey Told ‘Em partner Frank Musarra) with technicalities throughout the process.  It was cool to watch the album take shape, and I can say with authority that a great deal of time and effort was put into getting the album just right.

The finished product combines the scope of his marathon live shows, the hyper-glitchy editing from his IDM upbringing, and some original production flourishes to finesse the album into a bold, unmistakeably “Girl Talk-y” artistic statement.  I’m psyched.

Well, here I am, right down the street from Mr. Kiwi’s.  I jumped ship on Chicago last month, and moved out to Brooklyn with my lady.

So far, it’s been great, although Food Party didn’t get renewed for a third season.  Luckily, I’ve had plenty of hangtime with those guys, including an opening Thu curated at the Showpaper Gallery.

SOUNGS just had it’s second release – a new 7″ by the one and only Daniel Francis Doyle.  The single is called “There Are Two of You”, and you can pick it up on the SOUNGS website or from Dan on tour.  Stay tuned for more news on SOUNGS, including a new website, more releases in the archives, and a new album by Hearts of Darknesses!!

So now that I’ve got my studio setup here in Brooklyn, I’ve been working on wrapping up mixes on the new I Ching Quartet and James & Nathan albums that I recorded in Chicago.  I’m such a proud papa on these ones, I can’t wait from them to drop.  I’ve also been doing some mastering work for a couple Chicago-based bands – Dumpster Babies and Wild Jesus.

And there’s more cool stuff coming up in the next couple months!

xo,

twoeyes

Hello Again Summertime!!!

Just got back in town from not-so-blustery California, where I was celebrating my good friends’ wedding.  Now it’s hot as balls all over again.

I’ve been keeping busy with a lot of recording this summer.  Both the I Ching Quartet and Jim Elkington/Nathan Salsburg records that I mentioned last time are in overdub/mixing territory.  I’m really pleased with both so far – while they’re very different records, both have a very natural, tactile feel that I’ve striven for many many times, but never quite captured as well as on these recordings.  Stay tuned, we hope to have both records completed by the end of the month.

I also did a couple days of recording with the group El is a Sound of Joy.  They’re a seven-piece free-rock band from around town, alternately droney and balls-out aggression.  We did two days of recording at Experimental Sound Studio, and got about 7-8 hours of material to sift through.  Look out for an album from these sessions on New Ruins.

If you haven’t heard of Trouble in Mind Records, time to get wise.  They’ve put out an amazing run of 7″s from the Fresh and Onlys, Co-co-coma, Ty Segal and more.  I’ve started doing mastering for some of their releases, starting with the upcoming Personal and the Pizzas 7″.  Three songs of Ramones-y crooners, delicious.

I’ve got much much more to tell soon!!!  Pro Gear, Pro Attitude, y’all!

p, schenke

Aaaahhhhhhh…. summer vacation, still hasn’t lost it’s charm for me.

We wrapped up season 2 of Food Party a couple of weeks ago, with equal parts relief and sadness.  This was one of my favorite projects I’ve been involved with, and easily the most fun job I have ever had.  Beat that, NASA!!

Season 2 is restarting this coming week, for all y’all that missed it the first time around.  Tune to IFC every Tuesday at 10 PM and/or 3 AM EST for two episodes.  I promise it only gets better and better!

I’ve also been busy playing with Mittens on Strings, doing our last few shows before calling it a day.  We put together some hand-printed copies of our new untitled EP (available to stream on our myspace page), and have been jamming some new shit in the practice space.  Our next show is Wed July 21st at the Empty Bottle with the awesome Yellow Fever from ATX.

So in addition to sun and fun, here are a few things I’ve been keeping busy with:

• starting a new album with perennial favs the I Ching Quartet (super dreamy this round)
• resuming recording the acoustic guitar duo album with Jim Elkington and Nathan Salsburg (fucking incredible, truly excited about this one)
• mastering an improvised free jazz recording for Anthony Poretti (also of Spirits of the Red City)

I’ve got plenty more cool shit in the pipeline too, just hang tight.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working with my friend Chris Hefner on his film The Pink Hotel.  It’s a beautiful feature-length piece, shot in B&W on Super 8, very dreamlike in a David Lynch/Guy Maddin kind of way.  And it debuts tomorrow – Friday April 9th – for a one-off screening at the Music Box!

Chris spent I don’t know how long (months?) on the sound design, and brought it all over to me to mix and “make it sound like a real film”.  Chris and I met hanging work at the Museum of Contemporary Arts, and I’ve been a fan of his work since he gave me a DVD-R of shorts, but he really blew me away with this one.  We went over to the Music Box last night for a midnight test screening, and I’m really pleased with what we’ve done.   I’m really looking forward to for tomorrow night.

Other than that, been working on Food Party.  This week, Thu was stuck in a time warp…..  The new season starts Tuesday April 27th on IFC!  Oh, the anticipation!

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.