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Thursday, April 09, 2009

Recording Log 09: Weekend #1
Current mood:

accomplished

Thurs April 2, 2009:

- Jason drives from Ottumwa, IA up to MPLS and arrives at 2AM

Fri April 3:

- Start w/coffee and muffins at Minnehaha Coffee @ 11

- Start @ 11 30

- Set up mics, screw around with preamp choices etc. Make a decision!: to high pass filter the room mics or not!!!????

- Spend an hour trying to figure out a way for the drum machine to behave like a metronome

- Go to Radio Shack and get an adapter for Jason's ear buds

- Eat a Fast Eddie's S + P Pizza, extra sauce

- Worked on first tune, working title Uzi Suicide

- Finish at midnight

- Watch the brunt of "Love, Sex & Death 101 on Showtime

Sat April 4:

- BC wakes up at 8:45 and goes to the Y

- Coffee and Donut at the Minnehaha. Get Soda + Tea for Jsunn.

- Redux drums for Uzi Suicide from the night before

- Move on to other songs...record drums for 5 songs

- Poor Jason being driven rode hard with B's perfectionism and tweakhead nature

- Ate a Papa John's Pizza: picked up in Uptown on Hennepin

- Went to the final Maps of Norway show at the Turf Club. Excellent.

- Ate some great Tamales from the Turf

- B has trouble sleeping all night, obsessing about the high pass filter decision from Fri!

Sun April 5:

- Wake at 9:45

- Coffee and muffins at Minnehaha

- Start at 11:30 on "Hawaiian Punch"

- Shawn Jones comes over to film some recording footage

- Lunch @ the Mall of America where Jason wants to check out some sneakers. Qdoba for B and Chinese for J. Sneaker's purchased from Journey's. Mission accomplished.

- Come back and discuss list of tunes, and how to proceed

- Work on Styxx

- Finish @ 10:30

- 3 songs done on Sunday

Mon April 6:

Jason drives back to Ottumwa

4:54 AM

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Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Recording Log 09: Weekend #3
Current mood:

insubordinate

Friday, April 24:

- Jason drives up from Ottumwa and meets Jon in Iowa City

- Jason and Jon arrive in MPLS @ 7:45pm

- My awesome neighbor Chad is having a get together at his house this night...sorry for the rock ruckus, Chad!

- Jon and Jsunn get drums down for 3 songs by 11:30!

- Go on a Rodeo Cheeseburger run to BK

- We have an exciting viewing of Ric Flair vs Lex Luger from "Starrcade 88"

Sat, April 25:

- Wake up @ 9:45

- B and Jason run out to Mall of America to exchange Jsunn's sneakers once and for all

- Come back and begin @ 11am

- BC and J bust on one more tune, "Jackson 5" before Jon and J resume

- BC goes on a Papa John's run at 3 pm, this time picking it up from Grand Ave St Paul: a mistake...Hennepin is faster and better. A P/S pizza and a Ham + Pineapple Pizza.

- BC watches a bit of the NFL draft. J and B play catch out front with the Iowa Hawkeye Plush football.

- 11 hrs of playing today for Jon and Jsunn while BC runs the tape machine.

- Jon gets drums down for 13 song ideas in 14 hrs! An upper midwest record?

6:32 AM

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Tuesday, January 22, 2008

RIFT Magazine review for BOOM PATROL

"Boom Patrol" is the 5th full length from this Minneapolis/Iowa City
art-rock trio. Stylistically, this album sounds like one big '80s
mash-up, and it's a testament to The Slats' talent that more often than
not they manage to pull together a disparate set of influences together
and make it work.

The album's opener, "Ironman", starts of like a classic Minutemen song,
complete with D. Boon-esque beat poetry from vocalist b Cox. The song
later finds a groove that suggests a garage-rock b-52s, albeit without
Fred Schneider's incessant nasal delivery, which is a good thing. "Call
My Telephone" is a straight up '80s power pop number, only much more
raw. If this track was made 22 years ago with a lot of cocaine and
studio polish, it would have been huge. "Ignatius" flips the script a
bit with an electro-hop beat that vocalist J Hansen raps over in his
best Beastie Boys impression, and he manages to pull most of it off.
"Stegosaurus WrxxX" is full of more B-52s inspired weirdness, and "I
Wrote The Code" is another great power pop song that should be adopted
by computer geeks everywhere.

The Slats stripped down musical style (guitar, 4 string guitar, kick
drum and snare) have for some reason earned them some comparisons with
other minimal groups such as The White Stripes and the Jon Spencer
Blues Explosion. Suffice to say, this group sounds nothing like them, and
they manage to create a large rock pop sound out of the barest essentials.
"Boom Patrol" should easily appeal to the most discerning hipsters, as
well as to those who just want to party and have a good time.

TH

5:57 AM

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Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Big Takeover review of BOOM PATROL

This Minneapolis trio serve up another dose of their mechanized, new wave-ish alterna-pop for their fifth album, pretty much picking up where 2004's Pick It Up left off. From the opening Ironman, which features a tongue-in-cheek Mark E. Smith-meets-David Bowie vocal, you never know what they'll throw at you. Distinguished by J. Hansen's lurching, distortion-tinged guitar and B. Cox's deadpan singing, they sometimes resemble Guided By Voices if Bob Pollard instead obsessed on the early 80's. Throughout, you'll hear splashes of The Cars, Talking Heads, solo Pete Shelley, Elvis Costello, Knack, Devo, Beastie Boys, Fall, and Wire. While The Slats playing might be somewhat limited for this all-embracing, multifaceted approach, they compensate with enthusiasm, intellect, swagger, and songwriting ability. The result is another respectable, satisfying album.

review by Mark Suppanz

5:52 AM

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Tuesday, January 22, 2008

75 Words or Less review for BOOM PATROL

Equal parts New Wave and No Wave, The Slats channel a heavy Cars obsession through a dual filter of semi-tuned guitar skronk and early GBV lyrical oddness (not to mention the one track that ventures into hip-hop, as if imagined by Grand Buffet fronting defunct noise-ists McLusky). Enthusiastic "whoa-oh" vocals bump up against weirdly off-kilter squeals and a grinding rhythm section. If you're not afraid of a little dissonance, this could be the perfect new party album for you. - jeremy

5:45 AM

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Tuesday, January 22, 2008

All Music Guide review for BOOM PATROL

Review by Jo-Ann Greene

You've got to love this band. They've created a world all their own, which is only partially attached to the rest of our reality, but enough so that they don't seem totally alien or ridiculously fey and twee. Thus the Slats can in quick succession celebrate the success of a computer geek on "I Wrote the Code," follow a soldier soon to be deployed to a war zone on his search for the perfect pet on "Reptilium Rescue," then meet up with "Stegosaurus WrxxX." There again, it helps that ofttimes even the most far-fetched scenario is merely a backdrop for exploring more serious issues on Boom Patrol. The flip of this coin, of course, are the less surreal numbers that deal straightforwardly with interpersonal relations, like "Fireball" and "Call My Telephone." This lyrical dichotomy is, as fans are well aware, carried into the musical realm as well. Careening between power poppy, infectious punk rock and harder, more experimental post-punk styles, the Slats defy categorization. "Ignatious" strolls straight into hip-hop, while "DoubleXX Ranch" rides the range of goth-flavored post-punk. The title track, in contrast, sounds like a squelchy Ramones, "Ironman" like the Fall, while "Fireball" is driving punk rock, and "Telephone" power pop. By the time the Slats reach their big rock finale, "Ninja III," they have covered nearly every style in the book. And for all their lo-fi qualities, the group easily escape that tag here. The production and arrangements may be minimalistic, but the trio still kick up a musical storm and one hell of an album.

5:36 AM

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Tuesday, January 22, 2008

three imaginary girls review BOOM PATROL

Like the sonic equivalent of doing 3 cans of whippets and then cracking open the aluminum to get at the sweet sugary liquid still inside, The Slats blend equal parts spastic, stuttering hyperactive goofiness and unrelentingly sugar-high inducing pop chops to remarkable effect on their newest release, Boom Patrol.

Veering wildly from genre to genre between and even within each song, the Minneapolis three-piece creates a potent mélange that vividly calls to mind artists as diverse as The A-Frames, Drive Like Jehu, The Cars, Devo, Captain Beefheart, Brian Eno (when he stilled rocked), Weezer, Ted Leo, The Breeders, Gary Numan, Mudhoney, The Knack, Fugazi and The Beastie Boys. I know that's a looooooong list, but seriously, that's how much is going on here.

Songwriters B. Cox and J. Hansen deliver wonderfully twisted monologues of equal parts comic book and video game geekery, gleefully misanthropic social commentary and knowingly brain-dead big hooks, channeled through the vocal stylings of Numan and Ocasek. There's even one song where they veer off into Rage Against The Machine territory, which is either meant to be supremely ironic or just a big fat middle finger in the face of someone who said that doing that would be lame. Either way, it takes equally massive cajones and talent to cover that much ground on an album and still have it come across as a consistent piece of work and The Slats have both in abundance.

-Billy Corazon

5:21 AM

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Thursday, October 05, 2006

SPIN "Artist of The Day" - THE SLATS
Current mood:

aggravated
Category: Music

So, descendents of mt. olympus. The Slats have made the long climb down from atop the mount to grace the front page of SPIN magazine online.

What does this all mean? Who knows, but it does mean you should head over to this page and "rate" The Slats. I know. None of us like to vote. Yet, we implore upon you from atop Vesuvius that 'we will erase you' if you don't. Seriously.

2:37 PM

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Friday, August 04, 2006

What's goin on....
Current mood:

savage
Category: Music

Well, The Slats have a string of busy nights coming up. Should be a couple months of hot rock -

Plus, the new record "Boom Patrol" (LFR 014) will be available for super-secret "pre-sale" at all of these shows. Be sure to blog about it, tell your friends, and spread the good word....Boom Patrol features the songs:

Ironman
Boom Patrol
Call My Telephone
Ignatius
Bash The Plastic
Erase You
Fireball
King of Hawaii
I Wrote the Code

& more....plus, there will be new T-Shirts available....

August

9 - The Safari Lounge - Cedar Rapids, IA - 9:00 pm
11 - The Reverb - Cedar Falls, IA - 9:00 pm [All Ages]
31 - The Hexagon - Minneapolis, MN - 9:00 pm

September

3 - The 400 Bar - Minneapolis, MN - 9:00 pm
4 - Vaudeville Mews - Des Moines, IA - 9:00 pm [All Ages]
5 - The Mill- Iowa City, IA - 9:00 pm [All Ages]

4:13 PM

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