self-described

we're a long way from cassette trading, dual-deck dubbed demos, and mixtapes... for better and worse, a band doesn't self-launch on the tape underground just by being available and free, anymore-- every band is available online now, and you can listen to pretty much everyone for free. The downside of this is that there is so much Noise in the line, it can be hard to discern a Signal (the upside, of course, is: hey, new music!).

The trick, now, is to get people listening, and that generally means describing a band engagingly enough to warrant a listen... which I thought was going to be easy, because ubik. is a pretty unique band, and the songs tend to be fairly different from anything I've stumbled upon.

Unfortunately, every band in the world describes themselves as "unique." The writeup from the emo band that sounds like they belong on a mid-90's teen sex romp soundtrack call themselves unique, the white-blues lead guy playing nothing but pentatonic minor scales over I-IV-Vs calls himself unique, the heavy rock band that really wants to be Tool call themselves unique. These bands bore me to tears simply because they really do sound like every other mediocre entry in their genre, are nowhere near unique... but I don't think anyone wants to describe themselves as sounding like everyone else.

So we've given up on self description, mostly-- it seems to be a futile effort. People have compared us to everyone from King Crimson to Rage Against the Machine. Michelle gets comparisons ranging from Karen Crisis to Bjork (though she sounds nothing like Bjork, she has black hair and a small nose, and that seems to be enough similarity for a lot of people... music be damned).

We've taken up our own genre: psy-prog drift core. We actually asked people to name our genre, and the most intelligent response we got was someone telling us that we are, in fact, a rock band... which is pretty much true, but telling a would-be listener that we're a rock band doesn't tell that listener anything: it could mean anything from The Beatles to Soul Coughing.

How people describe us is a whole other phenomenon. Everything from funk to metal gets thrown at us (seriously? funk?), though psychedelic and progressive get thrown in there often enough. A recent show billed us as Am-Rep inspired prog-metal... and though prog-metal always makes me think of Fate's Warning and Dream Theater, so be it-- but I don't even know what Am-Rep is. What does that even mean?

everett mkII

Strangely, though our Everett gigs are plenty successful (2 for 2)... man, these are difficult shows to like. I wished I'd had taken a video of stepping into that place, panning from the stage to the body of the bar (crowded with video poker and pool tables) as Sweet Home Alabama played on the overheads. It was sort of like playing the Blue Moon, but where the Blue Moon is Harley Davidson, this place was Nike (and really brightly lit).

I have to go back to the thought that this particular "girls rock" showcase was the ultimate venue to play Let's Hunt and Kill Gwen Stefani, but it was a very weird version of the Girls Rock motif (a theme that, so Michelle tells me, was irritating enough to her that she would have turned down the show had the booker told her that's the bill she was agreeing to play)-- the first band lost a member and played a short acoustic set. The other band's singer was too sick to play, so there was no Girl there to Rock... neither being any band's fault, really, but it's a good way to hamstring a show.

just say no

So here's a first... we just said No to a show, just because we didn't want to play it. It wasn't pay-to-play, or a night one of us couldn't make it because of work or whatever Whatever was in the way: we just didn't wanna.

That was kind of cool.

It's not like it was frivolous, or we didn't have a reason: it was sort of a dingy sports bar sort of atmosphere, which never works for ubik. as a band. It just doesn't work. We've done sort of poorly at The Blue Moon and Goofy's, and there's just a certain "feel" of venue where we don't fit-- we're not comfortable there, the video light show never works very well, and the dug-in crowd just doesn't get us.

Also, it was in a location where we probably couldn't get anyone to show up, so we wouldn't be doing the bar any favors, anyway.

the new ubik. CD is on sale now (both online and in stores)

CD IN STORES NOW!

ubik.s album The World Is A Glorious Biomechanical Nightmare is available now both online and at record stores around seattle. Buy it online here, or stop by Cellophane Square (U-Dist) or Silver Platters (Queen Anne and Northgate).

Pretty keen, eh? We're all pretty excited to be getting these out into the world.

production

When we took the album to be mastered by the talented and very helpful Steve Turnidge, mastering engineer extraordinaire, he asked us if we were able to do this stuff live. I think the actual phrasing was "can you guys pull this off live?"

I think Joel was the first to respond: the question should be inverted. We do this stuff live so often, we weren't sure if we could translate it to a studio recording (my worry was always that it would end up one of those flat, lifeless records that never lets any of the band's live energy come through).

But the more I think about the question (and the more I listen to a few albums and compare them to their live counterparts), the more I realize how valid it really is. ubik. actually took the songs, as we play them live (which includes timing changes, large dynamic shifts, effected vocals, big flourishes of reverb and echo, one-beat gaps of silence, sound-design style screeches, etc), and just taped it. The sonic identity of our songs was not done in post-production: we didn't really add much after we finished taping the instruments live in the room.

...but those sounds happen on a lot of albums (especially now, in the land of plug-ins and pro-tools). It's not uncommon to hear distorted vocals on one verse or an wash of echo or some strange sound effect on any random album-- it's just not that common for those things to have anything to do with how the band actually sounds when they play.

shitty music

And here's a quote...

Does anybody really listen to that shitty music they play on the radio? FM radio music... What's it called- adult contemporary? classic rock? urban R&B? You know what the official business term for that shit is: Corporate Standardized Programming. Just what an artform needs... corporate standardized programming, derived from scientific surveys, conducted by soulless businessmen.

Here's how bad it is: one nationwide chain that owns over a thousand radio stations conducts weekly telephone polls asking listeners their opinions on 25-30 song hooks they play over the phone, hooks that the radio people have already selected ("hooks" are short, repeated parts of pop songs that people remember easily). Depending on these polls, the radio chain decides which songs to place on their stations' playlists. Weeks later, they record the hooks of all the songs they're currently playing on their stations across the country, label them by title and artist, and sell that information to record companies to help create more of the same, bad music. They also sell the information to competing radio stations that want to play what the big chain is playing.

All of this is done to prevent the possibility of original thinking somehow creeping into the system.

Let me tell you something-- In the first place, listening to music someone else has picked out is not my idea of a good time. Second, and more important, the fact that a lot of people in America actually like the music automatically means it sucks... especially since the people who like it have been told in advance by businessmen what it is they're supposed to like.

Please save me from people who've been told what to like, and then like it. In my opinion, if you're over six years of age and you're still getting your music from the radio, something is desperately wrong with you.

I can only hope that somehow MP3 players and file sharing will destroy FM radio the way they're destroying record companies. Then, even though the air will probably never be safe to breathe again, maybe it will be safer to listen to.

--George Carlin

any mutantfest pics, anyone?

so... ubik. had a great time at the autonomous mutant festival, but we don't have any pics of the shows. I know, I know, if we wanted photos, we should have made arrangements, but if anyone has any ubik. at mutantfest pictures, please send them to us.

We're at ubikband@gmail.com

Everett

So, playing a ubik.show in Everett was a bit of an experience... We were preparing for a place with a limited stage and no monitors, and we ended up in a pretty nice place, fairly large, that even had a monitor for the drums (pretty awesome when you walk into a place and see that). They had a mount for our projector, a spare DVD player (because we forgot ours), power for our recording gear... class act all around. Because of a scheduling/booking snafu (dunno which, so not throwing any blame around), however, our 3-band bill became a 6-band bill: our three seattle-area bands and another three everett-area bands.

I never really thought of Everett as its own city, really; not being from the region, Everett was just the northern part of Seattle, in my mind. Having played this show, I can say without hesitation that the seattle bands and everett bands that played were from different cities. Maybe different worlds.

When I was breaking down the recording gear, a fairly boozy older woman said to me: "You guys from Seattle?"

and that sort of thing struck me as odd, because I really didn't distinguish between Seattle and Everett. "Yeah. How could you tell?"

"It was very 'new.'" The word came short of everything but finger-quotes in the air. "'New Rock,'" she dubbed us. She didn't seem terribly pleased with us... I don't think 'New' is her thing. I still choose to take that as a big compliment.

That said, she was the only negative comment I heard-- a lot of the Everett crowd really loved ubik. A lot of people coming out had never heard anything quite like us before. They mic'd Tyler's kit to the nines, so people could really hear the intricate hi-hat work on things like The Spangler and The Planet's Kerploding! Joel and I always get the two-basses thing (individually, they flip out about his slap'n'pop and my pedalboards... i.e, his playing and my gear. *sniff*) and Michelle... Michelle had a big stage, and really put on a show. She probably had more of a stand-out night than any of us.

We made a big impact on the mailing list, playing in a town we've never played before. With any luck, we can get those guys to flier for us next time we head north... maybe ubik. will have a draw in Everett now.

I can only hope that's the way it will work for us: when we start playing down the west coast, we hit cities where no one knows us, play a solid show, impress the attendees, build up the mailing list, and then the next time we hit that town...

You are no longer in the arena

The un-popularity of metal in the post-grunge nineties scuttled several bands that had been huge... broke them up and sent them packing within a year of the height of their popularity. That metal is no longer stigmatized has brought about countless reunion tours, but a lot of these bands aren't playing to the thousands of people they once were.

I just saw one... it was uncomfortable. The music was actually pretty good, but the singer... oh, the singer. The singer was horribly offended that there wasn't screaming and noise filling every bit of silence the band left open... not just between songs, but in dramatic breaks and rests as well. Seeing as they were playing a mid-sized club in south Seattle on a Wednesday... to fifty or so people... well, they just never reached arena volume. He wasn't happy.

And he kept hanging the microphone out into the crowd for the crowd to sing the choruses of their songs-- not just the "classic" stuff from fifteen years ago, but also from the new album, which, sorry, but it's pure arrogance to assume the crowd at your reunion tour knows the words to the new album. The man sang half the choruses to most of the songs; the crowd didn't sing the other half, the other half of the choruses just remained silent, for the most part. Again, the singer wasn't happy.

Then again... for a "theatrical" band, (though the band was looking fairly rock), the singer (who had been known for costuming-up, in the band's hey day) was out there in jeans and a worn and faded t-shirt, hanging un-ceremoniously over his now-ample belly. So, well, he looked like he was there to play a club, not an arena. But the arena ego just wouldn't die-- we left half way through.

I assume it has to be hard to come back from the land of the screaming thousands and play a small club show for fifty-or-so people... but the Rock God attitude, sneering down at the handful of people who actually did pay $20 to see a band well past their prime, that's just uncool. If they don't know the words, just sing the choruses yourself, man; you're the singer. I'm sure this band started out playing smaller clubs... almost all bands do... so there had to be a time when they just put on a good show for whoever was there.

Again, I'm just assuming here-- I never played an arena-- but, seriously, stow the ego just put on a good show.

Amature hobbyist

I've always been interested in recording. The first time I tried it, believe it or not, was into a cassette deck with a Sholz rockman. I fed my bass into the Instrument In and taped a riff as steady as I could. I the took that taped riff, put it into a walkman, and fed that riff into the Auxiliary In of the Rockman...

Feed the Rockman (which now has my bass on Instrument In and a recording of my riff on the Aux In) into the cassette deck, on a new tape, and roll... recording that gives you two tracks. Harmony, usually, or counterpoint.

Take the two-track recording out, put in in the walkman, and repeat... playing along to the two tracks, recording a melody line, come out with a three track recording. And so on.

Never actually sounded good, and I didn't have a drum machine at the time, so there was no percussion of any kind, but it was one of those formative experiments. When I bought my first Tascam Portastudio (several years later), my world brightened

damn!

The pros and cons of huge pedalboards don't always balance out-- thanks to everyone for your love and support yesterday night, and it wasn't a bad show at all... but one of my pedals kept failing throughout the gig. Our opening song sort of dropped out during a crucial part, which stressed me out for the remainder of the gig (the pedal kept failing after that, too, which is why there was no fade out at the end of External Retraction). Small stuff that only I noticed, I'm sure, but Failing Pedal Syndrome is a pretty scary for players like me.

wonderful pop sensibilities

While I do pick up The Stranger every week, it seems like the music section is a little... oh... let's call it myopic. Check the Up & Coming section for in any given week, where a number of shows for each day of the coming week are listed, and a trend emerges: show after show, band after band, is written up for their "catchy, smart pop" or "rock with gorgeous pop sensibilities," etcetera, etcetera. They'll usually cover any big, national, touring act (regardless of genre), but for the smaller stuff, it's always cute, catchy pop (ranging from gentle, jangly indie pop, to medium-heavy rock with the requisite pop trappings).

What rankles is that there are so many good, interesting, and unconventional bands in this town... you could likely find one of them any week you went out. You wouldn't know it, though, reading The Stranger: the music listings all read like descriptions of songs you'd hear during a movie where Zach Braff is either falling in love or moping.

I hate those fences anyway

Well, that clenches it-- I'm never growing up. The whole suburbs, family, house with the white picket fence vibe is really not going to compare to going out to tape the Barefoot Barnacle show last night (which sounds roughly like anything recorded at the back of El Corazon would sound: not too great), and wandering back to The Octagon for a ubik., Red Rapture, Barefoot Barnacle, Hunab Ku mass jam. I'm pretty used to going to sleep around 6:00/7:00 AM on nights like that. And then there's the whole beer-on-balls thing which... I just don't know if a blogger post is going to capture that kind of magic.

In other news: the ubix.cube.bot is fully fleshed out and readily available. Those little suckers rule (example: I just posted a picture of Joel's bot battling pagers)

And the EP charges on...

I'm taking a mixing vacation... I've given all the stems and Cubase sessions to Tyler, who, with any luck, will have a better time with them than I have (these mixes make me wanna cry). I know he's got a little more free time than I do, which is good, but he also seems to have a better knack at making these mixes punch than I do... we've all got a rough mix of Seven Feet Under, and it's sounding really good (exceptionally good, when you take into account that it's a rough mix).

That said, we reconvened for practice last night, and... sweet jesus, it's easy to forget what a band does. Bands play-- that's what they're (we're) good at. The world gets too cloudy when weekly (or bi-weekly) practice gets discarded and the songs don't get played. At least for me. Hell, I can have enormous mood swings based on not playing music, so it's good to be back in the practice routine. I imagine that's why so many musicians have side-projects: to avoid those no-play dead zones.

vanpost

Joel: "You might want to back up and pull in at a wider angle."

Eric: "Nah. I'll be fine."

Michelle: "I admire your optimism."

While I'm really pleased that ubik. has a van now, it's sort of registered in my name, and I'm... well, I'm not very good at driving it, and I'm truly awful at parking the fucking thing. I've never owned a vehicle larger than a Chrysler LeBaron (hey, four doors!) and usually end up with compact Hondas-- that van is a beast, and way outside my experience. Thank god I only have to drive it to shows.

mixpost

So, let's never write another tight, rocking song ever again-- it's much easier to track the big, fuzzy, squishy ones. The mixing is really hard with two basses and close-mic'd drums... absolutely no room sound to be found anywhere... and most of the mixing has to be modeled on the "one bass/one guitar" model, even if we have no guitars, because we've got the problem of stereo width weighing on us.

Generally, if you have a 2-guitar setup, you can put one guitar on the left side, one guitar on the right side, and send the bass straight up the middle... none of these instruments are going to step on one another, because they're all in different spots in the mix. The 1-bass/1-guitar deal is different, and much more difficult to make work (especially in a modern context): if you put the guitar to one side and the bass to another, like in early Ramones recordings, you're in danger of... well... sounding like early Ramones recordings. Joel and I don't exactly have this problem, as we both play basses and can suck up a lot of frequency ranges, but panning us right and left always sounds lopsided from section to section, one way or another, and it certainly doesn't sound full. The only band I know of that can pull that off and not sound dated is NoMeansNo, because Rob's bass is so midrangey and distorted he's covering a lot of a guitar's range, so the audio focal point (the mids) tend to be pretty balanced between the bass on one side and the guitar on the other. That's just not the case with ubik.

The bigger, fuzzier, and more echoey songs give me an easy out-- I can be panned out wide with echoes and reverbs and send Joel pretty much up the middle, keeping his low end tight with Tyler's kick drum. Some pretty compelling and lovely mixes are coming from those songs, even in the early stages.

The tighter, rocking songs are much, much harder. They can sound very, very small, with no atmosphere or sense of location... I'm still working on how to get past that. I really don't want to do the "Eric on one side/Joel on the other" approach because it just doesn't come off very well. I'm testing out a few tried and true techniques for opening those songs up (things like Disrepair or Seven Feet Under), but that's another post...

this one's long enough.

This is love...

I was going to post something about how much I hate mixing, but that can wait--

You may or may not know: ubik is just recently back from a studio session, and gearing up to release a 6-song EP pretty soon. Unfortunately, most of the tracks laid down by the studio were just junk: Heavy distortion on all of Michelle's vocals, a poorly set compressor that made Joel a wall of noise and clicks, and my levels were so low that boosting me up with the rest of the band would make an incessant "shhhhhhhh" throughout the whole disc.

Good news is: the drums sound fine, and we can re-record individual stuff as needed.

Now: on to the Love.

I absolutely love the flexibility of being able to track parts and effects with some real consideration as to how they'll fit into the mix. I love laying out the ubik pedalboard at home to overdub External Retraction and thinking "hey, why use the Holy Grail when I have a real spring reverb tank here?" (seriously: I bought that pedal because it came closer to the sound of my real spring reverb than any of the other pedals I tried out). Then I can pan the 'verb signal and dry signal left and right-- an idea I got from Man or Astro Man? While I'm at it, why not double-track the fuzz riff for the doom breakdown in the song?

Mixing will probably be slightly easier, too, with the rough tracks of the ubik ep sounding pretty wonderful right now. Being recorded badly, and being forced to overdub our parts to the original drum track, might be the best thing that ever happened to this recording, production-wise.

...and this is exactly the reason I started m'own blog on the site.

yay! members blogs

You know... my life is awfully ubik-centric. I can walk out of a practice or a show with a thought or a monologue that I think about writing down (and don't). I killed my LJ a while ago because it felt a little... rotten. Luckily, I don't know about any friends with Blogger.com accounts, and I only intend to write band stuff here, anyway, so the messiness of blog communities shouldn't follow me here.

So here it is: my ubik blog. I built pages for the rest of the band, but I have no idea if they want to use them. I can get a little loquacious about music and need an outlet... and this is a decent way to do it, as I'm usually only half functional right before or after a show. Dunno why.