S.A. Sebastian: A View From The Bottom

That’s today! My album, See Me Comin’ with Atomic Brother is finally out on CD! It’s been over a year since we recorded it, and 6 months since it was released digitally. Go to the merch section of atomicbrother.com to get your copy! Here’s the press release.

New York, NY - On Election Day, November 6, 2007, the New York City-based Atomic Brother will release the follow-up to the band’s 2004 release Elected, with their latest album, See Me Comin’.

See Me Comin’ is Atomic Brother’s first full-length album and is a collection of 12 original songs. While mainly a hard-rock album, listeners are often surprised at the wide range of styles found on See Me Comin’. After the heavy riffs in “Not My Fault” and the title track “See Me Comin’,” it’s refreshing to find that the band is also capable of playing punk rock tunes like “Employee of the Month,” and even slower ballads such as “Home in the Sky” and the Spanish-feeling “Never Home.” With See Me Comin’, Atomic Brother decided to focus more on writing good music and less on a particular genre. According to bassist Gnolfo, they were “tired of hearing bands both live and on CD that sound the same from start to finish,” so they decided to focus more on writing good music and less on keeping it within a particular genre. “If it sounds good and we both like it,” stated guitarist/vocalist Melillo, “we’ll use it. Period. A good song is a good song.” In his review of See Me Comin’, Robert Pally of Swissrecords.ch certifies that, “Atomic Brother can certainly write powerful songs,” and according to Jon Worley of Aiding and Abetting, “these boys do rock.”

See Me Comin’ was recorded and produced by Atomic Brother in Lausanne, Switzerland at Soundlake Studios with the band’s close friend, and former colleague, Patrick Aeby (formerly of Krokus) playing drums and mixing the album. See Me Comin’ is being released independently by Atomic Brother, and on this Election Day, November 6, 2007 fans can purchase the album on CD from CDBaby.com and at atomicbrother.com. The album was release as a digital download worldwide at iTunes and in the U.S. at the eMusic, Napster, Sony Connect and Rhapsody online music stores on July 4 2007.

This isn’t exactly new news, but on September 12 Apple announced the release of Apple Logic Pro 8. For some a long overdue upgrade with outstanding features, and for others too little, too late. The biggest news is the price drop; from $999 for Logic Pro to $499 for Logic Studio. Gone are the Express and Pro versions, just one universal version for everyone, pros and amateurs, same product all for the same low price. But you aren’t getting the usual bundle of Logic plug-ins and synths and Wave Burner-they are throwing in Soundtrack Pro 2 and Compressor from the Final Cut Pro 2 bundle, a souped version of MainStage from Garageband and thousands of Apple Loops.

At the heart of Logic Studio is Logic Pro 8, now with an intuitive single-window interface for instant access to powerful music creation and production functions, including snap-to-transient selection and sample accurate editing directly in the Arrange window. New audio production tools such as Quick Swipe Comping and dynamic channel strip creation speed up common tasks. Logic Pro 8 also includes end-to-end surround production capabilities with innovative surround panning controls, multichannel tracks and busses, and support for True Surround software instruments and effects.

The team at Apple did a pretty good job listening to their users and sampling from the competition to implement some cool features. Logic users now have take management similar to ProTools. Simply record different takes over a region and the takes are organized and can be selected form a context menu, renamed, flattened and sent to new tracks. Quick Swipe Comping, which I think comes from the Sonar world, allows you to use the mouse to highlight areas of different regions on the same track to create comp tracks, rather than the usual cut and mute. Once you’ve created your comped part, the feature allows automatically applies cross fades. The new snap-to-transient feature looks like it can be used like Beat Detective in ProTools. A major change, one which I’m not sure I’m going to like, a single-window interface which gives Logic a standard application look and feel. I personally liked arranging the different components how I pleased across my 2 monitors, but we’ll see what I think after I buy the upgrade from 7. Which reminds me. Another excellent feature that isn’t highly touted; Apple didn’t change the Logic file format, which means Logic 8 and Logic 7 users can collaborate using the same project files! No more converting your projects to the new file format, that is unless you are still using version 5 or 6. Other cool features; Apple Remote operation- this would have come in handy on many occasions and cool if you have a new Mac; portable settings so you can bring your Logic preferences, channel strip settings and more to whatever Logic studio you’re working in. The most exciting and most widely requested feature is XS-key free operation. No more USB dongle!

I haven’t made the move to Logic 8 yet, but I will soon. And when I have I’ll be posting a more detailed review.

Apple Logic Studio 8 Upgrade from Logic Pro