Music As A Weapon: Disturbed, Trivium, As I Lay Dying & These Four Walls

Last week I was Lucky enough to go on tour with the Aforementioned bands as These Four Walls’ FOH Sound Guy

Just a few Highlights from the Music As A Weapon Tour:
-”Big Vals don’t Cry” Singalongs
-Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” Singalongs
-Matt Heafy (Trivium) walking up to Steve “…Hey man you guys were awesome – and your voice – Whoah! I was just blown away…” and Steve’s head exploding afterwards
-Jagermeister
-Being the Opening Act and Having Bangin’ Sound Every Night (The American crew were so good to us, and we were pretty much the only band that sound checked every night.)
-Staying in the Jailhouse overnight
-American Bands/Crew Standing side of stage Rocking Out to These Four Walls (John Moyer of Disturbed particularly enjoyed them)
-T4W Playing War Pigs – and Finding out the System Tech did Sound for Ozzy for 12 Years. “800ms – bang on every time”
-Making the most of having an American Accent
-Jagermeister
-Mat Mills (Disturbed’s Lighting Guy) Doing Amazing Lights for T4W Every Night “I really dig you guys…”
-Hitting the town with Bull (John Moyer’s Bass Tech) plus Big Val (T4W Guitar Tech) & the mighty Chris Yong (Redline/Tadpole)
-Final Party with All bands and crew in CHCH

-Consistantly Partying Hardest Every Night

FML is Awesome

god bows to math/TFF split EP

Last year I did some studio work with GCs god bows to math. I recorded 3 or 4 songs with them, 2 of which were for their split EP with TFF.

It was a really cool experience, and my first foray into more albini-influenced recording. Everything but lead vocals was recorded live in one big open live room. Grunty tones were conjured for the bass while Martin was unrelenting and unmovable on his guitar sound. This was a worry for me at first but came out WELL GOOD on the other side of the glass. stoked.

WARNING! DO NOT STAND DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF MARTIN’S AMP DURING A LIVE PERFORMANCE WITHOUT PROPER HEARING PROTECTION

I mixed and mastered four tracks, two recorded by myself – and two recorded by Jedi master Sam ‘Shep-Wan’ Shepherd.

All recorded in cubase, mixed in logic, and then mastered in Wavelab.

TFF (from dunedin) sent their files through to be mastered, and what came through was… noisy. In the recording you could hear everything, but what it was you were hearing was… unsettling? in terms of engineering anyway. So… to master these I brought them into ProTools and did some frankenstiening – duplicating each track several times and then filtering each duplicate so I could manipulate multiple bands. I remember using the Izotope Vinyl, sansamp, and even reverb on different bands to soften up the recording and enhance it as best I could. I haven’t listened to it since, but I heard the band were stoked.

The EP was released by MUZAI Records and can be found in most good record shops as well as being ordered online

*UPDATE* It’s been sold out, you may be able to find a copy floating in real groovy or JB-HI with luck. otherwise there must be an online version somewhere?

Photoshop

Aside from music/sound stuff. I love Photoshop as much as this kid loves colouring.

Among other things, I made that banner at the top of the page. That texture thing took ages (kinda) and i’m mega stoked on it. I love that shit. Textures and Contrast for the Win.

Nice Birds – Swirly

Nice Birds. Even the Sun Hates them.

Great chaps. Recording took place over 2 days on the ground floor of Creative House (Suite 2, now occupied full time by Dawn of Azazel and Heavy Artillery)

Just took my laptop and recording rack into the room and sat on the floor with headphones, recording live roomy takes. We settled on Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures as a reference for this EP, and we were getting the sounds we wanted Quite natural sounding, Albini-esque in places.

Big Shout Out Once again to Sam ‘Shep-1′ Sheperd for rocking up and throwing some ideas around. because of him we ended up recording vocals through a Beta58>SansAmp>Fender H.O.T. Amp>Audio Technica ATM23HE.

Painfully awesome.

There was also the Ogre Cymbal we created, some tambourine, and bells added atmospherically in the recordings. Many a good lol was had.

———-

Mixing began not long after, and I was getting everything sitting nicely – really stoked with how this was going, especially considering i’d never seen/heard the band before they got into the studio (and when they mentioned unknown pleasures i had to run upstairs to jump on youtube to have a listen to some tracks, then ran back downstairs and was like yeah sweet i can do that)

Then… Jesus and Mary Chain’s Psycho Candy entered the picture. “this is more what we want to sound like”

H#&*Y#F(*Y*(FEH.

okay. this is recorded entirely differently and every tone is completely different from the joy division record. FML.

If we had known, I wouldn’t have recorded it the way I did. BUT ALAS. Shit doth Happen.

So Mixing starts over, and it is a struggle, and we ended up at a happy ish medium sort of place. I probably would have liked the record more if it sounded the way it had when I had nearly finished mixing the first time, or if we’d recorded it with PsychoCandy in mind the first time, that would have been a whole other beast of recording DI-ed guitars through rats and such. dead as drums with heaps of reverb added afterwards.

Anyway it’s out now through MUZAI Records and is considered badass by those into that sort of thing. I must say The boys really upped their live game over the few gigs i saw them play at.

Sadly their EP release was their Final show as one went overseas to do awesome stuff. I even ended up renegading into God Bows To Math’s Set on the night to play bass for one song.

Sorry if this is short/tangential/lacks correct capitalization and Speeeeeling but i should be doing something else right now. May update it later.

Probably. Oh they made me a clock! I will post a photo of it here!

Bandicoot’s Jurrasic Warfare

Recently i’ve been working with a 3-piece noiz-pop band called BANDICOOT. They are amazing – they are all 15 and playing BDO in 2010.

Today we finished the last of the recording, running a microkorg into a PA monitor & putting it in the bathroom.

We recorded the band stuff Live in a practice room at Creative house in parnell, adding vocals afterwards – All of which were done with the lights turned out.

We built a fort for Pearl to do her vocals/dance in, and we ended up using pretty much all first takes.

Reuben had to come back the next day to do his vox, and we just had him run around the room yelling – it was gangsta as.

Shep-Wan of Catholic Guilt (guitar) and BMX Rapists (Lead Vocals/Noise Guitar) popped in & did some BVs on one of the songs, followed by a scat/a cappella rendition of BMX’s ‘Dennis’

All the recording (except what we did today) was done over the course of 24 hours. we were stoked. within the next hour ‘Bessie’ should be fully mixed and mastered, then more mixing for the remaining 5 tracks, all of which should be done within the next few days to be sent off for duplication.

The cover has dinosaurs with guns/lasers – and we are putting together a great show for their EP release party, which will be held on January 20th at the Basement – Projectors, platforms, maybe candy?

until the EP is out you can check them on MySpace

Tyler Burke – The Early years…

… is a videotape at my grandparents house. We’re gonna skip ahead a bit. actually nah – let’s bring it back:

• 1988: Born in Van Nuys County Hospital to Jeannine & Brian. I am the calmest Baby ever. “you never cried. never. it was creepy.” – My Uncle Marc.
• a few years I can’t really remember, apparently these are the most formative in a person’s life. I do know that in this time I hung out with Alice in Chains, Went to big outdoor rock festivals (hopefully saw black sabbath somewhere) I definitely remember seeing Jerry Garcia & the Grateful Dead. I also LOVED Sesame Street & LEGO was the best thing in the universe ever. I remember someone trying to show me how to play drums but of course I just bashed randomly. There was a house with a little bridge you had to cross to get into – in Laurel Canyon. Dunno who’s house it was though. it had that green golf astroturf on it, and was wobbly and terrified me sometimes.
• 1993: My favourite songs were: Spoonman by Soundgarden, Epic by Faith No More, Rocky Racoon by The Beatles, & Under the Bridge by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I had a crush on a girl in my kindergarden class named Amanda. Power Rangers was amazing – DINOSAUR ROBOTS! My mom had a poster in her apartment with a naked baby in a pool swimming after a dollar on a fishhook. It was really confusing. There was another one with dudes wearing nothing but socks on their cocks. I wanted to grow up to be an artist.
• 1994: “The Northridge earthquake occurred on January 17, 1994 at 4:31 AM Pacific Standard Time in Reseda, a neighborhood in the city of Los Angeles, California, lasting for about 20 seconds. The earthquake had a “strong” moment magnitude of 6.7, but the ground acceleration was one of the highest ever instrumentally recorded in an urban area in North America. Seventy-two deaths were attributed to the earthquake, with over 9,000 injured. In addition, the earthquake caused an estimated $20 billion in damage, making it one of the costliest natural disasters in U.S. history”
  I Slept through it. If you know me now, this wouldn’t suprise you.
• 1995: I am now 7, my Dad is probably my favourite person in the world, as I only see him about once a month, and we always did the best things, like going hiking, play at the park, making the best sand castles/mount dooms ever. LEGO still rules my life. My Grandpa knows EVERYTHING ABOUT EVERYTHING. Especially about blowing up stuff. My Brother Layne is born. He’s a total ladies man.
• 1996 – I read the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, but never got to finish Return of the King, because I kept losing my place and getting frustrated, and decided it was a better idea to start the whole thing over so I could catch stuff i’d forgotten about. (I think I did this 3 times) from here until about 2002 the only music I listen to is Solid Gold. Every morning in the car on the way to school “R-e-s-p-e-c-t! find out what it means to me!” It was awesome.
  I was very shy. By now the only thing I know about religion is that everyone has a different view, and it’s up to me to decide what I believe. Gay people aren’t gross/bad (but i still think it’s kinda weird) and I really really want to play Dungeons & Dragons with my Uncle Marc. Oh also I really like Depeche Mode and this one Erasure song.
• Somewhere around here/after this I find out that life is not Automatically School, College, Job, Wife, House, Kids. It turns my world upside down. “What do you mean not everyone goes to college?” but nothing really changes yet. let’s catch up later.

Shameless self promotion

Oh Hai! I decided it was time to start promoting myself Properly, so I started putting this page together, soon i’ll post some backstory to catch you up on the story thus far, then start writing posts about each Audio project I work on.

 

Chur.