S.A. Sebastian: A View From The Bottom

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.

The last year or so I had taken myself out of the freelance bass playing game, and planned on getting back into it after the Atomic Brother teen center benefit concert (see below), but before I got a chance to put myself out on the market, I got requests to record bass some songs, and to play bass at a couple shows. First, at the end of December I was asked by my old friend, and former Poets/Cave Penny band mate, Pete Collins to play bass for project, called Freedom, on a song called “Angels and Monkeys” for his new album called Angels and Monkeys. That was a fun instrumental, world music track. Shortly after I finished that one, Pete sent me another song called “E,” which I’ll be recording tomorrow night. A few days after I heard from Pete, I was contact by another friend, Ray West, of Hostel, Inc., Girls of Porn and Spread Eagle. Ray is putting out a solo album under the name All Pointz West, and asked me to play bass at Sullivan Hall on Jan. 27 and Don Hill’s on Jan. 30. I started rehearsals with Ray first week on January, and they continue through this weekend. I also just got a work request to play on some tracks for a metal band, through eSession, so I’m in negotiations for that, too. So, I’m officially back on the market. For rates and availability me through the contact form, MyMusicSession or eSession. 

In other news: In addition to that stuff, I’m playing bass and engineering demos for a second Atomic Brother album, filming and editing podcasts and promo videos, and helping to organize a concert to benefit teen centers in New Hampshire, called Teen Strong: New Hampshire (http://teenstrong.atomicbrother.com) on Jan. 24.  Last week we shelved the demos to select songs and start rehearsing for the benefit concert. First off we needed to find a drummer since Rob Kelly moved to Seoul, South Korea to play percussion and drums with an orchestra, and Mike’s wife just had a baby, making them both unavailable. So, me and James reached out to our old friend, and former Under the Influence band mate, Brian Carter. Not only did we play with Brian in UTI, he last recorded drums for us in our Junto project, in 1999, making us very familiar with him. Rehearsals went really excellent, like 10 years hadn’t passed at all. We head up to NH early Saturday morning for a 2 p.m. show. 

It’s Sunday, November 9, and I just wrapped week 4 of demo sessions with Atomic Brother. This week we had planned on vocals for 1 song, and the music for 2 songs, but ended up working on ”Rain on Me (Uninvited),” in it’s entirety. As far as demos go, this is the biggest, coming in at about 30 tracks. The setup is pretty much the same, except James has been using his Les Paul instead of mine, and we’ve started using my Fender amp to get some real nice, “bell-like” clean tones. Like the last few weeks, this session was broadcast live on Mogulus,  and some of the people tuned said that this new song sounds like a cross between Jane’s Addiction and new Rush. I think this song is more like Deftones and Placebo. Check us out live in studio next Sunday, November 16 at http://mogulus.com/atomicbrother.

I was back in the studio with Atomic Brother on Sunday this week. We continued working on demos of songs for the next album; this time we recorded guitar and bass for Bullet In Your Brain and Gold Digger. Pretty much the same setup as last time, except I have a new toy AND we are broadcasting the Sunday recording sessions live on the Internet. We are calling our live broadcast, Wastin’ Time With Atomic Brother Live! Besides what you see in the podcast, we thought it might be cool for people see what a full day, or pretty much a full day, in the studio for band was like.

We typically get in the studio around noon to set up, and then we go live just around 1pm Eastern time; and then we let the cameras roll for 3-4 hours while we work. We are using a service called Mogulus to do the broadcast live. The cool thing about Mogulus is that we can do a multi-camera show, and have television-stlye graphics, a ticker and a chat window to communicate with viewers. We are using 2 cameras; one will always be in the control room, where we record guitar and bass, and the other will be in the live room when we are recording drums or vocals, or in the control room to provide a different perspective.

We’ve done 2 broadcasts so far, and it’s been pretty fun getting real-time feedback about the songs from viewers, and chatting with everyone. It’s also interesting for us to know right away whether or not someone likes a song, or riff or lyric. Technically it’s been a challenge to get the rooms mic’d up so everyone can hear us talking, and not be blown away by the volume of the instruments. Mogulus allows the shows to be recorded, but we haven’t figured that out yet, but we want to be able to save these.

Join us in the studio on Sunday afternoons, starting around 1pm at http://atomicbrother.com and click on the link in the sidebar, or if you want to chat with us while we record go to http://mogulus.com/atomicbrother.