Plans..Plans..Plans

just a quick update to let you know whats going on in the land of bellflur..



My laptop is covered in drywall dust.. that means only one thing... we are busy constructing a new bellflur nest...

stay tuned for updates..

the only way i can describe it would be.. a chucky cheese for adults and musicians...

this is a video we made a while back.... it was basically a test video for making a longer video for one of our new tunes.. attached is a snippet of audio from one of our practices. enjoy!

new album + ep + dvd? out soon!!!

what! what!

album is done! (well sorta)

here is a few pictures that eamonn had taken during the studio.

almost there....stay on target...almost there

the end of day number 8 at the studio has come to an end and it has been fun

we were joined in the studio today by susan and emily, from the band exitclov, and may from Pree. they were all wonderful to work with and were good sports with my unimagined teaching techniques though i strive to be likened to a Apollo Creed /Rocky type of an image, in the coaching sense of the word. a fantastic team. Rocky has a statue and doesn't exist. quite a compliment. to all involved.

susan

emily

may

carlos

Tom!

los didnt finish this blog.. shame shame.. i post it anyway! ha!

cracker challenge!!!

Day 6!

why hello there....

day 6 has come and gone.

we had another productive day. It started around noon. we immediately turned our attention to "the rhythms of waking and sleeping." We had to finish laying down a bass guitar track and a rhodes part. Los went for the Rhodes part on the Suitcase MarkII.. after tracking it we tried using the Nord Electro on the MarkI setting. The MarkI had a little more bite which let it cut through a bit more..

from there we had to lay down the bass track. This is a bass line that Eamonn plays. It comes in at the end in support of the Novation BassStation line that I play. It sounds great.. Eamonn tracked it using Joe Lally's (of fugazi's) first Ernie ball musicman bass! This bass is the old 80's model and has its share of road rash. the action was terrible but the MM active bass was just the tone we were looking for..

Los had to dip out to pick up his mom from the Airport. so it was just Eamonn and I for a while. We decided to tackle some parts in "Last quarter of the 20th century blues."

Last night we layed down a Drum track from reason, los played the rickenbacker bass (ricky-bobby), I played an old Gibson parlor acoustic. It has a nice dark tone, unlike most acoustics I've played. after those tracks were set we broke for the night..

so from that I added another acoustic track using a Gibson j-45. this one was unreal. (thanks to nick for lending us his baby) a nice bright yet full tone. the 2 acoustics complemented each other perfectly.

the bridge needed some synth lines and the end needed some electric guitar. these parts were not written but we had some ideas floating around. I broke out my trusty BassStation, few octaves up, dialed up 2 new patches and layed down 2 contrapuntal lines. Eamonn plugged his sweeeeeeet honeyburst 60's gibson es330 into one of his preamps and layed down a tastey groove at the end.

we then decided to take a break and watch "over the top" only the best movie ever! i wont even get into this movie because it will easily triple this blog post.. all i will say is.. your life is not complete till you see this movie..

los and hatrick arrived shortly after and we paused the movie and went back to work. eamonn found an awesome synth plug in for protools 8. we messed with that for a while. Eamonn found the mario kart synth.. its amazing.. patrick found a nice high pitched filterey synth for the bridge and los layed down a styleophone part as well.. chock full o' synthy goodness.

hatrick also added and touched up some bell parts for some other tunes.

we broke for dinner, went to Guapos!!!!! mmm

LOS HAD AN APPLETINI! (please comment with your joke of choice)

so after we were all on the verge of vomiting from overindulgence, we went back to work..

are now all done.. EXCEPT
violins (susan and emily of exit clov)
cello (elizabeth olsen of meredith bragg)
horns(brad of cobra collective and fatty of deleted scenes)
vocals (may of pree, dave of sunchild, andy of play w/ me, and all)

onto the vocals.
Los and I had a great talk with Don Zientara of inner ear... He is a super cool guy that has recorded basically everyone.. advice from him is something you will probably listen to.

Los and I layed down all the vocals for "Bright Lights." I like to warm up my voice/prepare by singing rediculous songs, yelling or making weird noises. so im betting sneeky eamonn got sommadat.. for your sake , i hope not.

well I am finally tired..

until tomorrow
-tom

and completely un-studio related, i found this pic of a show we did a while back at the black cat backstage. not too many photos floating around where you can see all of us in one shot...

... and i think that's mainly due to the fact that i'm short... and i'm blocked out by the insane number and pieces of equipment on stage... many of which are taller than me...

... as are the other flurs...

... oh, lamentable existence

Inner Ear: Days 4 & 5

well into the sessions to complete this beast of a record. hunter and i have finished up all of our parts (drums, samples, the "R2D2" drums, glockenspiel, percussion, guitars, mellotron). as such, he and i are falling back into the normal (incredibly frustrating) life of work during the day while making our appearances at the studio in the evening times.

carlos, tom and eamonn are still at it strong though... even in spite of making consistent stops at the now venerable institution that is weenie beenie (mmm... bacon egg and cheese on toast... it'll get you movin' in the mornin'... and the afternoon... and as the essential last minute run to grab more of that addictive grease prior to this particular institution's closing time of 6pm). i'm not sure how one can remain "strong" eating such things with such frequency... but some things are better left untouched and unsolved. those three cats are simply beyond explanation.

so let's see:

i don't think any of us had any expectation to be as far along as we are. basically, every track for the 7 songs we walked in to record from scratch (as well as every track for the 6 previous songs we had recorded in session #2 back in the 'ol 2008) are done. this is highly uncharacteristic of bellflur. i suppose this is a tip of the hat to the pre-production and rehearsals. so we find ourselves with 5 additional days to record strings, horns, and vocals... and some extra time to screw around with things (which lord knows where that will go).

the stunner so far for me (while they all are sounding mighty fine) is we can build you. quite possibly because this was the one tune we didn't quite know how the end result would pan out. one of those walking the line songs where the recording has an equal chance of success or failure. but damn, its sounding great. hunter came in at the last minute with some incredible drum/synth samples. tom's bass line. carlos' doubling the piano with the acoustic guitar... its his own guided tour to pleasure town for all future listeners of this song (apologies, we were watching anchorman last night). AND... we had "our" cellist elizabeth come out to work through some ideas and did an impromptu recording at the outro of we can build you and, my my... it sounds like a cello (much to eamonn's relief)... and it sounds absolutely incredible.

** and by "our" cellist, i mean a person of considerable cello-ing skill who was kind enough to come record some cello on this here record of ours **

tom was able to record his long awaited quiqa (i don't even know how to spell that damn word) part on ghost ships. i still haven't heard it, but my understanding is that it somehow works well. i'm sure he'll get into it in more detail on his next posting (which should be sometime very soon and include pictures).

we're currently weighing the debate of sample clearance for two samples used in two separate songs. i'll not say which ones at the moment. perhaps that's a new blog survey... to clear or not to clear a sample? i feel i've said too much on this subject.

hunter and i did lots of percussion overdubs last night on rhythms of waking and sleeping... to include eamonn bringing down an old marching drum from the loft of inner ear studios. also a few drum overdubs on activate your cancelled check and ghost ships.

mellotron stuff on ghost ships and we can build you. lovely rhodes piano and dual guitar single note picking on fits and stops and starts.

i myself got to have some fun at the bridge of the new and improved version of insect politician. reverse reverb using what turns out to be a completely useless reverb pedal (hardwire stereo reverb) on any other setting in the pedal's sound portfolio... along with some teaspoon. ahh... the teaspoon. yes. the teaspoon is an effect pedal... and it saves my ass when i'm on the verge of fucking up a take.

anyways, things are moving along splendidly. i'll be redoing a glockenspiel part this evening, reamping a guitar part through a kaoss pad. but other than that, i believe carlos and tom are heavy into vocals today, with guest musicians later in the week. one or two special guest vocals on a couple of songs... possibly saturday the 7th!! the exit clovers (susan and emily) as well as elizabeth cello are slated to come do group string sessions on friday... assuredly an event that we will document on video as they are all better musicians than we :)

so until the next posting... take care. sleep well. keep your cute hat on.

patri-flur

Day Three Inner Ear

today went great!

we tracked grey sparkle finnish pigs today.. we nailed it second take.. which is cool cause that was going to be the most challenging song to capture.. after that.. overdubbz!!

lets see..

lots of effect pedals
farfisa
rhodes
samples
ms2000
novation bass station
hatrick axe
jawbox's p-bass
cocktail kit

lets see.. eamonn made that cracker challenge his bitch..
7 in one minute. no water!!!! video coming soon..

tomorrow:
metal band day
overdubbs
string and horn section meeting

flur