Will do, Long Knives played the Redwood Bar this past June 26th. ToyGuitar from SF was headlining that night. We won't know when we'll be back down towards LA.

It's really cool when people come into this thread with full on bands to show off!

I just checked out the Long Knives EP on bandcamp. Funny you say you guys weren't satisfied with the studio on your last go-around, I thought the production was actually pretty strong. It's recorded well, I like the guitar sounds, it's the real deal.

My criticism would be less with the vocals themselves and more with the lyrics and delivery. Following along with the lyrics on bandcamp, it really struck me that the phrasing was sort of all over the place. Sort of like when people hastily translate Japanese lyrics to English and sing them, some words are sped up and condensed, other words are needlessly elongated - and syllable emphasis is put in unnatural places. I dunno if it sounds like I'm nitpicking on technicalities, but I really think it hurts the flow of otherwise strong songs. Regardless of how strong the vocals themselves are, lyrics and word-fit, phrasing, those would be my main suggestions to build on.

Thanks GoldenRhino for your opinion!

When the EP was recorded it was when Long Knives was a trio. We recorded it at our friend's home studio and was mastered by him last year. We thought it was OK. Once we got signed, the record label sent it off to be mastered by people they know and it came back better than what we had before. That's the version that's on the bandcamp.

Kris is the main vocalist and guitarist and she used my white Gibson Melody Maker SG that was modded into an Orange Dark Terror. Matt our lead guitarist used his Gibson Les Paul studio into a Peavey 5150. I used my white Fender P-Bass and an Ampeg PF-500 with an 8x10.

It took two trips to the studio to record the EP. On the first day, we laid the drums down then guitars and bass. Vocals came late into the night. The lead guitar and backing vocals were added weeks later when Matt joined the band. The studio was in Rocklin, CA. It was a long drive from Oakland. Like half the day was driving. It was incredibly fun and I learned a lot.

The most recent thing we recorded was a cover song of Jimmy Eat World's "Blister" for a benefit compilation for the past Nepal earthquake.

[url]https://singitback.bandcamp.com/track/blister[/url]

The cover was recorded in a practice space of our friend in SF. We paid him in food since he wanted to practice recording. Had it mastered by our friend for about 40 dollars and we were happy with how it came out. Matt didn't like his vocals but we thought it was OK. It was all done in a day.

Heh, saw Jimmy Eat World a few nights ago, and this was one of the more awesome songs they played. Your guitar tones are super fierce, I like it a lot. Vocals sound better on this than on the other recordings, too, actually.

Here's a song I just wrote last night, it's about America/capitalism/religious zealots/all that good stuff:

https://soundcloud.com/midnight-down/in-our-sunday-best

[quote="Marekenshin"]Here's a song I just wrote last night, it's about America/capitalism/religious zealots/all that good stuff:

https://soundcloud.com/midnight-down/in-our-sunday-best[/quote]

Your guitar work is really nice, the vocals in the beginning were kinda hard to hear but gets more solid throughout the song.

Yeah, just a self-reference demo I recorded with my phone so that I don't accidentally change any of the important melodies, haha. I'll be working on a proper self-produced demo in the near future, hoping to finish it by sometime next Spring. And thank you! I'm actually a rather shitty guitarist, so I appreciate the kind words there lol.

I don't usually post my stuff around but seeing as it's my bands jams I guess I can do it

[url]https://lovebakudan.bandcamp.com/[/url]

It's an EP we made for my uni final project (audio engineering degree, hahaha )

I should be getting the vinyl releases this week, the test cut was so damn sexy to listen to.

There's some issues here and there but I'm really happy with it regardless.

Beardyman and Pied Piper of Chiba are more of what we're really about, Faux Vixen kinda just happened, its not a terrible track, just a little out of place in a weird way.

[quote="Spikeness"]Beardyman and Pied Piper of Chiba are more of what we're really about[/quote]

That's... That's a very good thing.
The cover art and lyrics to Faux Vixen give me major "SOCIALLY MALADJUSTED WEEABOO WHO JUST GOT FRIENDZONED" vibes.

Grats on the project overall though, it's so neat that you guys get to press that shit to vinyl! It's actually sort of surprising to me that vinyl production is part of an audio engineering degree. Is it part of a specialization? (glad it's happening too - we may be in a vinyl boom, but I've heard directly and indirectly that the quality and production capabilities of existing producers are not where they need to be.

Faux Vixen is one of our drummers tracks and she's quite the angsty teen!

The cover art was just me and my friend being silly, we originally made the band with the idea of being Japanese punk rock/whatever the fuck we like, so I guess we're kinda weeby. We actually had a few songs we wanted to chuck on the EP which were full Japanese but mid way into the recording someone reminded me a 7" vinyl can only hold 5-6 minutes a side, so we dropped a lot for a later release

As for the project it was just "make a marketable product in any form you wish", we didn't get to do any of the vinyl work ourselves sadly, though we found a nice place that does them all by hand.

Depending where you study this sorta degree really changes what kinda stuff gets covered, up until a year ago they offered mastering as a unit but dropped it when they decided to combine it with other units, which made it a short 2 lectures covering the history of mastering and not much else, one of the students who had taken the full unit mastered my EP as part of his project and while sitting in on the sessions he commented how the actual unit wasn't much different but it was a great world of help having people to actually discuss the subject with. He as great to work with, and did an amazing job, even if my instructions were as simple as "make it sound good and don't smash it into a brick wall"

Lyrics aren't my cup of tea, but the music is pretty nicely written across the board. Guitar tones are a bit thin on the lead lines for Beardyman, but overall sounds like "marketable product" quality for sure. I liked Pied Piper of Chiba the most.

Bit of weebiness ain't no shame, it's about pushing it into people's faces past them expressing a lack of interest that's a problem, just like disliking weebiness isn't the issue, shaming or picking on people over weebiness is. Wouldn't sweat it one way or the other as long as you're enjoying the things you have in your life and you're not hurting anybody. I think we had a discussion in the past at least a few times about how the majority of users on this board have at least SOME measure of weebery about them.

Uh huh. But yeah my issue isn't that the creator of that album art appreciates some aspect of Japanese pop culture, it's that it's the art is a naked anime girl with huge tits riding a missile. Like, come on now.

Edit: I more mean the type of weeb who doesn't know to keep it on 4chan. The "my only Facebook profile pics are anime" guy. The "my phone background is a high school aged character wearing a string bikini" guy.

I wish we had a punchy, specific term for that. If you've got a suggestion, holler

[quote]disliking weebiness isn't the issue, shaming or picking on people over weebiness is.[/quote]

I forgot to mention being silly children and pretending that we need to be offended personally over things that aren't our cups of tea is also kind of a problematic approach, but generally figured that went without saying. Guess not.

Why do you have such a hateboner for me? Stop derailing the thread with petty bullshit - the only one with a problem here is you. I can't believe the forum is as dead as it is and yet you insist on continuing to pull this. This is obnoxious for me and everyone else here, many of them being new users who probably don't have much context for your ongoing vendetta.

Back on topic now.

lol that cover sort of reminds me of an assignment I did for class (holy shit that was eight years ago) Where I took a stab at " random anime girl" to put on the cover of a cd. The "song" was Fighter Pilot so I put her in an orange and purple color scheme evangelion ripoff plugsuit kinda thing, doing a salute with a pink and purple helmet on the ground. I think I was going for a "fashion forward military, only in anime" look, and on the back there are two jets in nonsensical camo patterns about to crash directly into each other, and inside the booklet were a bunch of photographs of toy jets simulating attack runs on toy tanks and stuff. It's stupid as hell.

Ok that's the end of the weeb derail. Konno, Blister is always such a nostalgic track because it reminds me of the times I was an early teen hanging out in my best friend's kitchen where he had it on the computer. Winamp, it really whips the llamas ass.

I've been wondering if I ought to start using Winamp or something again. Should probably look into that.

Also I am still totally writing songs and stuff, though things have been quiet on that front in some respects, as it always takes me a while to reassemble a group of musicians when I move to a new place. Got one of my two planned projects moving forward bit by bit, and I feel like some of the songs we've been working on are starting to feel pretty together.

[url=https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwjs0bC_o1PIZXVWQWF0ZFpoNWM/view?usp=sharing]Something old[/url] that we brushed up, and [url=https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwjs0bC_o1PIdFRpM1JhWUdQdE0/view?usp=sharing]something new[/url] that I wrote more recently (just from a jam session, no vocals that night because was low on sleep and not feeling it on that front).

The older one used to be a song in the standard sense, but now really only has set structure for the first maybe two minutes and then goes off into jammy wankery for however long we end up going with it (the idea is that similar to jazz music, there will be occasional returns to the main riff, but the rest is going to be various solos and improvised stuffs of undetermined length and whatnot; it's a ton of fun, as much as I've talked crap about jam bands a few times in the past in my dumbe(er) days, lol). This one was the most fun of them so far, I think. The newer song is a pretty straightforward thing, but I like the drums my friend has developed for it, and am decently proud of the structure overall, in its nuanced simplicity.

Edit: Hilarious that GR really thinks that pointing out how maybe being pointlessly rude towards a subculture he feels some weird need to actively distance himself from (maybe he's "too cool" for the general public image of "japanophilia," so he has to bash on weebs to distinguish his appreciation of eva from their shameful too-muchness?) is just me trying to keep his grudge with me active.

Try to stay on topic, or at least understand that saying things like that generally causes at least a few others to either, as Cloudy has done, share a story to empathize with the person being shamed or, as I did, point out that such behavior is a bit silly. But as always, to each their own, lmao share your music kids.