Ok...so our last show a couple of weeks ago was...by our standards...pretty fucking shitty. Oh well...we were young, eager, and hot to trot. So...back to the lab we went. And because we still have yet to find a singer, Ted soldiered on. However, he was smart. Realizing that "The Death of Autotune" only applies to rap music, he went out and purchased a TC-Helicon. In a nutshell, it's like a portable death-ray for vocalists: point, click, and the coolness that ensues is like death herself. Well...that is, if you've got the settings correct, and it's pointed at the right thing. Which we're still fine tuning. Details in the paragraph on the live show. Expect to see it prominently as part of our experimentation.

Writing is proceeding somewhat smoothly, albeit slowly. Have got a couple of new tracks that are seeing the light of day, and they still need some more tweaks. Am very excited about the material's potential when executed correctly. Crossing a bit more into Radiohead, and have also attempted to steal some of that intra-song genre-hopping that our friends from across the pond do...well, the Schuykill river aint' exactly across the pond, but NSN does practice pretty far from DE, so that counts. We're actually supposed to lay down drums again this weekend for a demo. After being in this band for four years, I'm gonna not say anything more until it's done.

We just won a round of battle of the (3) bands this past weekend. That was real nice. 4 judges gave us an aggregate of 3.5 stars (out of 4). We play again in a couple of weeks. We got kudos for playing original music, with ebb/flow, that was technically challenging, and rocking out with our cocks out. Bad points were we misdialed on the Helicon (settings were off, and set to "stun," not "black-hole-gravitron-crusher), and we were quite sloppy in 2-3 songs. Obviously not enough to hurt us too much, but still. Oh...and when the lead judge mentioned that we sounded like a mix of Helmet and Tool, I temporarily fell in love with her. Heck...if she had started discussing short-selling, options, or derivatives I might've asked her back to my place for tea and scones.

Back to the battle of the bands...I think one of the reasons we were really surprised we won is because one of the other bands there was really good and tight. Their sound was very akin to most of the pop-punk movement, and they executed really well. However, apparently the judges weren't looking for that. Gives us a little bit of hope, ya know? And is there any other currency we have in this original music scene other than hope?

Well boys and girls, that's that. We'll properly promote the next show, since hopefully we'll do well and can get to the next round. Ultimate prize is allegedly a slot at SXSW. Allegedly. Could be a slot machine that was once in a bar that happened to be open during SXSW. We'll see. Until then...

EG