Day 4

It's 1.30 AM and we just called it a day. That's why I am going to keep this one short.
Deni left us this morning. He's going on a trip through Europe, so now it's only three of us left here. Here's the obligatory goodbye-picture:

After finishing the bass we've just started recording the vocals. This is where we're going to continue tomorrow morning.
Here's Pascal at work:

Finally I'd like to recommend another classy tune. Enjoy!

Celebrated Summer 2011 w/ SOUL CONTROL

Here's a great announcement for next summer: From July 22nd to August 20th we're going on an extensive European tour with Soul Control (Bridge 9). It's great to be touring with such an awesome band. I remember picking up their "Involution" record and how it blew me away. It's gonna be fun to watch them play every night.
If you want to set up a show, get in touch with niclas@nodeclinebooking.com. Spread the word about this! This is gonna be a nice tour.

The Finland-dates will be announced on New Year's Eve. Watch out!

And by the way, listen to Spacemen 3, all you folks!

Day 3

The further the recording sessions proceed, the more we begin to understand what is actually happening here. The guitars are done now and we'll start recording the bass tomorrow morning. When recording the guitars we tried different effects and reworked some guitar parts. Some songs got a new atmosphere now and it really did them good.

We've just listened to everything we've brought to tape so far and we find this to be our best effort so far. In a way we've finally found our own musical language to communicate in and when trying to describe these new tunes we mostly call bands that are either connected with the term "grunge" or with the term "shoegaze". So you could say it's all revolving around the year 1990 (that's when we were 3 years old).
We're also busy discussing the title for the album. There are some serious ideas, but at this point we rather keep it to ourselves.

Who's gonna keep track of all the cables and switches? It's so good to have the genius of Robin Völkert with us. He's playing an important role in the making of this record and we couldn't be grateful enough for that.

These boys know how to keep a kitchen tidy.

This picture is meant to make you curious. There's going to be one song to worship the great band My Bloody Valentine and here's Deni recording the foundation for it.

Good night everyone. If you're staying awake for no reason, then listen to these lovely tunes.

Day 2

"Grander than castles, cathedrals or stars:
Electric guitars"
Prefab Sprout, 1997

Recording the drums and editing the drum tracks is like looking at skeletons. Even if the rhythm hits you there's no soul in it. So when we finished the drums today, we were happy to get over this first stage of development.
Deni found a suitable guitar sound very quickly. I guess, that's the part that is going to separate the new album from all our previous work. The new songs are not working with the big riff or the huge and brute sound. Now there are some subtle and not so subtle harmonies in our sound that were asking for an appropriate sound. So it was a natural progression to employ kind of a "grungy" sound.
However, listening to the first songs with a recorded guitar track was a satisfying experience to us. At this point, we are happy about the way things are taking shape.

After recording the lead guitars we are planning to add lots of effect guitars to our sound. That's pretty much the plan for tomorrow.

Here's Robin accusing us of sounding like Silverchair. We assure you we are not!

Day 1

"Offen gesagt haben wir vor
weiterzumachen als Gescheiterte bisher
In Sachen Selbstverwirklichung
offensichtlich halten welche nicht soviel davon wie wir."
Blumfeld, 1994

It feels good to be back in our favourite studio. After making our way through all the snow we arrived in Oldenburg later than we had hoped. Therefore, we didn't expect this day to be very productive. When we came here to record "Beneath Aging Flesh and Bone" the complete first day was marked by impatience, cause all we managed to do was the drum soundcheck. However, today everything seemed different to those sessions that were also preluded by hectic songwriting and losing a bass player. Today we arrived relaxed, cracking jokes and having even more songs up our sleeves than we want to record.
But even apart from that recording goes pretty fast. We have just called it a day and only two songs are missing for the drums. Tomorrow morning we'll do these songs and then guitar is up next. The drums already sound massive even at this point of production.

Look at this lovely wall paper that has already inspired numerous bands.

We made this little campfire next to the drumset.

For the rest of the night we'll become slack as apparent in these pictures.

Let's have another chat tomorrow night.

This Sunday we'll start recording our new album

We've spent the last few weeks in our rehearsal room to finish the songwriting for our new album. Now everything's ready to be recorded and this Sunday everything's finally starting to take shape. We are really excited to say the least. These new songs are really taking us a step further, so we are curious to hear what kind of band we've become meanwhile. We will keep a studio diary on this very blog to discuss newest developments, maybe post some photos or even videos, so please keep checking this page.
There's still no title for this record, although there are some ideas floating around. It will contain ten new songs in like half an hour and it will be released by Reflections Records, this is certain.

If you have some time to spare, watch this video from our anniversary-show

This was filmed by Alex/FaceTheShow.com, thank you for capturing these moments.


"You swallow shit, you swallow everything they give!"

And while you're at it, we highly recommend you to watch this video from the Unbroken show in London one week earlier. This was surely one of the most intense shows we've ever witnessed. You know that was like we were playing with The Beatles or something.

It's the end of a year (there's another one coming!)

2010 was (and still is) a very pleasant year for us as a band. In March we played in Greece for the first time and then went on a European tour with ILLS from Finland. In summer and autumn we played a whole bunch of single shows. But most important we spent a lot of time working on new songs. This year ends with two killer shows, so make sure you're going to be there:

04.12. Burning Ice Fest, Mönchengladbach
18.12. Pazzo Shows Fest, Hannover

We're still busy finishing the songwriting for our new album. The studio is booked for the end of December and from then on we'll just see how long it's gonna take. We are totally excited about where these new songs are taking us to. It differs a lot from everything we've done before.
The two songs from Kissing Pavement were written during the songwriting process for the album, but they were chosen to be put on that 7", so they'd be deleted from the album. They just wouldn't fit on the album.
It's not that easy to say how this is going to end up, but it's going to be a hardcore record, that's for sure. Nevertheless, there are weird references we've been throwing at each other's heads such as The Doors, Quicksand, Blumfeld, Neu! or Nirvana. There aren't many rock riffs though. The new songs seem like an exploration of the question: Can beauty exist on a hardcore record next to the anger and nihilism? I'm not sure, if we'll be able to answer this question, but then again the unsolved questions are always the most interesting ones.

Meanwhile, I'd like to recommend this fabulous tune:

MySpace keeps digging its own grave

Everytime I log into our band account on myspace.com I get the impression something is even worse than the time before. Now they have launched a new version and it's just getting more awful. So once more here's our demand to follow us on Facebook rather than on MySpace, as we won't log in to that shithole that often anymore.
For urgent cases contact us through philippjwulf@googlemail.com

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Thank you!

Reflections Records on the road

Here's our first tour announcement for 2011: From March 17 till March 27 we'll be hitting the road with the REFLECTIONS RECORDS package. The line-up features NO TURNING BACK, RITUAL, DEAL WITH IT, NEW MORALITY and MIDNIGHT SOULS (on selected dates). Most dates are either already set or comfirmed but if you're interested in booking this package, please get in touch with STRONGER BOOKINGS (strongerbookings@gmail.com).

On another note, we are working really hard on the new album. I'll get back to this in another blog entry very soon.