Hello folks,
It’s been a while since our last update so it seemed a good time to post one and let you folks know about our next show, where C is for Cthulhu stands, and elaborate on the how we decided to revise our whole 7″ plans after this next release. Maybe I should start off with the whole 7″ thing.
OK, well, much like my getting a fat lip from tripping on my shoelace on the tennis courts the other day, when the LP4 fails at something, we do so spectacularly. In this case we have to admit that the whole idea behind releasing 7″s looked great on paper but in practice, eh, not so much.
If you remember, last year we announced out idea for releasing 7″s instead of albums. The way we figured it, we would release two 7″ EPs a year and so would have a steady stream of new releases. Nice idea sure but in the end, impractical. The biggest monkey wrench in our plan was the fact that we now make videos. Seriously, if we were just releasing music, this 7″ would likely have been out by now but that’s not the case. This “C is for Cthulhu” shoot is our most ambitious to date and there were and are a lot of issues with completing it. First we had to build miniature sets (which takes forever) then everything from green screens, light rigs, location shoots, scheduling a bunch of folks with conflicting schedules, and so on conspired against our best laid plans. And now, while some stop-motion work and one crucial live-action shot have been completed, the rest is effectively on-hold until the second week of May and it’s all because of schedule conflicts. Once those Green Screen scenes are shot in May, the most complicated work will be behind us leaving me with just stop motion and a few more location shoots to wrap it up. That would be fine except that when I look at the calendar, it’s a bit disappointing given our plan for this to have been a winter release.
That’s all incredibly inefficient. On the other hand, if you are releasing an album, you can make one flagship video for one song and call it “go” time. Lots of music and one video to help get the word out – done. Maybe, if you have some time you can make a few other videos along the way but those aren’t make or break. But when you have a 7″, the video to song ratio is much worse. You just don’t get as much mileage out of the same amount of video work. That’s not to say that making videos isn’t fun or rewarding – they are – but just that if you took half the songs on an album and released them as singles, you’d have a lot more videos to make and the time involved in making them doesn’t get any shorter. The end result is that the music takes a lot longer to be released and the amount of music you release slows down exponentially and, while videos are super fun to make, the main work of a band is to make music.
So where that leaves us is that “C is for Cthulhu” (long, long ago recorded and mastered) will be the last in this 7″ release experiment. We are now expecting it to be released some time in the late summer (July or August). The artwork is nearly done and the masters should be off to the plant soon and of course our video should be completed by then too. To be sure, the wait will be worth it. Everything from the music, to the 7″ cover art, and the video will be over the top awesome but you’ll have to just wait a bit longer than we had hoped and we’re sorry about that.
After this release we’ll move back to releasing full length records or 12″ EPs. In fact we already have the title track for that next endeavor worked out. It’s track called “Ampalanche” for which we already have a video planned and we should be recording in the next few months. Sure, we may be 9 to 12 months away from that project’s release date but the good thing there is we can promise you guys a lot more music than just two or three songs in that next release so more bang for your buck for you.
Oh and as I mentioned, we had an all day shoot for the “C is for Cthulhu” video at Valhalla last month that went really well. Here are some shots Larry and Clinton took and a video Steve posted.
It was a lot of work, a lot of fun to be sure, and we were pretty happy with the rough cuts of the footage. Christian Best and Stevie Sims were both great in their roles and the Valhalla staff was pretty accommodating and nice enough to play along with all our silliness. I’d show you some of the footage but I don’t want to spoil it for you guys.
Oh and let me close this post with letting you know about our next show.
We ‘re playing with Only Beast at Rudz on Saturday 03 May which should be a lot of fun. We’re playing second because we kind want to kick back and have a few beers while Only Beast kicks out the jams. College Station’s Ex-Optimists will open and we plan on bringing the whole multimedia thing out for this one. So come on down and slam a few beers with us.
Until next time…
