Thursday, November 19, 2009

A Message from Mark Wright

So, this weekend we record our first full-length record. I know, yipee right? Well, I was thinking about this on the ride home from wherever I was last night. An awful lot can happen in a REALLY short period of time. During the course of writing and arranging the songs for LP #1, members of the band have experienced job losses, spouse losses, house losses, memory losses, etc.(you get the picture). We've also watched our kids grow, fallen in love, and learned a lot about being in a band and playing music. It's been a hard couple of years, but you won't hear that on most of the album. We want whoever listens to the songs to take from them what we have. There are only a few downer moments in a couple of tunes but, for the most part, we were just looking for opportunities to forget all about the negative things in life and create rock and roll that takes us, and hopefully you, to a better place. As music lovers, we're just trying to pay back what we owe to all the bands and artists that got us to where we are as a band and inspired us to look beyond the parade of dramas in everyday life to create something new. We really hope you like what you hear. Thank you!

- Mark

A message from Matt Horutz of The Brixton Riot

Hi! This is Matt, drummer for The Brixton Riot. I just wanted to say that I'm really excited about heading into Arcade Audio Recording Studios this weekend for my very first recording session with the band. I think we wrote a really strong prog-rock opera record and I'm psyched to get all of our 8 minute (or longer) songs preserved in digital format. You can rest assured that I've got my 16 piece drum kit (including Octoban toms) all tuned up, and the 38" gong is polished and ready to go. Who knows, we may even attempt a Yes, Rush or Genesis cover!

P.S. – The airbrushed fantasy art we have for the album cover is TOTALLY killer!!!

- Matt

Monday, November 16, 2009

Preface To LP # 1

After countless delays, scheduling conflicts, canceled and rescheduled (and canceled again) sessions, some head-scratching, some sixth grade math and even a bout of the Swine Flu, we're finally five days away from beginning work on our debut album.

Actually, the "work" part started a long time ago. We've been preparing for a while now - writing new songs, tracking demos, arranging and re-arranging older songs and so on. We tracked our first demos for the record all the way back in April, in preparation for our originally scheduled sessions at Red Bank's Retromedia Studios in August. Then August became September and September became October. After some soul searching (and number crunching), we realized that we needed to explore other options to stay within our budget. Enter Dave Harman, drummer extraordinaire for The Campbell Apartment and the owner of Arcade Audio. After a brief scheduling hiccup in October, we're all systems go to begin rolling this Saturday.

It's hard to say exactly what will make it to the final product. The pool of tracks is about 16 deep and spans everything from our first song ("Cover's Been Blown") to our latest ("Signal To Noise Ratio") and there's even a cover song on the list. The plan is to get as many of these recorded as possible and then decide which songs will make the cut. None of the tracks on the Sudden Fiction EP will be repeated on the record.

And that, dear reader, is where we stand. We're planning on blogging, tweeting (I can't stand this word) and whatever it is that one does on Facebook throughout the recording process, but really, all that is secondary to actually recording. So all I can say for certain is "we'll try".

Oh, and as for that vague and unoriginal title "LP #1"...I'm happy to report that we do have a few candidates for a real title, with one front runner...but we're going to keep those quiet for now.

- Jerry