still kicking.

here's what's up:

- tyler is DJing the maus haus/battlehooch extravaganza for new years eve at the hemlock. go.

- NW tour = playing portland, olympia, salem and chico, but not in that order.

- record = still for sale.

- number of new songs we've finished = 1

- with we were promised jetpacks!

- we are playing WINTERFEST on 2/3 with our friends the hot toddies!

- we are hopefully playing SXSW.

- thanks to everyone who let us sleep on their couches, bought our records, watched us get sweaty and borrow their subaru

and to wrap it all up, look at this awesome video from our CMJ show:

check this shit out

Only $7! Price includes shipping fsho.

"THE GET DOWN"

only seven dollars incl. shipping

(make sure to add mailing info)

prenza!
--------------------------------------------

"Their latest EP, Repetition, stirs in a fine 20 minutes and is a fitting disc to spin for a pre-party. Hell - a party and after-party too."
--West Coast Performer Jan '08

"Tempo No Tempo's Repetition EP starts off strong with its title track, which has a catchy guitar riff and steady piano pounding that'll get the people moving to the dance floor. Then my favorite track on the EP, "Irregular Heartbeats," kicks off, with a bassline that turns in and out and drives the song. The drums and percussion have some maniacal hi-hat shuffling going on in this quick-paced song, too. The singing is frantic, and the singer even lets out a few Guy Picciotto-type yelps with the line: "Makes me wonder if there is a heart beating at all..." Then it's back to that bassline turning over and that hi-hat working -- the dance floor will be at fever pitch."
--Space City Rock 12/7/07

"The lead single “Repetition,” shows a maturer approach to a tired dance-punk genre (thank God), and the album moves toward a more experimental/psychedelic territory. We anticipate an even better 2008.."
--The Owl Magazine 11/9/2007

"If too many of the dance rock bands obsess in creating slick, shiny songs, Tempo No Tempo separates itself with an ability to embrace noisier and darker sounds while keeping things driving and melodic. It’s a skill that reminds me of Washington, D.C.‘s now-defunct Q and Not U, a band that similarly mixed synths and guitars and threw in enough musical and lyrical curveballs to make you think while you were dancing."
--Ajisignal 11/12/07

"...blended from the heavily farmed growing regions of Thunderbirds are Now!, Gang of Four, and Q and Not U. Yeah, it's dance-post-punk all over again, but you know you still crave it."
--Pitchfork Media 1/29/07

other bloggings:
IHEARTCOMIX
Macktronic
Neiles Life
Episode 36 of The Bay Bridged
Inflight At Night
Popmatters
Wiretap CD Release Review

After our glorious day of rest in Berkeley, we headed north; the beer got cheaper and the weather got colder.

First was Chico, where we played at the Salem House. It's a lovely college bachelor pad, and we were fortunate enough to play at their party, compete in some Nintendo 64 Golden Eye, and sleep on their couches. We played with Floss Anonymous, 3 dudes on an eerily similar pop culture wavelength as us. There were some serious chats about the merits of R. Kelly, Nate Dogg, and Chromeo. Cheers to them. We also discovered a Taco Bell in Chico that has a "walk up" instead of a drive-thru. The future is now. When we actually got there, it was closed. We tried walking through the drive-thru of the jack in the box and convincing the employee that my car was invisible. I saw no flaws in this plan, yet somehow it failed. When we got back to the Salem House, we found Alex being cheered by a crowd as he threw a microwave off the porch. He also bought a homeless man a drink. I think he had a good time.

After the debauchery of Chico we headed to Eugene. On the road we saw a truck that crashed, only to realize is was carrying 2 buck chuck. NO! DISASTER! We also pulled over and had an adorable snow fight in Mt Shasta.You should have been there. We played an "intimate" set at Sam Bond's Garage. And by intimate, I mean empty and sexy.  We revelled in the lack of sales tax and the abundance of cheap delicious beer. By some stroke of Alex's family friends, we had this awesome house in the hills all to ourselves for the night. I jogged for a whopping ten minutes, got to watch reality TV in the morning, and had my own bedroom. It was almost better than home.

PORTLAND, PORTLAND, PORTLAND....We like this town. There's cheap gas, delicious food, friendly cool kids, and donuts with bacon on them. While eating these Voodo Donuts, we saw Spoon's Brit Daniel walking around. Tyler nearly wet himself. Speaking of Tyler, his wonderful aunt Cory and her partner Janine put us up at their lovely home for 2 nights, and they even let us play their Guitar Hero. We played with Swim Swam Swum and Tranquilazer, both excellent groups. We found a great vintage shop that was empty except for the store owner drinking wine and chatting with his friend about the end of the world. I bought a 1971 Playboy with some super smokin lady with an Afro on it, but after I bought it I realized all the pages were stuck together. GROSS. Jason also started learning the wonders of fast food when we chowed down on 7 layer burritos at taco bell. Yeah!

Seattle has also been good to us. When we pulled into town, it started snowing. Snow? What the eff? Alex had been waiting for this moment all his life, so he grabbed his gloves and beanies and about 12 sweaters and his hiking boots. Good for him. We played an acoustic set on Monday at a cafe, and another acoustic set at KSUB on Tuesday. Playing acoustic is definitely something we're not entirely used to, but it's been really useful and increasingly fun. There's even talk of trying it out back home. KSUB was especially nice to us, and Tyler and I celebrated by drinking too much and hitting on the same girl. We both failed, but in the end we learned even more important lessons about friendship and growing up.

We spend our days watching streaming movies and TV shows on surfthechannel.com and checking out the sights of Seattle. Today we had some awesome clam chowder. We also got to check out the Subpop offices, where Tyler's ex-KALX boss now works. Last night we played at the FunHouse with The New Faces. They're super awesome, which is even more impressive considering that they are all still in high school. They weren't allowed to stay in the venue 'cause they're youngins, so we had ice cream with them at McDonalds.

Jason's friend Megan has proven a host of superhuman capabilities, putting up with us for the past few days and showing us fancy beer stores and the supermarket where Dave Mathews buys his groceries. We've also somehow limited how delirious we get after hours on the road and away from home. There's an unofficial band reading club that helps us shut up and chill out. I've been reading Marlon Brando's autobiography. It's poorly written but very much interesting. Tonight we hit up Bellingham and tomorrow Cottage Grove Oregon. Then home sweet home.

Ciao,
Chris / Tempo No Tempo

So we're all sitting at home in Berkeley for a day, and I hopped on the ol' myspace to keep you posted of our goings on.

SAN DIEGO:
We had the pleasure of playing LeStats, where the tea is scalding and the couches are comfortable, with Eben Brooks, which made us all wonder if we had stepped into a Christopher Guest movie. Tyler had been bragging about to fall asleep drunk, but he really impressed us all when he passed out bent over a kitchen counter next to a Sparks. We also enjoyed the local cuisine of Juanita's, in our finely tuned opinions the best burrito anywhere in the world.

LOS ANGELES:
Ah, LA. When I'm in Berkeley and someone asks where I'm from I say "LA" because it beats explaining that I live an hour outside of the city in a tract house known only for Kevin Cooper's murder and the town next door that was discussed in "The OC." So our stay in LA required lots of driving back and forth from the lovely suburbs; this gave me the chance to display what Jason has called "freestyle driving," which is a nice way of saying I drive like Stevie Wonder after a few drinks.

We did get a chance to do some serious exploring in our love away from music, tacos. Using this excellent taco blog as our guide, we traversed East LA and sampled some of the finest tacos ever known. Due to a fear of germs and death and plague, I avoided taco trucks and stands. Word from the rest of the band, however, is that the generator-powered cart on the corner of Indiana and 5th takes the prize. Maybe one day I'll man up and get back to that cart.

Oh yeah, we played some shows in LA, too. Our Knitting Factory show was all sorts of awesome. Openers Aanchors Aaweigh proved that drunker is better as they avoided tuned instruments and relied instead on endless badassery that included a cover of "You Make Me Feel like a Natural Woman." We had the pleasure of meeting Mike Watt, who was playing next door, and The Blood Arm. They even brought along Art Brut singer Eddie Argos. Art Brut? At our show? Twas a victorious evening indeed. The victory was limited by the fact that we had to load in all our gear from a parking garage into an elevator, up two stories, THEN into the venue. But, dude, whatever, Art Brut.

Our musical/culinary adventures continued the following day as we played a brief acoustic set for Indie 103.1 that will air on January 20th. While we were practicing outside we even made a dollar from a passerby, which is exactly one more dollar than we made on our last trip to Seattle. We played at The CIA, possibly the scariest fucking venue ever. It's decorated  like a circus freak show, and you really have to check it out to understand. I made Jason escort me to the bathroom because I was afraid of a clown or a coke dealer leaping out of the walls at me. Our homie Austin and his band Dino Dance kept it real by setting us up with the show and put on a fine set themselves.

We finished up our LA eating adventures with Langers, home of the best pastrami sandwich in the country. We had a 400 year old adorable waitress and were offered fake IDS about 7 times between the car and the restaurant. But it's OK because the parking lot was situated between a mural of Selena and another of Edward James Olmos. I love LA.


We enjoyed hollering at high schoolers with our new favorite toy, my megaphone while we waited for Alex to finish up some JPL rocket science work leftover from his summer internship. Then it was up to Oxnard for a quick show at the Exerimental Cafe, and an intense drive back up North.

So here I am, back on my couch, showered, about to eat Cheeseboard, rooting for Obama, doing laundry, and catching up on "The Wire." Looking forward to getting started up again tomorrow in Chico.

To all the girls I've loved before,
Chris  / Tempo No Tempo

Hi all.

Perhaps (and perhaps I mean most likely not) you've been wondering what we've been doing while waiting for what will most certainly be the BIGGEST YEAR EVER for Tempo No Tempo. Well, I will tell you what we (read: I) have been doing while getting ready for our tour/record/etc.

Watching One Tree Hill.


I blame the Soap Network, because their twice-a-day showings of this O.C.-esque soap opera have led me to a life of binging on whole-season discs and late-night watchings of the intense drama between Dan and Keith Scott. Tip: watch season one on acid. SO fun. It's embarassing, yes, but I feel beholden to tell everyone that it's a slippery slope from "Six Feet Under" to "One Tree Hill."

I highly recommend watching this show, if only so I can talk to someone else about it who isn't a 14-year-old girl.

That's all.

Tyler/tempo.

We have pictures to post from some recent shows.  Not of the shows themselves, mind you, but pictures of some/all of us being very very drunk and in various states of completely ridiculous.

Santa Cruz was very kind to us, especially the good ship Battlehooch, who always bring a very special kind of ridiculous to the table.  People bought stuff, and we ended up at a party that ended up turning into a contest to see who knew more lyrics to mid-90's rap songs.  A list of the favorites are as follows:

Sisqo "The Thong Song"
Tupac "California Love"
Snoop Dogg (feat. Nate Dogg) "Ain't No Fun"
Sisqo "The Thong Song"
Jay-Z "Money Ain't A Thing"
Sisqo "The Thong Song"

Let's just say much discussion was made of Mr. Sisqo's wonderful ode to the thong.  Also, after a debate on whether or not Too $hort could actually rap 225,000 hours, as he claims to do in "Blow The Whistle"* we gave up the argument and ended up rapping along some more.  Brilliant.  Happy birthday to Anne, whose party we very much crashed.

In Santa Barbara, the Natural Ice flowed like water, and we'd like to thank Davis Brimer, the god among men who allowed us to play his courtyard, drink his booze and sleep wherever there was no spilled beer.  Pictures definitely will be posted of this.

*The math definitely didn't work out-- we could only account for 5,000 hours with the assumption of 6-hour rap days.  This put him about 220,000 hours short of the claimed amount of rapping, and we were extremely concerned that Too $hort was lying to us.  However, listening to the song again, $horty claims that "I must have superpowers," which accounts for the lapse in mathematical logic, as these superpowers could involve any amount of time-bending or rap fortitude.  Perhaps he raps while he sleeps, or while he chews food.  The point is, Too $hort is the best.

if we did a tour blog, would anybody actually read it? the thing is, the more time we spend blogging, the less time we spend drinking. so we want to make sure it'd be worth it, yknow.

let us know.

OH and go to the shows!
5/18 Santa Cruz-- Caffe Pergolesi w/ Battlehooch FREE SHOW!
5/19 Isla Vista-- House Party FREE, two sets @ 9ish and 11ish
5/22 San Diego-- San Dieguito Academy @ 2pm
5/23 Fullerton-- Plush Cafe w/ Brian Taylor and Great Glass Elevator (woooo!)

So we have kiiinda confirmed shows for SB, SC and Fullerton-- but we need help with San Diego and LA proper!  If anyone knows anyone who knows someone, drop us a line. 

But the important part is, we're definitely hitting the road and we're way looking forward to playing to allllll the kids not chillin in the 510.

/////tyler.temponotempo

So here in the Tempo No Tempo camp we're plotting all kinds of fun stuff for the next 6 months or so, including making T-shirts for you to buy and wear and enjoy, playing some excellent shows (perhaps go on a small tour) and hopefully hopefully get recording for whatever we're releasing next.

Mostly, we're sitting tight and getting ready for a biiiig 2007.  So, please stay tuned.