After touring a bit on the Inexact Replica record, we secluded ourselves to the garage of the house that Joe and I rented in the Rosemary Garden are of San Jose to write the next record. We practiced at least twice a week and were really exploring different sounds or getting inspiration from random places like shuttle launch countdown recordings. This record was the outcome of that two year period. We tracked most everything with our good friend Jeff Pinn at his Zilla studio in San Bruno under the 380. We had a great time, ate the best barbacoa tacos, and got the best sounds. Tracked everything to tape until that filled up, then striped track 24 with timecode and sync'd up Pro Tools using a MOTU Midi Timepiece A/V that had smpte in via 1/4 inch.
I still hear some memorable moments in this record that place me back in the live room, which sometimes housed a tent, some video games, and lots of miller high life. I think at the end of the song "8" you can hear Eric falling off his drum kit into the Royer 121 placed behind him after the last few beats, but he nailed it, so we kept it. Sunch good energy and We were really happy with how it came out.
We mixed this with Jeff and our good old buddy Gordon Gurley. Some songs were mixed on Zilla's Soundcraft Ghost and some on Gordy's Orion (I think) console that had more british and edgy sounding EQ's for some of the material that could use the extra sheen it brought. We got this mastered at Silver Sonya and it was released the summer of 2004 as Eric, Joe, and I were moving into the Downtown San Jose house at south 11th st.
The Night All Systems Fail is available for purchase on sloe.bandcamp.com
Band
Released July 2004