Goldbug Zwei session 2 (overdubs) 1k studio | Philadelphia

Barry Meehan and Eric Slick came to the studio today to add a layer of live overdubs to the original improvisations from session one. I prepared their work areas before they arrived; Barry has a Fender amp mic'd up w a sennheiser 609 and is using an old RCA mic (creating feedback melodies); various acoustic and electric guitars, and a casio keyboard—lot's of found sounds, textures, and lo-fi vocalizations.  Eric has both a green bullet mic and a contact mic running thru a kaos pad into a marshall mini-stack mic'd with a sennheiser re20. His toys and sounds include cymbals, turkish sazbus, thumb piano, echo regenerations, and Floydian madness. The contact mic proves to be very interesting on everything. I engineer mostly , but also have a roving sm58 that i move to various sources, or use on my own vocals. We generate a vast amount of new material improvising along to the original tracks—some fascinating accidents of sound occuring more often than not. Later Barry and I create the 'hieroglyphic choir' on a section of the music generating 6 tracks of double tracked vocals before recruiting Dejha Ti for two tracks of operatic female vocals. Two tracks of reductions are made for Theo Travis to play on and sent over to London via dropbox.  Thus far terms like 'Kubrickian, primordial, heiroglyphic' are used to describe the feeling of the album. Theo responded that he loved what we sent over: "I sense a sort of 21st century Interstellar Overdrive but with a jazz depth, some serious playing and a sort of nujazz electronica. Very cool stuff."  As we are waiting for Theo's parts to arrive (he's currently quite busy with Steven Wilson touring), we've been constructing an intro to the album using the source material, and bits of an improvisation on a recently acquired 1950's Hammond chord organ. Exciting stuff. more soon.

Akropolis.

Fantastic show tonight. with Phil Yaeger joining on trombone. He travelled 4 hours by bus from Vienna to Prague. On his bus in, they stopped and Phil left his horn behind by mistake, or perhpas the bus  left without him. (I can't remember) He took a second bus into Prague and when he arrived they had his horn. whew! Phil is an amazing musician and good friend. it was great he was here.
nice venue. good sound. after soundcheck, Crowd was really with us, a very cool concert vibe here. The venue reminded me of the Trocodero in Philly. very similar. Afterwards interviewed for radio, then to dinner. great! Leffe in the house. back to hotel. sleep.

Slon hotel.  I love this hotel. very feng shui. Queen size bed next to window that opens wide—wonderful fresh air. Slept upon arrival up until soundcheck. catching up on sleep. hot. sound check is fine.
Ursula does interview for slovenija tv. apparently the show is broadcast on the slovenija radio here.
dinner. slovenian trout! quite amazing. salad, veg. feel good. folks here very nice. hip.
after really great festival show back to hotel. it took 3 songs to get the audience. 'fuck you' got their attention. from there on it was way on. afterwards, walk to bar for wind down. extremely drunk people here. observe kids dancing to slovenian pop music. then, sleep.

Hotel breakfast. walkaround music row. amazing gear here and v expensive. enjoy a late lunch and pint at a local pub. bus to venue. upon arrival, nothing is set up. all drums are still in flight cases, nothing mic'd up. now i find out there is no power transformer either to power my pedal board. upon inquirying i find all the backline companies are closed. for the next 3 hours we run about (on foot) in east London trying to buy a transformer for the show. all stores are closed. every place closes early here. no luck. finally our friend calls a musician who has a transformer. this will be delivered 10 minutes before showtime. there in no soundcheck. a quick line check only to make sure everything is working. just insane. we go on just after 10pm, and ironically, it is absolutely awesome sound. We have an incredible show. Transcendental. bad food afterwards. back to hotel. sleep in preparation for our travel to Prague tomorrow. good night.

Travel day. Almost miss our train to Zurich due to a cab driver wasting time. crazy and creates anxiety for us. Swiss chocolate at airport. A nice flight into Heathrow. Upon arriving in UK, Ursula's hunch is right, we are held up at UK immigration. Our papers are not sufficient. The promoter did not provide work permit and as a result we are detained at 4:30pm. This turns into 7 hours. Our bags are searched, we are searched, finger printed, photographed, & interviewed. They went through all of our personal things, contents of wallet, luggage, etc. Finally we are held in a holding room until promoter gets it together.  Finally all is worked out and we leave at 11pm. Exhausted and mad as hell. This was a first. On to the hotel to sleep. Tomorrow we play in London.