Fire and Time

We began recording "All You Are" this past week which actually stretched into three sessions. Jake recorded somewhere close to 53 harmonizing guitar tracks. When Peter played the bass, the walls shook and glass cracked. The whole time I couldn't stop thinking about how this particular song has, in my mind, become a corner stone to the album. It can be difficult to balance power with frailty, speed with patience, despair with elation, and this song aims to embrace all of that. A hopeful fatalist. Something I think this album will try to draw out as we continue to chase it down the path of where ever we're leading it.

In the meantime though, a pause. "Weightless Mass" is an instrumental piece that may or may not make it all the way to the finished album. We've paired it with an hand painted film by Jax Deluca.

"...it smelled like cool air and metal and space. It smelled of fire and time."

p.s. as you might imagine, it looks best when you bump the picture up to HD.

-Mark

It's Official....mostly

There was a show played this past Wednesday, in Rochester, at The Bug Jar which some might call... well, monumental. It rewarded us with a large sum of money and landed us a sweet contract with a (semi) local brewer you may have heard of once or twice before.  You can read about it in this past Friday's newspaper above. That's right ladies and gents, A Relative Term now rocks for Canada! (not to be confused with Canadian) And by Canada, I of course mean Canada's beer and by beer, I mean slightly flavored, slightly foamy water.




...and by all of this I mean, the Term boys had a great time playing the Bug Jar. Jake and I drank non Canadian beer, scaled the Bug Jar and took pictures in front of the billboard on the roof for as long as we could before someone saw us and turned the lights off. Ta-da, only slightly less glorious really.

Now we tip our seats back, put our hands behind our heads and await Molson's counter-offer.

-Mark

street smarts

Vocal Tracking

The great green room where the tracks hit the hard-drive 

and the sunlight hits the ponytail.

Mark leaning in to 'Indications'  

Mic experimentation- Beyer M500

We got multiple vocal takes of most of the songs we have recorded already.  Operating almost exclusively in the Mark directed 'sweet spot' of Labor Day afternoon, the two of us managed to find a good combination of mics (Neumann 103 and Blue Mouse) for the vocal sound.  The more I listen to these tracks, the better I think they sound.  Mark noticed some audible buzzing from a bass track that might need replacing but all in all, things are shaping up.

Tomorrow night we're in Rochester at the Bug Jar if you're over that way and feel like hearing some songs.  We've got about six planned for the gig including a new one 'To Let Go' found its way into the list and I'm looking forward to playing that one live for the first time.

See you there?

-Peter

"To Let Go" A Relative Term recording session 8.29.11

We spent some time tracking "To Let Go" this past week. I'd returned the night before from a 4 day trip to Colton, NY for a different recording session with members of the band The Yóü-Tü.

While a beautiful and great experience, sometimes working with The Yóü-Tü can leave you a little drained which I was feeling by the time A Relative Term got together on this one. Luckily for me, Peter and Jake picked up the slack and put together some good stuff. It's still got some work to be done but it's well on its way...


-Mark