We finally did it. We finally put out something good.
Okay, our 2nd demo wasn’t terrible (especially compared to the first), but this is the first professional thing we’ve put out. And that’s exciting. It was also my first trip to a studio in years too. Last time was probably when we recorded the Skumboyz LP.
A lot has changed since then.
Hell, a lot has changed since our last demo. For one thing, we got new members.
Anyways, onto the process of documenting the whole process. Because that’s what this blog is for. A record of me doing stuff.
12 January 2024 (and before) – Before
So before we even stepped foot into any studio, we had to decide on two things. First, a track listing. And second, who would even record it.
The former was solved with minimal bloodshed, and we picked five strong songs; two that were on our first demo, one new one, and two that were on our second.
The latter decision was made with (surprisingly) no bloodshed.
We wanted to go with Yavé Rust. He does fantastic work, Julian and I have worked with him before, and he’s also in this:
Speaking of Municipal Waste, they recently (relatively) made the greatest music video I’ve seen since Cattle Decapitation’s “Bring Back The Plague” video.
I will move on before I turn this into a post where I just talk about cool music videos.
So we booked a day with Yavé in early/mid-January, and spent December destroying our hands/arms/vocal cords by repeatedly playing those five songs to prepare ourselves to further destroy our hands/arms/vocal cords by repeatedly playing those five songs.
Evan and I went the day prior to set up and mic the drums. By that I mean I stood around and occasionally held a cymbal stand while Yavé and Evan did the actual work of setting up and mic-ing the drums.
That whole process was quick and painless. A little over an hour and we were done. The next day was when real work would start.
13 January 2024 – Recording
We showed up around 11am, fully caffeinated and ready to go. By noon the three of us instrumentalists were wired up and ready to start running through the tracks.
At least, we were once Evan cut a hole in his kick head to fit a mic inside because he couldn’t find one the right size with a mic port.
After some unknown length of time, we had run through all five songs at least three times each. A total of (about) fifteen takes. We sat down for a bit, listened to them, and cringed at all the minor mistakes we all heard.
But Yavé worked some studio magic to cover our sins.
Yavé’s cats came to hang out with us for a bit while we listened through.
He explained that the black cat loves everyone (which we saw so first-hand as he took turns sitting on all of us and sleeping) and that the gray cat does not (which we saw first hand as he attempted to claw our arms as we passed by).
The duality of man cat.
After the first round of listening was done, and we picked the best of the takes for each song, Yavé re-amped Julian’s initial guitar runs. Julian still had to touch up a few spots here-and-there, and then record another guitar track over everything to both add some power and get the lead parts.
Evan could not help being a bit of a perfectionist and cringe at every slight mistake anyone (including himself, especially himself) made on the tracks.
The singularity of cat man.
After Julian, it was my turn to be re-amped and clean up any mistakes. But because I’m not special I didn’t need to add another layer to anything.
After all the instruments were kind-of okay, it was time for vocals. Yavé constructed a vocal booth and sent Nic to the box to repeatedly yell.
Nic has accused me of writing novels (which I will not deny), so some of the songs had to be done in multiple takes so they could catch their breath. Missing a line or two of lyrics is fine during live shows, so long as you keep up the crowd-work. But all of the lyrics need to be there when recording.
ALL OF THEM.
And yeah. The lyrics I’ve written tend to be word-heavy.
But finally. After 8 hours of recording, a little around 7pm (or 1900 if you use the correct kind of clock), we had recorded all five tracks. Yavé did some rough mixing on the spot so we could hear how everything sounded together.
And so we sat and listened once more.
A few tweaks were made here and there, but things were sounding good. So, at 8pm (2000 in the correct clock format), after 9 hours of recording and listening, we were finished and booked a day to start mixing the tracks.
25 January 2024 – Mixing
That day was 25 January 2024.
Actually, that day was really the day before 25 January. So 24 January. That’s when Yavé started mixing the tracks. He only needed us to be there the second day to get our input and finalize tracks.
And when we got there we all agreed that they sounded amazing. The only request we had after listening to the tracks through various outputs was that the bass needed to come up a bit. But that was it.
We highly recommend Yavé if you’re in/around RVA and are looking to record any kind of release.
Mastering
After recording and mixing comes mastering. That vague and almost magical process which converts tracks you thought already sounded pretty good into something amazing. Their final form. Ready for digital and/or physical release.
Just before we went in to mix the EP, we talked with some friends who were in the process of recording their own EP, and they told us they had just gotten back their masters. They went through Will Killingsworth of Dead Air Studios and loved how their final product sounded.
So we looked into him. The quality and affordability were perfect, and Julian was already sold based only on hearing who the dude has worked with.
During mixing, Yavé told us to look around for mastering, and said that we could stick with him or go somewhere else. But given that Yavé was about to go on tour in the next couple of weeks, when exactly we could master was up in the air. Which was totally fair. I mean, it’s a tour.
We asked Yavé about Will, and he even told us the guy was good. So, off to Will we went.
Will made quick work of our tracks, and we got them back sounding fantastic. There’s not really much I can say beyond that (in part because I barely understand it). It’s not like mixing where we needed to be there. It was like magic.
Prepping to Release
Now that we had the tracks done done done, we had to actually put them out into the world. Or, at least prepare for doing that.
And that’s where I come in. Again.
Because I’m behind a computer screen all day anyways, I’m the one responsible for managing our bandcamp and other means of online distribution, our email, our mastodon (that no one checks), and our website (that really no one checks). The only part of our online presence I don’t touch is our pages on Facebook and Instagram because Facebook is gross.
Oh, did I mention that we didn’t have a title for the EP until just after mixing? Well we didn’t.
We debated on that endlessly as well. Evan wanted to self-title it, which I thought was dumb because we have a self-titled song and that wasn’t going on this release. He disagreed. We thought about using “Glow In The Dark” as the title track, but Julian was worried that it may send the wrong message given who that song is about (even though it’s just a song about him, by no means an endorsement, but I get that people can be fucking stupid and conflate the two). “Breakfast” was a contender, but Nic hated that.
Eventually we settled on “Extremophile”. Because it both captured the vibe of the EP/Band, and was the first one we all actually agreed on.
After that, with the name finalized, we asked Nic’s tattoo artist Logan to do up some artwork for us. That was the last thing we needed before actually setting a date to release, and it came out looking great.
So we just had to pick a release date.
Or two.
1 April 2024 – Digital Release
Getting physical copies takes a lot of time if you want to line it up with the digital release, and we wanted to get this out ASAP. So we said “fuck it” and decided the digital release would come first, and then we would do a physical release later.
For the digital release date, we chose April Fools’ Day. Because why not.
Also, that day, which is April Fools’ Day, is today. Meaning, that as of today (that day being April Fools’ Day as previously stated), the EP is out. And you can hear it. With your ears and/or other sensory organs.
The best place to do so is probably Bandcamp, but I’ve also got it up on Soundcloud, YouTube, and the Internet Archive. You can download it for free, but if you want to give us money I won’t stop you; besides the name your price on Bandcamp (where you can get it for free or give us money), free download is available via the Internet Archive (either directly or through the torrent I’m re-seeding, preferably the latter to reduce load on them).
It’ll also be on Spotify and everywhere else as soon once the distributor runs through their laundry list of checks. That process takes a few days (or longer), so it’ll probably be there within the week (maybe). And once it’s there, we can really start raking in the cash.
And by “cash” I mean the literal fractions of pennies musicians get from streaming royalties.
The Physical Release
But who cares about digital media?
I sure don’t.
Not me.
Not at all.
Disregard anything and everything I’ve ever said before. This is not a bit.
For the physical release we decided to go with the epitome of high quality. The greatest medium for the physical release of music in all of history.
Wax Cylinders Cassette Tapes.
Yes, Cassette Tape.
They are cool again. So we’re getting a few made via duplication.ca (as recommended by Patrick from Destruct) and are working on booking a tape release show with some of our friends once we get those in. That, however, is a long process. But If you’re interested, an announcement for that will be made on our site, not my blog.
Anyways
It’s been a long journey, with a few more stops still ahead to get the tapes out. But here’s the EP in all of it’s glory.
I can’t wait to do this all over again for an LP.