10.18.07
Oh, i'm sorry, were you expecting an update long before now? Have you forgotten with whom you're dealing here?
So here's what's up with IfIHadAHiFi: Earlier this month, we spent five days at Bobby Peru Recording on the south side of Milwaukee with our pal Shane Olivo of The New Loud. With him at the controls, we laid down basic tracks, overdubs and vocals for our third full-length, tentatively called Tragedy Breeds Success unless we come up with something better. The recording process was largely pain-free and a hell of a good time. Being holed up in a studio with no one but your band and an engineer tends to make the imagination run a little haywire, and as such, many amusing stories can be told about the five of us just sitting around talking mad shit, from the coining of the phrase "the porn-thick cock of the king" to the invention of The Damnwich.
The Damnwich, by the way, is now IfIHadAHiFi's trademarked junk sandwich of choice. After a friend of ours began a debate regarding which hamburger "enhancement," Hamburger Helper or Manwich, was more disgusting, a plan was hatched to incorporate as many ghetto fixin's from our youth into a sandwich as possible. We came up with a loose meat burger that combined ground beef with Manwich sauce and Hamburger Helper, then seasoned it with Shake-N-Bake. The only condiments that were allowed on the Damnwich were ketchup, hot sauce, and macaroni and cheese. The end result was a creation of sheer decadent genius. I myself had two.
As far as the actual recording, upon listening to the rough mixes i think we are all in agreement that this represents our best work yet. The drums sound positively enormous (thanks to the Pearl Masterworks kit i was bashing as well as the very live-sounding concrete-walls-and-hardwood-floors room), the guitars and bass scream, and synths gurgle in the way you've come to expect from us, but what's notable is that this is likely to be our poppiest release yet. We are busting out some radio-friendly jams with this one, y'all. Most of them you've heard if you've seen us live in the last year or so; staples like "Success! Success! Success!" and "Paradise By the Paulding Light" will be on there, as well as less-familiar tunes like "You Can Dig 1000 Holes, But it Takes a Body to Make a Grave" and "99 Probalos." Catchy, noisy, dense, and fucking LOUD. That is this record in a nutshell.
So, after we head back in to add a few additional bells and whistles (a few more vocals and maybe some more noise are necessary), the tracks will be shipped off to Dallas for mixing in December, with mastering shortly thereafter. From there, it'll be time to think about release schedules. We'll let you know more about that when things with our likely new label get sorted out.
In the meantime, we'll be playing shows here and there...watch for us in Minneapolis in early November and in Lansing in December, with more to come, hopefully in the new year. In the meantime, we're writing and polishing up our first batch of post-Tragedy songs. One of them, "X-13D," will show up in demo form on the soundtrack to The WMSE Cookbook, also featuring tracks from Milwaukee superstars like Testa Rosa, Collections of Colonies of Bees, and Couch Flambeau.
Dude, i just let that sink in for a second. We're on a comp with Couch Flambeau! Wtf!
"X-13D" chronicles the attempt by a secret government branch to drug the populace into a state of compliance by sneaking experimental snack chips into food shops, including the Mars Cheese Castle. Because we couldn't come up with a clever way to make a recipe for pan-seared salmon steaks rhyme with itself. So it goes.
So, yeah, we've been quiet with the updates, but lots of stuff is afoot! See? Proof!
-DrAwkward
