From the Lab...

Lots of lab work happening these days - Gigs have to be put on hold for the greater good of the big sound becoming ENORMOUS....

Kali and Ricky have a wicked new version of "Gelatin Coated" coming along. Finally the stand-in percussion parts which make a nice backbone for Jon to play with live, but which are a bit less than ideal in the studio without the live drums (quite a project to do right), are being beefed up through the collaborative efforts of our complementary strengths. Check for this soon - ultimately this 'remix' will actually become the new version letting the old one retire as a sketch. Simultaneously Aija is working on getting us out of our purely instrumental mode by learning the melodies and writing lyrics to a few of the more developed tunes. She is really great - a few lucky people have heard her breathy alto on a few test runs, the rest of you are going to have to wait for the official recordings. In the meantime, check her out on myspace - she is a real talent:

Aija on Myspace

Kali's guitar rig took a hit in the construction of the new live setup. The little pocket mixer with 1 (!) effect send was just not up to the task with the new lineup let alone the 8 outs of the MPC 2500. The Allen & Heath 16:2 fits the bill nicely with its 6 (yes 6!) effects sends - really nice EQ too. Thing is,  Kali's PCM41 and the Roland DC-30 as well as the AKAI MFC42 became the go-to items in the rack since they have always been the core of the dub. Kali's guitar rig was feeling a little neglected - rightly so. As death precedes rebirth (Kali in the Hindu tradition) - the guitar rig is now the phoenix arisen - the Moog MuRF MF-105 and the T.C. Electronic Nova Delay are now the filter and delay and best of all STEREO. The perfectly restored Twin Reverb (by the master Skip Simmons) ...

- do not take a tube amp anywhere else -

Skip Simmons Amp Repair

... along with the Mesa Boogie Mark III and these stereo effects allow for a dizzying hypnotic kaleidoscope of guitar tone. Skip is going to find us another twin for the true stereo effect. The sound is already magical - now we just need to figure out how to record it right... When we do you'll be the first to hear it.

New friends

The mission...

As some of you who are most in touch with the ongoing mission know - we are retooling the lineup so we can make an enormous theatrical wall of sound  playing electronica/dance/house/trance.

To this end we've been playing with lots of new people of all sorts because the above described mission is not easy. Machines are necessary but so are people - to make this mesh requires exceptional players with a lot of taste, restraint, and rhythmic integrity.

Somehow the infinite wisdom of the universe brought us Jon.

Kali and Jon used to play together in Sharkbait. They had lost track of each other, but just now, when Schweickie finds himself with a bit too much 'life' to devote the time we need, Jon magically appears. We are fortunate indeed as Jon is a monster: the right combo of industrial/metal thunder and maturity/taste to make our new electronica material LIVE and human without it turning into rock. The recent rehearsals and jams have been magical.

Through some networking and craigslist ads we've found all sorts of interesting folks with quite a diverse range of sounds, talents and instruments. We are getting to know some new percussionists, keyboard players, turntablists, and singers.

Worth remaking upon is Ricky Switch - DJ for Distant Relatives. We've done a few sessions and the results are inspiring and exciting - we should've recorded the live version of "Gelatin Coated" we did last night.

#1 He's got SKILLZ and INTEGRITY. Its always a challenge to find musicians who actually do what they say they'll do.

#2 He is from Northern Ireland - despite some reluctance to generalize about entire races / nationalities I gotta say that I do not think I have ever met an Irishman I didn't like....We like to have a nice cuppa tea when we hang out.

He seems to like us and we like him so we're going to keep at it and see where it goes.

Yeah Ricky - we hope we can work together for a long time.

Check him out:

Ricky Switch

...In the beginning...

Well well well, the mighty swamp sound system has boldly stepped into the 21st century (finally).

All our old friends know of the musical explorations and collaborations - but all of our new internet friends were not there in the garage, the ghetto home studios, the naive short lived incarnations, the great sounding lineups which couldn't stay together...

So, as we start to establish this presence with the most important business of getting our new sounds out to people who are looking for something like what we're doing, we also will be sharing little bits of history. We do hope this is interesting to some of you...

Lets start by giving a few links:

swampsoundsystem.com

This is where all our current material is being 'tested' mixes go up here and get replaced by new ones, thus the whole band and any interested fans can make comments and the sound develops. There are also a lot of old mixes and records, basement tracks etc. here.

Our latest material is from Drink & Food - an instrumental group started by Schweickie and Kali. We were listening to a lot of  Jungle and Drum & Bass and being a drummer and bassist we thought, "Why don't we do some drum and bass the old fashioned way?" so we did. We have a few recordings of those jams on adat which were digitized before that format became completely obsolete - we will get a few posted one of these days. This is where "House on Haunted Hill" came from. 

haunted hill.mp3

This also how "Train Unforgiven" came into its own as a fully developed tune.

train-unforgiven.mp3

Currently we are working on a House / Trance incarnation played by live musicians in real time. People seem to respond positively to the material and the rehearsals are huge. We will be gigging in a few months and its going to be so much fun - really REALLY fun material to play.

Also we are trying to get a lot of archive material posted there as well. Just added is the entire Alter Ego / Babylon representative album "Slush Puppies" - if you like old school punk rock have a listen. Ritchie's songs are hilarious and Schweickie and Hegs really rip it up. This was an amazing party band... r.i.p. Maybe if enough people bug us we'll get a reunion together.