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.

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.

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.