krayandthebird.com

Wow, it’s been a while since we communicated with everybody. Sorry for the silence. We don’t really have an excuse.

The truth is, it’s Gareth’s fault.

Anyway, we’ve been working hard on this side with various projects, so I thought I’d keep you in the loop as to what’s going on.

First, album. We are still very much on track with our upcoming full-length album. Mixing and editing are currently taking place simultaneously, and it’s sounding great. Matt Duminy (editing) and Dave Langeman (mixing) are doing fantastic jobs at making us sound like a good band, so we are all feel pretty excited.

An album launch date has been tentatively set, so watch this space for details to follow soon!

Next, gigs. We have a few coming up, but to highlight two important ones in the coming weeks:

1. Next Tuesday (22 March) we are playing at Die Boer, one of our favourite venues. It’s been a little while since our last gig, with the album going on, so we’re really eager to get on stage and jam. Hope to see you there! (Reminder: you need to book for Die Boer: 021 979 1911. There’s no charge to book, but you should probably eat something

2. On the 30th we are playing at Plaasteater as part of their Battle of the Bands. The winner receives lots of equipment and the opening slot at the Table Mountain Blues Summit. So we need support! It’s a great venue in the countryside outside Kuilsriver and the food is great. I recommend the cheeseburger.

Lastly, we are currently working on some new material. I don’t want to say too much, but it’s unlike anything we’ve done before.

Thanks for listening!

Yesterday evening we completed tracking for our 2nd album. It’s been a great few days with Matt in the studio. The songs are sounding great, the arrangements are coming together very nicely, and we are all feeling super excited for the end product. We all would like to use this opportunity to thank Rooftop Studio and Matt Allison for their hard work in helping us record our album.

Now it’s off to Matt Duminy, who some of you might know as one of the guitarists for Versus the Wolf. Matt’s also a very skilled editor, he’s gonna put everything together so that it flows like an album should. That will probably take ten to twelve days, after which we will be taking our edited tracks to Dave Langeman for mixing.

In the meantime, keep an eye on Facebook for little clips from our time in the studio (we’re calling it Clips from the Attic). We hope you enjoy them and that they will offer some insight into the making of our album.

Chat again soon!

Imagine this for a moment, if you will…

If you could ‘hold’ a sound, in the same way you hold a tennis ball. There is sits in your hand, waiting to be used. Now you take that sound and bounce it off the wall, and squash it momentarily by hammering it with a tennis racquet, or alter the air inside by stepping on the ball for a long while.

Did you know you can do that with sound file?

Yesterday we recorded some small drum fill parts for ‘Choose a Lane’. But the idea was not to simply have drums plodding along with the intro, like most people do. No, Matt Allison, our inventive – and apparently disturbed – producer took the drum sounds and tossed them into an electronic blender, adding all sorts of echo, pitch variation, strange harmonic voices…I won’t tell you too much for now, except to say it sounds like World War II inside a metal factory…inside a black hole. We’ll see how much of it makes the final edit.

We made good progress in the last two days. As I am writing, the Mighty Spear (that’s Gareth) is tracking vocals for ‘Misplaced Credit’. In the last 48 hours we have added all percussive extras, Rae’s saxophone parts, violin segments for Karyn, as well as keys and violin for Mark. All that’s left are all the vocals, and we have two and a half days to nail them.

But we’ve already learnt tons about ourselves and our band in the last few days of studio work. Hearing what we sound like through a proper studio rig has lifted my passion for my instrument and the band. It’s all starting to sound like an album now, and a really good one too!

Well, we think so.

Have a great Christmas everybody!

I wonder if people in St. James are either immune to road rage or simply the nicest folk ever to grace the earth.

Our studio is situated on the coastline, just off what seems to be a fairly important main road here in Muizenberg. Traffic officials have decided to narrow the road to one lane in order to proceed with roadworks. Fair enough, the tar is probably in quite a state. So what do most people do? Well, bring both directions of traffic together and use traffic officials to guide the cars – like robots, giving each direction a chance to move. First the one lane, then the other. Easy peasy.

Not in St. James. Here they simply turn the road into a one-way. And once you’re on it, there’s little you can but follow the road until it eventually opens up again. Which makes finding your way back home such fun!

Maybe I’m judging it too harshly. I don’t know.

In the studio things weren’t entirely smooth sailing either. Monday morning was spent doing more guitar and keys, which went well. But then came Am I Innocent, a raw, gritty, emotional song written by Gareth that has the three founding band members harmonizing quite elegantly. From the start, the band had the idea of recording this song ‘live’ – the three of them, in a circle, surrounded by microphones, and laying down a single, glorious track.

Great idea. The problem lies in execution. When microphones are so close together they all pick up everything. Which means editing is simply out of the question.

Which means one single mistake, and the entire take would be scrapped, and a new one would have to commence.
Now we aren’t egotistical idiots. So we can say, without shame, it didn’t work. To play perfectly, in such a controlled, nervous setting, is close on impossible. By Tuesday morning, with multiple failed attempts under the belt and in the recycle bin, we decided to track separately.

We finished the song in less than an hour. And it still sounds great.

The rest of Tuesday was spent adding little parts to the songs – like the trippy intro and outro to ‘Choose a Lane’. Once again, it wasn’t easy, but we got the tracks down just before the studio shut its doors.
Looking back, it was a good day, with good results. At the time we were just too tired and mildly irritated to see it.

And that stupid road didn’t help either.

This past week we initiated plans constructed nearly a year ago. We started to record our second album.

Expectation for this album is high, not only from fans but also ourselves. The first album, for all its strengths, was a tad short, and comprised older, ‘classic’ songs of the band. This new (and still un-named) album will be a full-length product boasting eleven songs, and I feel it’s really going to reflect the musical variety of the band. Gentle love songs alongside jazzy shuffles alongside modern rockers…and for those who keep asking where and when they can get their hands on a recording of ‘Twinkle Twinkle’: your day of fulfilment is near.

The venue for this recording is Rooftop Studio in Muizenberg, Cape Town. It’s an amazing place, chosen by our tracker and producer Matt Allison (more about him later). Step inside and you immediately see why. In a city populated by backyard home studios with one vocal booth the size of a cabbage, Rooftop is a gem: three full-size live rooms, a half-size room and a central control room that doubles as a second half-room. Add to that a lounge with a Nintendo Wii and a bottomless bar fridge filled with Coca-Cola, and you have happiness.

Our studio tracker is Matt Allison, and if you know the name you will know how impressive his track record is. Put simply, Matt has worked all over the world with some major artists. Stepping into a studio with Matt is like stepping onto a movie set with Sean Penn or Judy Dench (not that Matt is a woman in any way, of course).

This past week our focus was on the rhythm section. Our plan was to lay down drums and bass for all the songs, as well as the main rhythm instrument, like guitar or keys, where possible. Matt’s goal was to have all drum and bass completed by Friday evening. We finished on Thursday afternoon. Score one for Karyn and Emil!

Guitar and keyboard rhythm tracks commenced on Friday and will continue in the coming week, followed by solo instruments and, finally, vocals.

We’ll do our best to keep you informed on this page. You can also visit our Facebook page to view some photos and (hopefully) some video clips too.

Thanks for listening (and reading)!

And we’re off to our sound for this evenings “Back in the Hood” gig. It’s going to be a scorcher!

— K, Ray and The Bird

Weekend… here we come! Looking foward to our performance at Goodwood Methodist later this eve!

Hi everyone! This weekend we’ll be meeting up with our creative arts director to discuss ideas for our 2 music videos – SETTLE DOWN and A ROLE TO PLAY. We are still up for any suggestions or creative ideas that any of you might have. You can have a listen to the tracks on this here facebook page. THEN, a reminder that we are performing next week at the BARLEYCORN MUSIC CLUB (18 Jan) andthe ZULA SOUND BAR (19 Jan). Hope to see many of you there. Thanks for listening!

We’re off to our final band rehearsal this afternoon. Going to be working on some new arrangements for our performanes tomorrow and Sunday evening.