Day 7

   We are finished!!!   Today we closed up shop and prepped for our trip back south. It was an awesome experience and working with Jay and John was one for the books. Listening to the new record was real exciting and the tracks sound explosive. If they land on the right ears, they could reach many. Keep tuned in and soon you will know what I am talking about.  

                                                                                                    Thank you guys!

Brian @ The New Kinetics 

aka: Los Nuevos Kineticos!

Marvin always has good feedback

Allen at the controls

That's a wrap!

Days 5 & 6
Freeeking out! I can't believe how fast things are going.
Two days just went by and it felt more like two hours.

We are at the stage of listening to playback and tweaking levels.... sounds easy right?  Well it's actually maddening. Luckily we have JV and Jay to steer us straight when we think we're hearing phantom clicks and misses... Jay throws a bucket of ice water in my face and JV slaps the shit out of Brian.. Leslie and Jon are catatonic ;) j/k!! These guys are the sweetest most awesome bunch to work with!  They just finished "F*Bomb", nothing less than perfection! of course :)... and now are moving to "Plagues"...  so many fun tidbits in there ..this track is gonna be our Pet Sounds the way it's going.
We love you all and miss you dearly.
Birdy

Day 4
Birdy here.
I can't say enough about the fantastic team working on this record with us.
 Vanderslice or "JV" as we've come to know him, has a contagious energy and excited to offer any assistance he can think of. While listening to playback on a particularly fun track where Brian and I sing tandem, "Tear Down Your Idols," JV swings his chair around to ask Leslie and I if we have chosen somewhere for mastering.. and immediately started typing an email to a contact of his he says is the best in the business... cc'ing us asks his contact if he can slip our band in or get their first availability (despite that he is usually booked out 9 weeks in advance at any given time).
 Jay Pellicci is friendly and totally approachable...yet more resembles a demon cobra when he's at the controls he's so fast. Even Allan the intern from Athens GA is an indispensable part of this well polished gem of a recording facility.
 I'm particularly excited at how amazingly some of the new tunes such as "Plagues,""PopLife,"and "Reverie" have developed in the studio and we haven't even heard properly mixed tracks yet.  :)

The TNK cheerleading squad!

Go team, go!

Marvin sandwich.

New room today, A room console is humongous.

 JV, evaluating.  It needs more guitar!

Late night after hot tubbing...!

The calm before the storm... You don't wanna know.

On to mixing, party time!

Day 3

Hey everyone!

             Brian here. So we are done with day three and man I gotta tell you, wooooooohooooo!   Sorry. I have had a bit of coffee. Today we wrapped up a few of the songs structurally and started doing vocal harmonies. We have started the piano parts as well and have had the opportunity to use a Story and Clark upright grand piano from 1904 as well as a Moog from 1981. 

          The sounds that we have been getting with the production and direction of the saints at Tiny Telephone has started to sound less like song ideas and more like a progressively more intense rumbling beneath our feet. 

     While Contact may have been our voice, this is us shouting. Tomorrow we move into the big studio at Tiny Telephone. I have been told that it is massive compared to the studio we are in right now. I find that to be an incredible statement as the room we are in now looks bigger than anything that EMI had in 1965. Birdy ripped a hole in the sky today with her vocals in "Crows Landing". Jon played a tremendous drum that looks as though it should be toted about at the head of a civil war battle on "Poplife" and I got to squeak weird noises all over "Evacuation soul". That song is all about my love of modern pop and how the radio plays swell music all the time. . . .   Nah, not really. 

    Also, today Leslie basked in the glory of proving our pronunciation of Moog was incorrect! More to come!

 The worlds most expensive cat tree.

 Moog on a trashcan.

Day 2

What a day.  Yesterday we tracked all ten songs, which is amazing progress.  JV and our engineer Jay have both told us that bands typically track three songs per day, which is why we had three days booked for just that! It feels great to be so far ahead of schedule.

"Nice drumming, Marvin"

Says Jon.

Today was "Guitar Wonderland", which meant that Brian had all day to work on guitar overdubs, and a huge selection of amps and guitars to choose from.  As a band, we brought everything we could carry, and Tiny Telephone is equipped with a ton of old tube amps and guitars.  A 71' Gibson ES-335 and a 51' Kay hollow body were among the favorites.  It only took four or five hours to finish... B. Reilly is a maniac.

Since Brian finished so quickly we started Birdy on vocals.  We heard her voice through more types of microphones than I knew existed, and we were all amazed by the difference in each one. She also finally had the chance to check out the echo chamber.  It sounded like mermaids on acid.  Definitely going back to that tomorrow.

This record has something for everyone and I can't wait for you 
to hear it.

Marvin thinks it sucks, so he's leaving.  What does he know?  Everything, really.

Love, Leslie (TNK)

Day 1

We made it!  During our first day at Tiny Telephone studios we became acquainted with the rooms and engineers and it was an instant fit.  We were scheduled to take three days to track the songs, but we completed all 10 live tracks in seven hours.  Working with the talents of John Vanderslice and Jay Pecilli was intimidating at first, but we quickly found that our work ethic and musical vision aligned.  It made it easy to stomp through take after take.  They were enthusiastic about the sound that they were getting out of our first session.  We can't wait to get back in tomorrow for overdubbing, vocal harmonies, and guitar layering. It's going to be stellar.

Oakland/SF Bay Bridge, arriving in San Francisco

Security is tight at Tiny Telephone

John Vanderslice

The console at Tiny Telephone - not tiny

Marvin, the studio cat

Behind the console

The three bears