I swear I am not trying to dominate the blog today… Anyway read this week’s Action 5 HERE.

Posted by ryan on 30 Nov 2007 at 03:35 pm

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Hey Kidz!!

It has only been a day or two since I told you about The Buddy System but we have been hard at work on songs for our upcoming show on December 8th at the Caledonia and we have posted a new demo for our show opener “Rap Music” on our MySpace page. Check it out, let us know what you think. Just wait until we unveil the animation at the show - seriously, you have been warned!

Posted by ryan on 30 Nov 2007 at 02:40 pm

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I keep meaning to introduce you all to my little buddy and since Team Brown just brought it up, I give you my own personal Salacious Crumb, the A #1 ladykiller, the baby seal who keeps it real, the one and only MR PRESIDENT!!

Check out his full website HERE 

Posted by ryan on 30 Nov 2007 at 01:24 pm

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So, the Vancouver Winter Olympics just announced their mascots and, while graphic design is important, the thing itself is an even more important selection. If it’s good enough, it can overcome bad design, whereas good design can’t save a stupid choice. That said, the Vancouver mascots are both awesomely designed and awesomely selected. Miga is a sea bear, which I was confused by until I realized they’d made it up. She’s half bear and half killer whale. And extremely cute. Sumi is, um, some kind of spirit thingie, but he’s furry and has wings and I covet his hat. The winner here, though, is obviously Quatchi. You might think there’s been too much sasquatch/bigfoot/swamp ape in the media lately (ads for Cold Stone Creamery and Jack Links beef jerky being the two that come to mind first but hardly the only ones), but I would contend that there is no such thing as “too much” in this category.Anyway, where the hell is Kindercore’s mascot, Kangaroo Alliance? –hb 

Posted by teambrown on 30 Nov 2007 at 11:11 am

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…seriously? I mean I just got done watching him slog his way through the YouTube/CNN Republican Debate and I am gonna have to call bullshit on that one.

Ok “some people” are you sure we are talking about the same Fred Thompson? The one who is currently running for President correct? This Fred Thompson?!

Really?!

This Fred Thompson:

Bullshit, more like:

Posted by ryan on 28 Nov 2007 at 11:39 pm

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Hey kids!  

For the past few months Mat, Craig, Lauren and I have been working on a new music/animation band called The Buddy System. Think Cornelius, Stereolab and Tullycraft playing along to the Electric Company and old Disney or Hanna Barbera cartoons. We are making our live debut at the Kindercore Xmas Party on Saturday, December 8th with a miniset - in case you didn’t know, animation takes a while.

We also have a song on the upcoming XMAS 3: The War on Christmas comic and compilation!Anyway there will be more news, music and video from us as time goes on but I wanted to announce the band here and point you all to our shiny new (but still in progress) MySpace page so that we can be friends! You can listen to our XMas song and a demo of another jam while you are at it. Also if you want a sneak peak at some of the animation in progress click HERE just don’t tell Craig since it isn’t finished yet!  

Oh and while I am at it here are some images from upcoming animations: 

Posted by ryan on 28 Nov 2007 at 04:12 pm

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Here it is, week two of our elbo.ws cover experiment. This week #1 on the elbo.ws what’s hot track list is Aly, Walk With Me by Raveonettes.

 
Illustration by Aaron Lemay

Here is what Mark had to say about the original song: ”The structure of the tune is 3 singing verses interrupted by a spaghetti western guitar hook and 2 solos of feedback and distortion. A reverbed out drum loop and farfisa organ make up the rhythm section, with a chime or triangle on the downbeat of every few measures. The instrumentation recalls of the self titled SUICIDE record. A parallel harmony follows the female vocal as she asks this Aly person to walk around different cities with her. Lyrically, this is a tune about obsession and unrequited desire.  “Aly, Walk With Me” runs 100 beats per minute and is in the key of G sharp minor.”

Here is my take on what we did with it: I really loved working on this song and I think it is one of the better tracks we have recorded. Mark initially sent me a vocal track, the crunchy lead and the keyboard hook on the chorus. Mark sped the track up to 126bpm and and changed the key to Fmin.

I listened to the tracks at work and thought about what I might do all day so when I got home the process was really fast and fluid. I programmed the drums first, a repetitive straight 4 on the floor. I thought the song needed a continuous beat to keep in the spirit of the original, but I added some tom and rim shot fills at key moments to keep it interesting. I then added bass following Mark’s crunchy lead but I added an arpeggio on the chorus bass to distinguish it from the verse. Then the vocoder. I have been using vocoder more and more lately and on this one we decided to use my vocoded “aly, walk with me” as the chorus vocal hook even though the real song didn’t have it. I think it works for this clubby version of the track but it may not have served the original well. I filled out the track with the arpeggiated keyboard and the pads in the background and sent my 5 new tracks up to Mark. Mark always blows me away with his additions at this point and this one really got me. He completely rearranged the track and added the crazy guitar solos. Aaron added his drums and we cut and pasted some parts over the phone until we got the arrangement exactly how we wanted it.

We wrapped the whole thing up in about a day. In reality, the actual work time was a lot less because a lot of it was spent talking on the phone and uploading/downloading files. This one was really fast because the song itself was so fun to work with.

 So, here it is: Ruby Isle - Aly Walk With Me (Raveonettes Cover).mp3

Posted by dan on 28 Nov 2007 at 01:05 pm

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Last week Ruby Isle decided to cover the number one song on elbo.ws. It happened to be Shadow Falls by Hello, Blue Roses. We posted about it here. This turned out to be a really fun experiment. In only a few hours we tried to take a beautiful, somber, ambient song and turn it in to a party jam. It turned out so well that I decided to send it to a few friends and they all really seemed to like it. Some people also pointed out that it was a very surreal experiment in that we actually released a cover of a song before the actual song itself was officially released. It really pointed out the immediacy of the musical world we live in where release dates have really become nothin’ but a number.

This week we decided we would take the experiment a little further. We are going to continue to do covers of the #1 spot on the elbo.ws hot tracks chart on a semi-weekly basis until we get bored or the songs get bad. Mark, Aaron and I are then going to blog about it here at kinderblog hq and let everyone know what we did, how we did it and post a copy of the song. Mark will talk about the technical side of the original track, I will discuss what we did to it and Aaron is going to add a graphic interpretation of our cover for each song. We figure someone might find our analysis of these tracks interesting Keep in mind, we won’t be criticizing them, just covering them and talking about the technical aspects of the original songs.

The process itself is kind of interesting since Mark and Aaron live in Minneapolis and live down here in Athens, GA. Thanks to yousendit, we are able to record, mix and master the tracks within a few hours by sending tracks and files back and forth. Then we will post it here and let you have it. The whole thing can really be done in a matter of hours if we have time and are inspired. Obviously, starting with a good song is really going to help!

With that said, this week’s track is already done. Aly Walk With Me by Raveonettes should be up very soon.

Posted by dan on 28 Nov 2007 at 11:55 am

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Some of you may know that I write a weekly entertainment column in the Athens daily rag (and my former employer) The Athens Banner-Herald. I used to post links to my columns on my blog but since I have all but abandoned said blog for this post-eria I figured I would start linking to my column here.

So this is the place to look if you want to read about movies, music, comics, video games, stores, restaurants, toys or whatever else I feel like writing about each week.Read last week’s column HERE 

Posted by ryan on 27 Nov 2007 at 03:39 pm

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so i’ve been sitting around in my bedroom allot thinking about how women have ruined my life and how i am the king of terrible choices and mostly i’ve just been acting like a big emo pussy. the last time i went through something like this i broke up my band. this time i’ve just been listening to allot of music that i forgot i loved. one such rediscovery is from a little known and unheralded band from the great state of Alabama called Verbena. they were best remembered or forgotten as that band Dave Grohl produced and tried to make sound like Nirvana, which is about what he got. i discovered Verbena sometime around 1998 when i was fully into the whole hardcore scene and had largerly forgotten about my grunge rock roots. well luckily for me my kid brother read about this band in an issue of guitar world that was described as a southern rock Nirvana…and being that Nirvana was and always will be my favorite band of all time we both decided to check out whatever record of theirs we could find. the album we discovered was 1997’s Souls For Sale.

Souls For Sale was everything i wanted out of a rock record that i wasn’t getting from the emo/hardcore albums that were dominating my cd player in 1997-98. it was a raw riffs and rough vocals with a wonderful southern twang. the best way to describe the record was a perfect combination of Bleach era Nirvana trying their best to sound like Sticky Fingers era Rolling Stones.  opener “hot blood” and track #5 “the desert” shred, while moody “junk for fashion” and the wild horses-like “the song that ended your career” showed that the band could write a good sad song as well. the guitar work on the album is phenomenal. and the lyrics are great. every song is catchy and memorable and makes you wanna drink a bottle of whiskey and forget that girl who broke your fucking heart back in 1996. it really is one of the hidden gems of the late 90s’ alternative/indie rock scene and if they’d put this album out in 2001 they’d have been huge stars. instead they got lost in the shuffle of late 90s Nu-Metal/rap rock/fake grunge Creed-like schlock. which is to say they never had a chance. if you love the sound of a cranked to 11 rock band playing bluesy heavy and catchy as hell rock this is the album you’ve been missing out on. i highly recommend.  

Posted by justin on 27 Nov 2007 at 03:11 pm

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