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

We’ve let the blog slack a little over the past couple days as things in other areas have picked up quite a bit. Between the upcoming Stripmall Architecture single and part two of Feathersongs, DarkDriveClinic, the Josh Varnedore album and simply trying to keep breathing, it’s been hard to keep up.

Regular posting will continue soon…

- RYAN

My introduction to Futura came via Frankie Goes To Hollywood, though it’s unlikely I had any concept about typefaces at the time. All the Pleasuredome-era Frankie releases were typeset with various weights of Futura by in-house designers XLZTT. Journalist Paul Morley used to write all the funny/strange liner notes on the Frankie sleeves, mostly set in Futura Book. It was a fitting typeface to use: I found it to be clean, modern, yet creepy and whimsical, especially when used with words or short phrases in quotation marks, in all lower case. This was Frankie’s font, and it subtly defined their early image, other than the famous Katharine Hamnett-ripoff “Frankie Say Relax” shirts (designed by Morley). Strangely enough, Frankie’s second album, Liverpool, flopped (I blame its use of Helvetica).

Futura bold became part of the early Sub Pop template for their 7″ singles, and for a few years was widely seen on designs by Vaughan Oliver (particularly on sleeves for the Pixies, Throwing Muses, Lush, Pale Saints, and the first All About Eve EP). Lately it’s been seen on sleeves for Broken Bells and the Pet Shop Boys. Outside the music realm, Volkswagen uses it, and IKEA famously used to employ a custom version, before their controversial switch to Verdana–a font that I’d say is practically devoid of all the soul Futura has. Yes, good typefaces have soul.

To close, here’s a gallery of Futura applications.

I have really been enjoying the excellent Scouting NY blog since I stumbled upon it a few weeks back. The blog is written by a New York-based film location scout that often finds himself in extraordinary surroundings within the dense city. Many of the places he’s featured are totally hidden or unnoticed which gives the whole thing another level of interest. His recent, expansive post on Hempstead House, a now-empty mansion with a fascinating history, makes a great starting point.

Since I’ve found the blog, I’ve been hoping/waiting for someone to do something like it for San Francisco.

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)