Last night at practice, the idea was raised that we should not book another show after the O'Riley's gig in December until we have finished recording.  In fact, the idea was not only to postpone any further shows after O'Riley's, but also to postpone any further practice together as a band until all the recording was done.  There was unanimous and instantaneous agreement among all members.

We decided to take this approach because the EP recording is just not being accomplished.  Whenever we sit down and make an effort to do it, we all agree then nothing ever gets done or very little gets done.  Part of this is because time is limited for us. Another major problem though is the setup time involved for a one-day session.  If it takes an hour and a half to setup and we only have four hours available for recording, then there is very little incentive to continue recording from week to week because the headache outweighs the benefits.

Therefore, during this time, we will no longer be practicing in the practice room, but rather setting up all our microphones, amplifiers, and various recording equipment in there so that our setup time is greatly reduced and we can concentrate on recording and recording alone.  For those wondering why we have to bother with our own setup for recording, it's because we are doing our own recording obviously.  We went the studio route to get the drums, but we save a lot of money and can get just as good a sound with the other instruments at home as we can in a studio.  Part of the price of that, of course, is that we do our own setup.  The benefit, apart from saving money, is that we can do all our recording on our own time.  Unfortunately, the unforeseen side effect was that doing it on our own time would be a huge hurdle.

It is not just recording that we do in these sessions either.  While we record many of the parts you hear during the live performances, we are also constantly looking for ways to improve and broaden the recorded versions of our songs.  Fadade, for example, sounds very stripped down live.  On the recording, we had something ungodly like 52 tracks to be mixed and the result was a very full sounding song with a lot of extra parts that we just can't play live with a four man band.  For each of these recordings, we're looking for places to add keyboards (and we don't have a keyboard player), vocal harmonies, and additional rhythm and lead guitar parts and melodies.  In essence, we are very involved in rewriting many parts of the songs as they are recorded.  This is yet another reason why we need to devote all our efforts to just recording.

So please bear with us.  We are confident that this is the right way to go in order to retain our focus.  Plus, once we come back we won't be sidetracked with concerns about the EP and will be able to devote 100% of our time to the live shows and writing new material.