S.A. Sebastian: A View From The Bottom

A couple weeks ago I recorded another bass track, a song called “Masters of Limitation,” for Freedom. It’s very cool hypnotic track that combines acoustic and electronic instruments. This is also the first release featuring me on upright bass. (I played the upright on the 2 live tracks on Atomic Brother’s Pretty Little Lunatic Ep, coming out May 25th). You can check out “Masters of Limitation” by going to Freedom’s website at http://freedom-artist.com, selecting the Age of Aether album and then click on  ”Masters of Limitation.” You can listen or download for free.

Production on the latest Atomic Brother Ep, Pretty Little Lunatic is almost complete. The artwork is complete, and now we’re in the mastering stage with Roman Vail over at Joe Lambert Mastering in Brooklyn. James and I have been working with Joe Lambert since our first release together in 1998, with the band NVR. Joe’s been real busy lately working some major players, we thought we’d work with his protégé Roman this time around. We’ll be releasing Pretty Little Lunatic digitally through all the major online services like iTunes, AmazonMP3, Napster, eMusic as well as through our own portal at http://music.atomicbrother.com, where you can get it free, or pay what you like. Of course we’d love for you to give us a little something for our hard work, but the free option is always there.

The Pretty Little Lunatic Ep releases on May 25, 2010. Check out the press release for more details.

Been spending a lot of time working on music for Atomic Brother. There’s so much going on in the studio, it seems that there is no end! Here’s what’s been going on.

Winter Studio Sessions

In December, Atomic Brother vocalist/guitarist James and I got together at his place on Long Island to do some recording. I got off the plane from sunny, Austin, TX to be greeted by “Blizzard-o-rama ‘09″ (or whatever stupid name they gave the snow storm!). For the next 5 days we transformed James’ place into our recording studio. These sessions featured the songs “Uninvited,” “All Scarred and Alone,” and “One of Those Days.” The drums for these songs were performed and recorded by Pat Aeby in Switzerland and I did the bass in my Austin studio. During this week we recorded James’ guitar and lead vocals, and a couple live acoustic songs. After we finished up these tracks, I headed back to ATX, and James headed into the studio later in December to oversee Robert C. Kelly recording drums on 3 more songs, “When It’s Over,” “The Blindness” and “Better Day.”

Mixing Update

Spring 2010 brings us back in studio for more recording and more mixing. I spent most of March mixing the 6 songs we worked on in the September and December sessions. We were back at 5th Street Studios in Austin for the mixing with Craig Sadler behind the board. The mixing sessions were a little crazy thanks to the studio making changes while we were in the middle of the project. The studio owner thought it would be a good idea to change out the D/A converters and get rid of the ProTools HD hardware right in the middle of the session, which caused some major problems and delays. But, Craig worked with the studio to get everything back in order. Despite the various wrenches in the works, the mixes came out great. These songs will be released on 2 Eps - one in the Spring and another in the Fall.

April Studio Session

On Thursday, April 1st, James came out to Austin, TX, for 5 days to record the guitars and lead vocals for the 3 songs Robert C. Kelly played drums on in December. This was the first recording session at my new home studio in Austin. And like the recording sessions at my old recording studio, these were broadcast live over the internet. Because of airline restrictions, and luggage limitations, James came armed only with his 1986 Les Paul Custom Black Beauty, so we rented a guitar amp – a JCM 900 head with a JCM 800 cabinet – from David Marshall at Fast Horse Studios. Also, instead of the usual combination of Les Paul and Strat, we used my 2008 Les Paul Standard for the second guitar. We also ended up using my Fender Deluxe 90 for clean guitar sounds and some solos. We wrapped the week of recording in our usual way; recording live studio versions of out songs for extras. With James’ Martin acoustic in New York he had to make do with my 1993 Takamine and 1970s Kay acoustics, and I got to record with my newly acquired (unknown model) upright bass. These songs will be edited, comped and mixed sometime in the summer for inclusion on the Winter Ep. Before I get to those, I have to wrap up mastering and overseeing the artwork for the Spring Ep, so we can make a late April release.

Work on the new Atomic Brother Ep, Silence Collide, is finally done! After moving to Austin in July, I got back to editing the tracks in August and searching for a mix engineer in September, and overseeing the creation of the artwork in October and putting together the distribution and new http://music.atomicbrother.com website.

Silence Collide features 3 new songs plus 2 live acoustic tracks and will be available on iTunes Worldwide, AmazonMP3, Napster, eMusic, Rhapsody and more in November. The new songs feature me on bass, James Melillo on guitar and vocals, and Robert C. Kelly on drums. The Guitars and vocals were recorded at my old studio in Montclair, NJ, the bass in my new studio in Austin, TX and the drums were recorded in Seoul, Korea, at the university where Rob is a professor of music. The live acoustic tracks were performed by me and James and recorded at his place on Long Island, NY. You can get the Silence Collide before it’s released directly from Atomic Brother at http://music.atomicbrother.com where you can name the price you want to pay, and you can get the Ep in AIF, MP3, ACC, Flac and WAV file formats. In addition, you will get the digital artwork PDF and the “Making of Wastin’ All My Time” video as a bonus.

In September, I went back to Long Island, NY to finish recording our next, and still untitled, Ep. We set up a makeshift studio in James’ apartment and recorded guitars and vocals on 3 new songs, and bass on 1 of those songs. Plus a whole bunch of acoustic tracks to accompany the studio tracks. The bass on the 2 other tracks was recorded in Austin, TX. This time we have both Robert C. Kelly and Patrick Aeby playing drums on this Ep. Rob’s drums were recorded again in Seoul, Korea, and Patrick’s recorded in Lausanne, Switzerland. I’ll be back to editing, and getting ready to mix these songs in November for a January release. I just have to tidy up the Silence Collide release, and finish getting Ep number 3 ready for Patrick to record drums.

This August I relocated to Austin, TX. It was totally unexpected, “out of the blue,” if you will, but it’s been really great and really exciting. It wasn’t an easy move, especially considering my band Atomic Brother is based in NYC, and been doing great work on exciting new music, and all my connections and freelance work was based in NYC. But, the lifestyle here is great and my new studio is up-and-running, and I’m looking forward to getting out in the music scene and making some new connections and getting out in the clubs and playing records for new bands.

Atomic Brother hasn’t broken up, it’s just transformed. We’ve been moving in a more global direction, anyway, since we went to Switzerland in 2006 to record See Me Comin’ and have Pat play drums and when Rob began recording tracks for us virtually after he moved to South Korea. Working as a band over such long distances like this will be a challenge, and gigging will be a little bit more difficult but the climate for bands in NYC isn’t as favorable and exciting as it was before 9/11, and it makes sense for us to think with a more world-centric point of view.

Over the next several months James and I will be traveling between Texas and New York recording the final guitar, bass and vocal tracks, while Pat and Rob record their drum parts in Switzerland and South Korea for all these songs. As I write this I am finishing edits and getting ready for mixing and mastering the first 3 songs for the first of several Eps to be released over the next 6 to 9 months. The first Ep is due sometime in September. Get on the Atomic Brother mailing list to make sure you get your copy delivered to your inbox for free!

Also, work with Freedom continues. Since January I’ve recorded bass on 8 tracks on the new album, Angels and Monkeys, and Freedom signed a record deal with a European label. There should be about 14 songs on the album when it’s all done later this year.