We had an entirely different post written to post up here but things change so fast these days that we’re going to have to hold off on that for a while.   These days are full of things that aren’t going to see the light of day for a while.  A lot of lab work.  In the era of Twitter and Facebook, etc etc, you do have to pay a little attention to the outside world so you aren’t forgotten in this awesome age of super-fast information and all that.  Besides, we’re too excited about these things going on to not talk about them a little bit.  Hopefully, you’ll find some of it interesting, too.

We’re working very hard on finishing the album but it looks like we won’t be releasing part two of FFFG until January since it’s just too hard to get through all the noise of the holiday season that will be here in just over eight weeks (!) ugh.  Our original intent was to squeeze it in and make it happen, but that reality – along with some other exciting developments – has convinced us that we should probably wait.  We are still planning on releasing a single from it this year, though.  With ‘b-sides’, or bonus tracks or whatever they’re called these days.

All five of the songs for part two of the album are basically done, except for vocals.  This is pretty much how we’ve always done things, but things are a little different this time since poor Rebecca is working on two albums at the same time (and doing a great job at both).  There’s a lot of singing happening.  So, it’s all coming along nicely and we’re very excited about finishing it up and getting it out as soon as possible.

It’s nice to be taking a little bit of time off from playing live, too, to rethink our approach a little bit.  On the technical side, we’re trying to put together more of a ’show’, which we haven’t been able to really focus on yet since we have been worrying up until now about just establishing the band.  So now, we have an idea what all that is going to sound and look like and it’s just going to take a while to put it all together .  It will probably be some time around January before that side of things is ready.

We have been talking a little bit about doing one or two shows in-between now and then, though, of non-Stripmall material.  There are a ton of logistics involved in those, though, so we’re still weighing whether they’ll be able to happen or not.  We’re totally in love with the ideas, but without the proper time and preparation, they won’t live up to our standards.  Plus, it’s just really hard to tell how many people will come out to shows these days.  It’s an unpredictable time, which has forced a lot of us bands and musicians to rethink a lot of things.

We’ve been asked A LOT to do another performance of the Music of This Mortal Coil show we did back in January.  I’m not sure I can adequately express how much work that took.  To do it again is an appealing idea, but it would really have to be the right scenario.  Since the last show, we have corresponded at length with both ‘members’ of This Mortal Coil (including John, who Rebecca is collaborating with on DarkDriveClinic) who have been incredibly supportive of the project and have even offered many ideas and suggestions should we do another.  I wish we had the resources to devote ourselves more fully to these kinds of things.  So challenging and so much fun.

The other show idea, slightly less work involved, would be to do a set of early Halou music.  Again, it’s hard to gauge interest in a show like this, but it seems like there might be enough to make it happen.  We’re looking into it.  Feel free to let us know your thoughts.  I’m sorry to say that our ambitions are seriously out of scale with our resources these days, and it’s important for us to be aware of that when taking on these sorts of plans.

Finally, we’re preparing to launch our Stripmall Architecture Broadcast page, which will host intermittent video updates and performances from us – hopefully on a regular basis.  You can bookmark that page now and sign up for a UStream account so that you’ll be set to go when we launch (maybe we’ll launch once we pass 1,000 likes on Facebook…).

Those are the big things we’re up to at the moment, with much more in the background:  We’ve been talking with some potential collaborators for projects next year, licensing and composing tracks for films and commercials, and even considering a new, very crazy Kickstarter campaign.

(Wrote this very quickly on the run, please forgive errors.  Thx!)

Talk to you soon…

R/R

It made me reflect on how, from a music fan’s standpoint, the game has obviously changed with digital distribution now in full effect. I don’t mean to sound overly sentimental, but here was the typical process of following my favorite bands before the digital revolution, and when I finally had a job to afford to buy music:

I used to go to Tower Records or, whatever indie record store within driving range, usually Aron’s Records in Hollywood. When I used to visit my brother in Berkeley, it always included trips to Rasputin and Amoeba. Always.

At the stores, I’d leaf through Melody Maker or NME. Strangely, it was the ads that excited me the most, rather than the editorial. I’d find out what releases were available or coming out, taking mental note of any limited editions. As these were UK newspapers I’d be browsing, the releases I’d anticipate were commonly UK imports. I would then check the store’s stock, or return later.

If a particular item was in stock, I’d buy it. I’d take it home. Listen to it. Commit it to cassette (for my car). Usually I’d make a mix tape with with some tracks from that release (especially if it was a single or EP with “b-sides,” and then I’d make a cassette cover (I’ve designed well over 100). Then, maybe I’d get bored with that release after a while and trade it in at an indie record store. And with store credit, I’d buy something else. Repeat cycle. This was my “ceremony.” While it’s not totally gone, it’s certainly diminished.

Other ways I’d find out about new music might’ve been from watching 120 Minutes on MTV. Or, perhaps enjoying an opening band at a live show (a pre-4AD Red House Painters, opening for Pale Saints, was not one of them). Back then, though, bands selling merch at shows usually just meant t-shirts. Selling actual recorded material was unusual. After all, isn’t that what record stores were for?

Nowadays, I don’t follow music as obsessively as I used to. I mostly rely on friends’ recommendations. I usually can’t be bothered to browse 30-second samples on the iTunes store. The old music-buying process has now been reduced to: hear about it and download it. Done.

These shapeless, intangible MP3s are visually represented by a small JPEG and is made up of binary ones and zeroes on some type of device. And when you fall out of love with it, you can’t take it to a used record store to trade it in. You either ignore it or delete it. And even if you delete it, it’s fairly easy to reacquire. It has no smell, like that cocktail scent of vinyl and its sleeve with the faint smell of ink, or that fragrant and undoubtedly toxic smell of the new cassettes (What? You don’t know what I’m talking about?).

Is there really is no “emotional attachment” to MP3? If anything, that emotional attachment has transferred to my hard drive. I couldn’t begin to put a dollar value on it, with all the months of non-stop music on there, accumulated over many years. Perish the thought if that thing ever craps out on me.

Hmmm…

Excuse me while I go back up my hard drive.

Apart from the album, we’ve got a finished 2-track single and another nearly-finished non-album track that we hope to release soon. We hope to have some information soon about how we’ll release these but we don’t have all that finalized just yet. I know, I wish we had more solid info at the moment, but we will soon. Excited to put some new music out there. It’s been…weeks!

We have been posting some clips of these tracks on Facebook so hop on there to listen if you haven’t already.

More soon…

- Ryan

Prince famously released his album Lovesexy on CD as, at first, one long uninterrupted track. As in, you couldn’t skip around the album, save for using the fast forward/rewind button. I thought that was an audacious way of “forcing” the listener to hear the album, in sequence, as intended. Forget hitting the “random” button on your CD player (remember that?). That button probably bugged the artists more than anyone. Album track lists are obsessively sequenced the way they are, kind of like how there’s a method to the madness of the batting order in a baseball game.

Stripmall Architecture’s first album features an inside-ish joke by opening with a sample of the “XDR” tone bust borrowed from Capitol Records cassettes (remember those?). If you popped We Were Flying Kites into your CD player and hit random (or, hit “shuffle” on your iPod), you would’ve missed the point of the “gag”. Unless, of course, you’re too young to know what a cassette is.

But there’s one particular kind of CD that always puzzles me why it would be divided into individual tracks: mix CDs. And I mean mix CDs by DJs, where every song is blended into the next. I mean, how dumb would that sound on random? I’d made it a habit of ripping mix CDs as one giant singular track. Because it makes sense to me. Not that it’ll ever happen, but imagine if I was hanging out with James Lavelle and had one of his Unklesounds or Global Underground DJ mix CDs playing…on random. If I were him, I’d be pretty annoyed.

Live albums are more forgiving to random/shuffle for the most part, since the songs rarely blend into each other. Still, it’s sometimes jarring to hear the audience cheering abruptly. The Beatles Abbey Road, in my opinion, should’ve been released on CD with “You Never Give Me Your Money” until “The End” as one track. Seriously, how can one listen to any of those tracks on random?

Oh, and if you’re listening to the excellent Gayngs Relayted album, do yourself a favor and listen to it in order. It’s gapless for a reason. You’re welcome.

I guess the right way to start this post is to say that a lot of unexpected things have come up that have prevented us from really getting down to work on part two of the Feathersongs album. Though we can’t get into most of that here (yet), we can say that the second-half of this year should see some interesting SMA-related releases. Even though we’ve been slightly derailed for the past few weeks, we have kept one eye on the album and have definitely made some progress.

The “Feathersongs Part Two” folder on our audio drive has seven works-in-progress inside, most of which are fully-formed songs that just need some focused work from us to finish up. Part two will only have five tracks, of course, but all the tracks we finish will be released in some way or other (as downloads or EP tracks, probably).

Ppart two will definitely be a much more uptempo group of songs than part one. It’s still pretty early on, but these tracks are sounding great at faster tempos. Rebecca already has some great vocals recorded and the construction we’re doing in the studio will help us to get a still better-sounding final release. I’ve really gotten back into my synths in a pretty big way lately and I’m certain that will also color the final product.

The main thing we’ve been really pleased about is that it feels like we’re finally starting to relax into being Stripmall Architecture. We’re not reacting against, or building on Halou anymore (I’m not sure we ever were, but even having those thoughts was a little distracting). These days we’re getting a little more into refining the details of relatively simple arrangements instead of layering massive amounts of texture (The Droplet Sounds, etc) or simply rushing to finish songs so the world can begin to figure out that we are even here making noise. Again, it’s still early on, but we’re really excited and looking forward to releasing the second half of the album.

In the meantime, the Pripyat EP drops this week. If you haven’t ordered a copy yet, you still have time to do so and have it shipped with the first batch of packages. Of course, we’ll also have it at the upcoming performances. We should have some photographs of the final package online,as well, in the next couple of days.

Hope you’re enjoying the summer so far. It’s really beautiful here in sunny San Rafael.

Best,
Ryan & Rebecca
July, 2010

Geographer – Kites
(You might remember these guys from a show we played with them at Cafe du Nord a few months back.)

School of Seven Bells – ILU
(A fantastic new song off their new album, which you can hear in its entirety on their website .)

Wild Beasts – All the King’s Men
(If they come to your town and you do not go see them, you are missing an incredible performance.)

Nina Simone – See Line Woman
(Because there is never enough Nina)