Thanksgiving has past and it’s been a minute since I’ve written a blog post.
2023 has been a head-down kind of year as we really focus on preparing for next year. And I can finally see light at the end of the tunnel, which excites me!
First off, we have a record we are dropping the first half of 2023. It’s called ‘Nightmares in Technicolor’. (album #7). It’s a 15-song epic… the longest album I’ve released since Lucid (back in 2007). And I think it’s my best sounding record. I got to have a lot of my closest friends make appearances and I’m very happy with the end result.
This record has taken me a few years to make… A lot of the songwriting happened around 2016-2018 (like I always do, I added some new tunes during the recording process). I started recording the tracks in earnest in 2020 I believe. I think you’ll hear why it took a bit longer to produce… to capture the sci-fi vibe I spent a lot of time with the soundscapes of it all. The time spent has paid off though, because I have learned a lot of valuable lessons making this record.
Finishing the record is really just half the work for an album release. I’ve been working diligently on the artwork that goes everywhere… from CD layouts to social media content… it takes a long time to do. And I know not everyone likes the way I use instagram as a big artboard… but I really like it. It gives me a chance to interpret the music of a given album visually… which is really satisfying to me.
I also have been hard at work on some visualizers for the singles. I originally intended to keep it simple… but it quickly because probably the most difficult and exacting visualizer work I’ve done to date. So I’ll be spending the better part of December finishing that up.
All the while, we’ve been working on the follow up record (#8… whose title I’ll keep secret for now). Brad has just finished drums on the 13 songs we’ve recorded… I’ll likely cut 2 or 3 before the end. I’ve been mixing and doing ‘basic tracking’ as we go… which means I’ve been re-recording guitars (replacing what was on my demos) and getting the tracks into an okay position. The next step is vocals (starting December), having Alan finish his guitar work, incorporating Adal’s work, recording Maddie’s vocals, and refining the mixes. My goal is to finish the record in February… but I suspect it’ll be more like March or April.
We will likely start releasing singles from album #8 next summer, right after ‘Nightmares in Technicolor’ is released. We just want to keep chugging along. As I’ve learned with Shark Attack Records… consistency goes a long way. And I have all the Johnny Stranger records written already… it’s just a matter of focusing in and getting the production done.
But - despite my habit of disappearing into studios - we have been finally getting ourselves back into rehearsal mode. It’s a bit of a lengthy, slow process… but the results are always satisfying. We hope to start performing next year and just keep going from there. Wild to think we haven’t played a show since Covid started.
So that’s our progress report. We have done a whole lot of work in order to burst out the gate in 2024. We’ve got a lot of work left to do… but thankfully we’ll finally be out there and hanging with our friends and fellow musicians in LA. Finally!
