We are collectively the worst bloggers in the universe

We need to invent a new word for "blogger", for serious.

There is no news on our record for the moment. This doesn't bother us so much as we appreciate the time off mentally, but it doesn't make for a highly interesting recording blog. I figured, since we can't actually put any new music up yet, why not talk about the things that most inspired us while we were writing/recording this album.

Alphabetically:

Battles - Mirrored. Having something like this come out when you're halfway through writing your record is scary. It's inspiring, but it also makes you want to start completely over and/or bash your skull in for not thinking of it first. We haven't gone this apeshit over a record in a long time. I felt like i had to play it for everybody I saw for a week afterwards. I think i even walked around Edwardsville with a CD-R of this in my pocket at one point in case i ran into somebody. We've been getting a little more nerdy/techy lately (my live guitar pedal count has doubled from 3 to 6), and Mirrored kind of showed us a new angle on how to approach songwriting. I believe there are 2 songs that are pretty directly influenced by this one.

Cinemechanica. We accidentally made a guitar record. There aren't solos or wah pedals or anything, but lots of dual lead line guitarmonies (editor's note: rhymes with "harmonies") and things of that nature. We have Cinemechanica to blame for this. They are our guitar heroes. In fact, if any of their songs were on Guitar Hero, i would actually enjoy playing Guitar Hero.

Eno, Brian. I think Chris Walla was trying to channel the spirit of Brian Eno during our sessions. The Oblique Strategies cards alone were enough reason to put him on this list (see link on the right).

Menomena. Read the description i wrote for the Battles record, replace the word "Battles" with the word "Menomena" and the word "Mirrored" with the words "Friend and Foe".

Talking Heads. This goes hand in hand with Eno. It's becoming cliche to list the Talking Heads as a major influence, but I feel strongly about it. In a few spots, i think we really nailed the Remain in Light-esque percussive multi-layered thing and I'm really proud of it.

Weezer. Pinkerton was probably second only to Remain in Light on the list of records that directly influenced this album. We would listen to "Tired of Sex" in the control room at Tiny Telephone and just wonder how they made drums sound like that. I hope that when this record is released, people will be able to hear it and go "man, those dudes really like Weezer." Because we do. A lot.

Yes. This one may go more for me than the rest of the band. Griffin grew up on Yes, and I had never taken them seriously until he let me borrow his LP of Close to the Edge. I made a cassette of it and i think Aaron probably wanted to punch me over how many times I put it on in the van. I can't vouch for everything this band has done, but when they're on they're pretty unstoppable. When I played the instrumental demo we made of the first track on the album, the one that I think sounds like Talking Heads' "Crosseyed and Painless" meets Deerhoof's "Perfect Me" meets our "Search Party", more than one person said it reminded them of Yes.

Which leads me to my next thought: are we a prog rock band? I don't think so, but i'm not sure if it'd be such a bad thing to be considered. I mean, math rock and prog rock are only a few degrees of separation apart. The Mars Volta went from one to the other in like 6 months. And we write "fantasy" songs about apocalypse and earthquakes and things like that anyway. I think we're safe for now, since our longest song is 5 minutes and we don't have any guitar solos (yet).