Miniature Airlines

written by Miniature Airlines

written by Miniature Airlines

A new rough mix, posted over at Soundcloud. Very much in progress. Feedback encouraged. This is the most recently “completed” track from the forthcoming album. Possibly the opening track? I haven’t decided yet. Tell me what you think…

written by Miniature Airlines

See this chart? This chart shows the amount of stuff I need to do to be finished with my current album project(s). Each one of these boxes needs to be checked off. There are 14 tracks that I consider to be contenders for the album, and 6 steps to completing each track. That makes 84 boxes to check off. I’ve currently got 15 checked off. That may not sound like much, but the first column (composing) is the hardest part, and most of that column is done. Bouncing, mixing, choosing a track order, and mastering are all challenging as well, but less so. The last step, encoding and tagging, is a formality. I guess I could add a check box for artwork as well, since I’ll be handling that, as usual.

Anyways, this is a progress report. Expect updates.

XOXO

written by Miniature Airlines

My good friend and label-mate Hjalti has released his new album, And Will You Leave Me Thus? Say No. Say No. Say No. It’s a deep, dark record with influences ranging from IDM, industrial, black metal, glitch, and beyond. I can’t even imagine what genre it would fit under. Oh, and I also provided a remix for the album. Please do go check it out!

XOXO

written by Miniature Airlines

In the absence of other concrete information, I’ve decided to post a recording. My last live set, from Feb. 20th at the Lo Fi Lounge, is now up on Soundcloud. It’s a mix of new and old material, some so new it’s not even titled yet. Hopefully that will tide you over while I’m working on my new project. Speaking of which, I’m thinking about posting some of my works in progress soon. I’m still wrestling with format ideas, but I’ve got a solid batch of songs lined up, and I’m about ready to start taking the scalpel to them, and really working away at the details.

Meanwhile, I’ll be working with Hjalti this week, on the final mixdown and artwork for his album, And Will You Leave Me Thus? Say No. Say No, Say No…We spent last night cutting his logo into a plastic block, inking it up and printing it on assorted papers, with assorted distressing techniques. it’s nice to get your hands dirty with this type of artwork, rather then doing everything with pixels and cursors. The album should be out soon, with remixes by me and the Naturebot! I’ll let you know, of course…

XOXO

written by Miniature Airlines

Well, it looks like I’m officially commencing serious work on my new record. Still don’t know what shape it’s going to take, or what it will be called, but I’m at least coralling all my unreleased tracks, and preparing them for all the final editing, fixing, tweaking, mixing, and re-working that they’ll need before they’re ready for potential release.

I started this weekend, with an old track called “Slender Wrists”. This is one of my favorite tracks I’ve ever written, and it’s seriously old. It predates Pushpin Revolution, and possibly Apparel as well. It’s at least 5 years old at this point. In fact, it’s so old that a VST plugin I used in the track has disappeared from my archive of software installers. Which made it difficult to open the original source file.

I ended up opening the file and swapping that plugin out for a generic electric piano. Then I went out and found the newer version of this VST. The problem is, the demo version won’t load old presets, so I had no way of getting the original sound back. I ended up having to recreate it from scratch, then bounce the track to a .WAV file without closing Buzz. That was an all day project, but it worked out and I’ve now got the individual pieces of this track ready to mix.

There are about a dozen other songs that I’ll be playing around with int he next little while, but I don’t know how many of them will be part of this next release. And hopefully, I’ll end up writing a few more in the process of putting this thing together. I’m toying with the idea of posting some snippets, screenshots, etc. while I work, but we’ll see how good I am about keeping up with that.

XOXO

written by Miniature Airlines

Oh, in case you haven’t heard. I’ve been twittering for a while now. I’ve been a Twitter user for ages, but I just recently started a dedicated account for Miniature Airlines-related posting. So you can follow that account if you want to know what I’m doing with my plugins, but not what I had for breakfast.

Cheers!

written by Miniature Airlines

Friday night was pretty insane. I’d never been to the Lo-Fi Lounge before, but I see myself coming back soon. It’s a great setup, with two rooms; one large performance space in the back, and one swank lounge in the front. Hjalti and I were set up in the DJ booth in the front lounge, which was a lot of fun. Andrew Luck opened the show, with some guest spots by a live MC, then Hjalti played. His set was unfortunately cut short by some technical difficulties (seemingly caused by excessive heat and an old laptop). What he did play sounded fantastic, especially the heavier elements he’s been incorporating lately. The material he played is part of a new album in-progress, so hopefully we’ll be hearing some of it soon.

I played afterwards, and I was pretty thrilled with how the set went. It was about a 45 minute set, and I got a decent recording of it, which I’m planning on releasing as a Live EP after I have a chance to clean it up a little. Two nights before, I started writing a last minute addition to my set, using a glockenspiel sample kit I’d picked up. It came out so well, that I’ll probably expand it and turn it into an official song on my next release. I ended with the loud, feedback-drenched ending of “Survive To See Tomorrow”, which sounded great over a decent sized PA. I pushed my laptop a little harder than I normally would at the end, at one point dragging it into stutter land by using 120% of my available CPU power for effects processing. Also, just to give any Buzz users out there a panic attack, I was playing with Burst Protection turned off. I live dangerously, what can I say.

Erictronic from Team Bonkers picked up where I left off, and got the little lounge moving, and then Travis Baron closed out the night by playing a few records for all the kids who stayed out late. It was completely drunk and debaucherous by that point, and we dragged our gear up Denny Hill to crash for the evening.

Many thanks to Timm, Travis, Grindle, Donna, both Andrews (Luck and Droomstyyg), Erictronic, and everyone else who made this night worth coming out for. Hope to see you again soon!

written by Miniature Airlines

Quick note, to let you all know that I’ll be a live on-air gues of KBCS 91.3 FM tonight, from 11pm until 12pm. Hjalti will be with me, debuting a new track, and we’ll be chatting it up, playing some tunes, and promoting the show at the Lofi next Friday. Tune in, loyal followers. See you at the show!

written by Miniature Airlines