We've been nominated for an SDMA this year in the "Best Alternative" category.

Vote for some bands you like here:
http://www.sandiegomusicawards.com/

Check out us playing "Dead Rot" and "Parliament of Rooks" on Fuel TV's the Daily Habit:

UPDATE: You can buy the 7" from either our shows or Writer's, or at Lou's Records in Encinitas and M-Theory records in Mission Hills. On line coming ASAP.

So our 7" came in last week. Actually we picked them up while we were in San Francisco for our show at the El Rio. They came out really awesome and we're really excited for everyone to check 'em out.

We'll be playing a release party with Writer on Friday, 02/27/09 @ the Whistlestop which is where they will first be available. A few days after that we'll make them available on line via our websites; and at Lou's in Leucadia, M-Theory in San Diego (Mission Hills), and Spin in Carlsbad.

Petro recorded both songs at his home studio, Science. Mario over at Black Box mastered the tracks, and Pirates Press in San Francisco manufactured them.

Love, Christine did the beautiful drawing and hand-rendered type, Andy from Writer and Myself layed out the packaging.

Here's what they look like:



~ alex / Swim Party

UPDATE - 12/23/08:
So it's almost the end of the year! Holy crap that time flies.

• i've made some more progress on the website: http://www.swimpartymusic.com, so check it out and let us know what you think.

• Speaking of websites, starting in the new year, i'll be switching our mailing list to an actual hosted service since managing it through my own personal email server is now proving to be a daunting task. I'll be sending out an email to everyone on the current list after the new year asking them to re-sign up to the new mailing list (if you're so inclined of course). As always, we wont spam you with tons of emails. Just send you a note before an upcoming show or release. Also thinking about adding a Twitter account, but we'll have to see how interested people really are in that.

• Our song for the split 7" we're doing with Writer is now basically mastered! Writer finished recording their last vocals last night and Petro will mix it this weekend. Thanks to Mario from Black Box for guiding us through some of the mastering techniques.

We'll be releasing the 7" on Feb 27th at the Whistlestop! more on that in the New Year.

Well, we hope everyone has fun for the last 8 days of '08. Looking forward to '09!!!

~ alex / S.P.


I figured it was a good time to give everyone a little heads up in the world of Swim Party.

• We're moving forward on our production of a split 7" with our friends in the band Writer (one of our "top friends"). Principal recording is now finished on both our song and Writer's! Petro ran back East to visit family and friends for a few days, but when he gets back, we'll finish up the loose ends of recording, then mix and master and get that off to the press. It's looking good for a February release date.

• Shows are starting to line up for the new year! We've got a few shows in the works already, including a show at the new Ruby Room in San Diego, 2 Casbah shows, and then we're also getting on the road! San Francisco, look for us in your neck of the woods in mid January. Arizona, we'll bring "it" at the end of January. Portland and Seattle and the Pacific Northwesterners, look for us in February, and the midwest out to Texas and back, look out in March (plus shows in and around sothern california: LA, Costa Mesa, Santa Barbara, Long Beach, etc...)

• Website. I've begun working on our new website (finally). It will be live in about 2 weeks, so more on that soon.

• News updates. I've decided that I'll be updating information about our ongoings and such every week or 2, especially as more news comes "down the pipe" regarding our shows and the 7" release, so look to our blog on a semi-regular basis and stay "in the know!"

~ alex / swim party

Hey, we're Filter Magazine's undiscovered band of the month! That's pretty cool, eh? I know, I know, it was posted almost a month ago and this is a little late.  But still, it is very cool to be noticed by a pretty awesome music magazine.

Check it here:
http://blog.filter-mag.com/filter/2008/10/undiscovered-ba.html

I think it will be in next months printed copy.

We feel pretty lucky this year to have 2 nominations at the San Diego Music Awards.  We're nominated for Best Alternative Band in the public voting catagory, and Best Alternative Album for Pixie Dust on the Blood Range. There's some very stiff competition in both categories, so we definitely feel honored to be there.

Anyway, take a moment to vote for your favorites here: http://www.sandiegomusicawards.com/, and you know, vote for us if the mood strikes you. 

Our CD release show for Pixie Dust on the Blood Range (PDOTBR) was last night, and it was seriously one of the highlights of my life. I wanted to just give a quick recap of the night.

DJ claire started the night off around 9:30 or so and instantly had a great mix of her amazing collection of soul and rock records.

Writer took the stage (well, floor really) around 10:15 and were just amazing. I mean, honestly, they're just one of the best bands live. Chills every time I see them. They'll be releasing their next album in August and i'll be front and center, you should too.

When they were done we had a quick change over since we more or less had setup both bands equipment from the start, while DJ Claire spun a few more great tracks.

We took the floor around 11:15.
Here's our Set List for the night including the hilites if you will...

1. Twenty-Five
this is the first song off our 1st EP. we've been closing sets with this song for some time so it seemed fitting to start the next chapter of our band by playing it first, kind of as a way of saying goodbye to the old, not that we wont continue playing Twenty-Five, it's one of our favs.

In the course of this 1 song I managed to knock over one of our light boxes and a mic stand. The mic stand was saved by Matt Sheridan (from the Modlins, thanks Matt!), the light box fell behind a mess off amps, cables, extension plugs, and booze, so that's where that lightbox stayed for the rest of the night, but, it did survive!

2. Pariah
Just a fun song and it seemed to be a good fit right after 25. During this song I tried to knock out a light pole too. WTF? I'm too "punk rock" for my own good I suppose. heh.

3. Said the Captain.
We had Natalie Kardos from Its Too Sunny Out Here (http://www.itstoosunnyouthere.com/) join us on stage for the first of our guest appearances. She'd always wanted to play at least once on stage and asked us once candidly if she could play a song with us. We held her to it and she did a fantastic job and "Said the Captain" sounded great with the addition of keys

4. Parliament of Rooks
First song on the new album, 4th song in the set, no more destruction on my end of the stage. apparently the answer for me was to have 1 more vodka-soda.

5. Canada (cover of Low's song)
the song is awesome, watch Low's video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XtP4Aa9gRQ

6. Broke Ships Sink
This is one of the first songs from the new album that we wrote and played live, but we hadn't played it in a while so back it came. We dedicated the song to Rosey from SD: Dialed In (http://www.sddialedin.com) because it was one of her favorites and she's been so instrumental in the band's last year and a half or so.

7. Dead Rot
This is the first time we've ever played this song and had our great friend Eric Killian of the Modlins (http://www.myspace.com/themodlins) join us on guitar.

8. the Kids Are a Drag
Eric Killian stayed on and was joined by his fellow band mate, Matt Sheridan who help out with some keyboards, percussion and singing. Eric and Matt sang some extra vocals for us on the recording so it was only fitting to have them join in at our CD release show.

9. I'd Rather Be Mountain King
this is the last track on PDOTBR and we decided to not only end the night with this song, but had the boys from Writer join us to close out the night. Matt Sheridan and Eric Killian stayed on stage with us so we had 2 drummers, Keyboard, Rhodes (well digitally from a Nord Electro), 3 guitars, bass, and percussion. The experience was nothing short of religious for me. I now see why bands like Arcade Fire have evolved from a 4 piece to the big band they are today.

After we were done, DJ Claire turned the night into a non-stop dance party where even the members of Swim Party shook their "money makers."

I'd like to say thank you to everyone who performed with us; who came out to the show; to Sam, Scott, Dennis, and the rest of the Whistle Stop crew; to Kristina, Camille, and Francine for being so supportive of us through the album process and the late nights, late practices, long weekends, and "necessary" gear purchasing (damn you craigslist); to all the bands we've met in San Diego who make SD's music scene the amazing community it is; Mario from Black Box for recording us, Jacob for Mixing and making the album sound amazing; DJ Claire for being the official DJ for Swim Party at pretty much all of our shows at the Whistle Stop; to everyone who's listened to us and come to our shows or sent us emails; to all the residents of the "Cardiff" house, past & present, for tolerating the band's practices (which really were about 20 minutes of music and 1.5 hours of Adult Swim and burritos); and lastly, I'd like to thank my band mates, Eric and Petro, for being hands down the best musicians I've ever had the opportunity to play with and on top of that, being some of the best friends i've ever had.

~ alex

So we finally have our shit together and all our ducks carefully aligned and not moving in a row. Our new album "pixie dust on the blood range" is scheduled for release June 30. In addition to standard printed copies, we'll also be releasing 200 copies of the CD with handmade art. The album will be available at Lou's records in Encinitas and M-Theory records in Mission Hills as well as a few locations on the internets (details to come soon).

The cd release party will be a few weeks after, july 25th at the Whistlestop bar in Southpark with our good friends Writer opening and maybe some other friends/special guests joining us on stage, or floor area really, to help us play our jams in complex fashion.

Here's the track listing for PDOTBR:

1. Parliament of Rooks

2. Who even are you

3. Pariah

4. Sunlight and Sprawl

5. The kids are a drag

6. Broke ships sink

7. Dead rot

8. Said the captain

9. I'd rather be mountain king

We recorded the bulk of the album at Blackbox Studios (Golden Hill, San Diego) with Mario Quintero engineering, along with some additional tracking ourselves at SCIENCE (i.e. Petro's home studio) and the Evervess space in Oceanside (thanks Joe!). Mixing and Production by Jacob Feinberg-Pyne. Mastering by John Golden of Golden Mastering. A big thanks goes out to Matt and Eric from the Modlins for contributing some great vocals to track 5.

Well, we’re still mixing.  We had a couple of things to redo and fix along with working with our mixing engineer/ friend Jacob Feinberg’s schedule.  At this point we’re about 80% done mixing and will finish in the next few weeks.

We’vet set a date of May 2nd to get the disc mastered by John Golden ( Sonic Youth, Primus, Superchunk  ) and then we’ll get them pressed.   Soo, the record will finally be out end of May/early June.  This time our guess is better than the last time. I swear.

~eric

So, it's hard to believe, but we basically sold out of our first EP last night (there's 1 left at M-Theory records in Mission Hills and 2 at Lou's Records in Encinitas) !!! 300 limited Edition EP's, hand done packaging, the first of what we hope will be many albums to come. We want to thank everyone who's bought one, come to our shows, said hello afterwards, stuck their thumbs up (or down), given us hugs, beers, pointers, etc...

With only the use of the old 'space (myspace) and playing shows, our EP has ended up in people's hands from San Diego, to Chicago, Philly, Atlanta, Austin, New York, Madrid, Berlin, and more! it's a surreal experience that is beyond words, and beyond the thanks we can give in a blog, but thank you all none the less!

On to our next release. Our First Full Length will be out (unless I just cursed us) in April. All music is recorded and 9 of the 10 songs are being mixed now! the last song is recorded, we just need to lay down some vocals and then that's that.

We'll be releasing it 2 ways, a regular printed CD (though we'll still use 100% recycled cardboard 'cause i'm a hippy-in-denial), and then a limited in hand done packaging similar to our EP (we're thinking 200 by hand). We plan on charging $10.00 for the regular printed and $12.00 for the limited.

Anyway, we'll start working on the artwork in the next few weeks and post all that stuff soon! (we're only about 6 months behind schedule, heh) and now. I will eat a burrito.

end of line. (i just watched tron, sorry, i'm a total geek)

~ alex / swim party