S.A. Sebastian: A View From The Bottom

James and I have spent the last few months locked away in his apartment, or my studio, writing songs for the next Atomic Brother album. Since March we have about 12 or more new songs in various states, plus a few written while we were gigging last year, and a couple others we wanted to put on See Me Comin’, but just didn’t have the time. So, we decided we had enough of just the two of playing, and gave our drummer Rob a ring and hit the studio in NYC tonight to work out the songs like a proper rock band!

We got a late start thanks to the LIRR, but, once we got going the new songs sounded really excellent played all loud, with the band. We hammered through only about 6 of the songs, and ,of course, since this was the first time we played these, things were a little rough; but fun and excellent, none the less. We’ll be posting clips of some the songs to our video podcast, Wastin’ Time With Atomic Brother in the next week or so.

We decided to keep playing until we leave for Switzerland to keep our chops up. We pretty much have everything where we want it. No more changes to the songs. We actually had some fun jamming on Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Van Halen tunes for a while. We have flight and hotel booked. James is getting an acoustic guitar to record with from our old band leader Joey while we are out there, and I am trying to get a fretless bass to use from Ernie Ball since the new one I have on order won’t be ready until we get back.

Atomic Brother: We have been working hard on new songs as well as the old. It’s been a little rough since we’ve never been the lyric writers and singers before, but it is coming along really good. Our song list with lyrics now includes; Employee of the Month, Freedom, Lipstick Lovebite, Home in the Sky, Not My Fault, When It’s Over, Up In You, Wasted Time, Take You Away. We still have about 5 more without lyrics, including Spanish Booty and a song I wrote tonight. We have been in rehearsal studios working out singing and playing and making changes to the vocals and will be re-cutting demos soon. I’d love to get a follow-up to Elected out by October this year. We also might be booking a show for September. Stay tuned.

Scratcher: We have been working on more new music. We have another 2 songs we added since the last time I wrote about Scratcher. The demo is finally done and will be out soon. You can hear on the Scratcher myspace too. I’ll post the address soon. We have some shows coming up in July and August. Check back for more details.

Solo Project: I haven’t decided what I am going to call this. Should I make up a name or just stick with S.A. Sebastian? We’ll see. Anyway. I posted 2 songs, both instrumental. Check them out and leave feedback. I have many more I am working on, all kinda goth-electronic-industrial. Check back for more.

Spent Tuesday night with Scratcher wrapping up vocals for the 3 song EP, listening to rough mixes, and checking out photos from our photo shoot from April at the Chelsea Hotel. The rough mixes of “Still Waiting” and “Fade” sound awesome. We had Brian in the box and had him put an additional background vocal on Still Waiting in the bridge which added the perfect touch. We had Melissa in the box singer her ass off for 4 hours to finish vocals on the song formerly called “Superstar.” We pretty much had her re-write the melody for this one that night. This pics look great and will be posted on my websites as well as the Scratcher website soon. Mixdown is next weekend, then off to duplication. Atomic Brother was in the rehearsal studio last night working out how we are going to perform the songs on our instruments while singing. A little rough around the edges, but we worked out 6 songs with vocals. We’ll be at it again this weekend working out the kinks and then it’s back in the studio to record the new demos.