as of 3 hours ago, you can't booze on a london bus or tube (do still try though, because i want to know if you get folded into your seat, q-branch style), but you can listen to 6 (six) new wintergreen songs. this actually means three proper new songs, one re-recorded old song, a new iteration of the magic road and a cover of a smog song.

they're well good. the best thing about them is probably their aceness.

it did take us ages (almost a year from "shall we record some songs, then?" to "oh look, here are some songs"), but that's because we thought very carefully about every note and every increment of every knob on every software. honestly, we just look at GUIs our entire lives. i'm looking at one now, it's unparalled in its ugliness.

anyway, please plant our songs in your social-networking allotment.

the other day we decided our bright red nord lead was a luxury we could ill afford to cart round, and made arrangements to play live with only one keyboard. when i broke it to the nord she said going out was shit anyway, especially as she had nothing to wear since we hadn’t bought her anything new for three-and-a-half years.

so everyone’s happy.

especially me, because i have new speakers.

i didn’t tell the nord that where she once stood would be the autoharp because, for a red keyboard, she can be awfully green.

looks like we’ll soon be merrily trotting past the deadline of andy’s birthday for having the new songs finished and steadily approaching the new deadline of ’before i go to japan’.

alec

my birthday's finished but our new songs are not. however, they are getting much, much better with each procrastination. the temptation now is to wait until next month to mix them as that's when we'll have good speakers. i'm not sure if anyone will care how well they're mixed, but since it's been absolutely ages since we offered up any new recordings we want things to sound as ace as possible.

at practice the other day we revived the almost forgotten autoharp. she'll be appearing on at least two songs, and quite possible more, as we only actually had time to practice two songs because of what is best described as 'wintergreenness'.

more practising tomorrow, lots more. possibly with take away pizza. yum, music never tasted so good.

alec

guzzash! we have a practice room. her from last harbour reacted to this news by saying "but wintergreen don't practice much do they?" hahahahahahahaha, very funny gina, but you won't be laughing when we're fourth on the bill at the bull and gate and so tight that we don't even put you on the guestlist.

anyway, we'll have some songs for you (not you, gina, you, everyone) soon. by my birthday i reckon. mr jona's doing some bass tonight and then it's just a matter of curing the common cold so andy can do some non-snotty singing. lovely.

alec

i've finally got round to listening to some deerhunter tunes. this first one repeats the line "patiently, patiently" as in, "i am not approaching the current wintergreen situation very patiently, patiently". let me try and explain the sources of my frustration.

we've got loads of songs and ideas we want to try out live but can't practice because our laptop screen is broken (admittedly, this does produce an interesting visual effect) and because we still haven't got round to buying ableton live 7. also, we might have found a semi-permenant home for rehearsals and recording but we don't know yet. i'm waiting for someone to get back to me. pluh, come on.

secondly, we've got some ace songs that we've really nearly finished recording all properly, but not entirely, and even when they are finished we haven't got any decent speakers to mix them on (or indeed a decent room to put decent speakers in) so god knows when we'll be able to let anyone hear them.

finally i've got a new guitar amp and cab, which sound splendid, but i am missing the magic of the shure sm57 so i can't record them.

and i've only got 4 deerhunter songs, what use is that?

alec

hello there,

three fifths of the wintergreen contingent are off to ATP-land just now, and i figured this would be as good a time as any to deposit a little festive treat before we head westwards. hope you like it...

cheers,
andy

hello everyone,

we've got some new(ish) demos up on our page. they're perhaps a little bit more representative of the stuff we've been doing recently, though a lack of (expensive) studio time of late has left them a little rough around the edges.

not being terribly good at the whole self-aggrandising thing, you'll have to judge for yourselves whether they're any good or not. but please do tell us, we'd like that. oh, and try not to kill us to death too much for murdering a perfectly good smog song...

we've also got a couple of gigs coming up too - one in nottingham, and one in north london (see our page for details). and it'd be even better if you could get yourselves along to one of those.

cheers,
andy

another one for tonight.

'are our future' was a bit of a live favourite last year, for me at least, and it's now getting a drummerless makeover. fortunately it had lots of looped drums and stuff anyway, so it's more a case of getting used to playing it again, and getting it setup on the fancy new virus synth. andy's already complained about his monophonic bollocks and trying to find his split-point. ahem.

the virus has reacted to this juvenility by playing back something that sounds either like something from a wes anderson film, or something by clue to kalo, or just some weird noise. anyway, it's doing it all by itself. a bit like the "erm, some uh ghosts in the machine there" bit from i'm alan partridge. without it speeding up.

is it Asus4 or Aadd9? that's the burning question, and i haven't got the foggiest. to be honest i'm not totally sure how i used to play this song, although i do remember i'd turn my Estring down to D. that's easy as pie now i've got a fancy tuner.

there's some swearing in this song. alec and i like it, andy and annie don't. any thoughts on needless swearing in songs? apart from "fuck this band, 'cos they swear too much. it's an obvious ploy, and irresponsible"

god, we're productive tonight.

it's been a while then. two gigs, both somewhat more successful than thei all-dayer, have passed. one day we'll record "dance to the dirty dream (number 2)", but that's another story. today's priority is a cover of smog's (or is it (smog)? i don't know, although i'm sure andy does. answers on a postcard or blogcomment) "somewhere in the night", whch we'll do something tasty with later. andy's been working away and has produced some mad skillz drumbeatz and some lovely shimmering guitar haze. i'm not convinced of the bass, to the extent of dragging my 'axe' along with me. we'll see.

what else is new? we have another gig coming up, and we'll hopefully have a couple more songs that we can play in our new drummerless line-up.

oh, it's crashed. hopefully without breaking everything and people ending up in hospital like some sort of hollyoaks disaster. and then, just as the computer crash could've been the worst thing ever, the laptop i'm writing this on decided it just couldn't be fagged with it's battery anymore, and we had to get the adapter and plug it in before all these words were lost forever. i'm going to 'submit' this now, especially as we've moved on from smog or (smog) or whatever. bass unchanged.

we played the bowlie alldayer a few weeks back. it was classic wintergreen - badly prepared, beset by technical problems but including moments of splendour.

so, how have we tackled the serious issues that our first drummerless performance raised? with a soul searching band meeting? a resolution to practice harder? don't be silly. we've spunked thousands of pounds on new gear, that'll fix it. item number one is the fantastic virus ti keyboard (complete with flashing logo):



we are sulking a bit about this as we wanted the white one, which is the prettiest thing we ever saw, but it's too small. i suppose we could've dropped all songs which require more than a three octave range. bit late now though, wish i'd thought of it earlier. anyway, we think the nord will be terribly pleased to have a new boyfriend.

items number two and three are an audio interface and a rack mixer, so only really excitng for me.

the upshot is that by the time bowl and sebastian rolls round we'll sound about the same but look a lot better. our b + s cover is going to be superaces too.