What was I saying about the video clip and the recordings being finalised by Tuesday night? Wrong. The video is still going – nearly finished, just one ten second section we can’t get right. The latest recordings needed more attention in mastering yesterday, completed last night – so the audio is actually DONE! Yeah! (ready for release)

Shot from the latest video clip – still in production.

In just a few hours we officially leave for tour, first stop Tamworth. Sydney Monday morning. Beijing Tuesday.

Checkya later,
Fires out.

Spent the past 3 days editing the video clip for the latest single release. Been sitting in the same spot on the couch here the whole time. Feel like part of the furniture. Need a shower. Obsessing.

First draft produced late last night. More adjustment today…

Video shot from one of the verses – taken from last weeks production.

Gotta hit the mastering suite again this afternoon (Crystal). Small adjustment to one line of backing vocals. More obsessing. Having trouble sleeping – head racing when I go to bed & racing as soon as I wake. Adrenaline kicking in. By the end of today both the songs and the video should be done. It’s been a long process.

Leaving for the China tour on Thursday. First stop – Tamworth on Friday, followed by Sydney airport very early Monday morning. Then Shanghai & then Beijing where we’ll be based for a week before the tour kicks off. All the tour dates have now been added to the Shows page.

Checkya tomorrow.
Fires out.

Excerpt from an interview Max did over the weekend –

I’ve attempted the impossible: making a list of 5 favourite songs. I’m sure if I had to tell you what they were tomorrow or next month or next year it’d be different!

1. ‘Love of My Life’ by Queen – the Live version. I only recently heard this song for the first time while watching a documentary on Queen. There’s nothing like thousands of voices singing a great song to make me cry!

Max on video set, last week.

2. Pretty much anything by Aussie punk legend Nick Cave. My first experience was hearing ‘Stagger Lee’. It terrified me and I decided he was a psycho! But after seeing Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds live I was a convert; he has the power to move an audience from terror to tears in one show. My hero!

3. ‘Little Well’ a traditional Ukranian song recorded by punk band Borshch and taught to me on a tour in Ukraine. The raucous energy of Ukraine’s punk audience changed us as a band forever!

4. ‘Time to Pretend’ by MGMT. This song blew my mind when I first heard it – such lush dancey pop. We were recording our album Betrayer in L.A. at the time, so it’s a reminder of the excitement of making music.

5. ‘Without’ by us. It might seem conceited to list one of our own songs, but I don’t mean it that way! Marty (our guitarist) wrote this song and we’ve been closing the show with it for a few years now. It still makes the hairs on my arms stand up as the tempo gets faster and faster and people get crazier until we’re all out of control!

Hopefully see you at our Beijing show at Mao’s (May 5th). – Max

Checkya later.
Fires out.

During the week, Mat Ward created this pic which resulted in a flurry of Facebook activity on our band page.

“Miniature Rock Bands are the latest craze. Every home should have one!”

Mat with miniture On Fires.

Checkya later.
Fires out

Another big day today. Started with the mastering suite to finalise the latest releases. Sounds fantastic – always great when John at Crystal works on our stuff.

John Ruberto & Marty X at Crystal Mastering, Melbourne.

We’ve been mastering there for years & it’s always lifted our audio mixes up a notch. John was talking today about how there’s a lot of competition our there with people now mastering from their garages & audio engineers offering the service as an ‘add-on’. It sounds crazy to me that bands would spend endless hours on their recordings (and a pile of cash) only to put the whole sound in jeopardy by skimping on mastering. It’s one of the most important steps & there’s no substitute for the guys who really know what they’re doing.

The rest of the day was spent running around like a headless chicken locating power supplies and other stuff related to the upcoming China tour (Melbourne’s traffic is definitely approaching Sydney’s grid-lock mayhem).

Now, I’m sitting at home working on promo-videos for China – which should have been done a week ago. Ahhhhhhhhh! (It’s a Friday night dammit)

He he.
Fires out.

Yesterday was a big one, starting with sitting in line at the Chinese Consulate. The good news – we’ve finally got our visas which is a good thing seemings as we’re touring there next month. We leave next Thursday.

After the good visa news, we started set up for a video shoot which started around 1pm & finished about 9 hours later, give or take.

Max & Marty on set yesterday for the next video single release.

We’re both really sore today – I’d have to liken the experience to several hours of aerobics with a few breaks here and there to catch your breath. And we’re not exactly aerobic fit at this point. When the final take was done, we had general collapse. Suffice to say, it’ll be an energetic vid. I think we shot the song about 40 times.

Tomorrow, we head into mastering for the final phase of the next recordings – with a single & video to be released in time for the China tour.

Checkya tomorrow,
Fires out.

Something special for today’s post – and we’ll also run this article as tomorrow’s post. Tell your friends.

Mat Ward is not just our official photographer he’s also a creative IT Project/Business/Service Analyst with great team leadership, stakeholder management and customer relationship building skills. His background is in IT infrastructure at large companies such as Australia Post, Bendigo Bank, Hewlett Packard and Coles Myer.

Mat Ward with Chewy.

He’s currently between gigs and available for new roles straight away. You can see more information and contact him at Linkedin: http://au.linkedin.com/in/matward

While looking for fulltime work Mat’s also available if you need someone to take photos at an event or gig or if you’re looking for someone to help you out with a little creative writing.

You can also view Mat’s creative side at www.eyehunger.com – his very own site featuring his photographic & writing works.

Checkya later.
Fires out.

Visa Stuff:
Just spent an hour (this time) at the Chinese consulate. And we had all the relevant documentation. They’ve ticked the boxes, so we should have those all-important visas by next week.

Michael From SOM – Now An Actor:
Micheal from Sons Of Messengers just dropped over. Great catching up. He’s playing Hamlet next week at a theatre somewhere in Mt Waverley (will post the details here when he shoots us the link). We’re going down to check it out – only just found out he was an actor.

TC Does it again:
Tony C just sent this pic through on Facebook. The world’s coolest fridge?

Release Update:
Mixing is done. The 2nd new song landed last night and we made the mistake of listening to it before going to bed. No sleep possible til very late in the early morning. Tired today – but pumped up something stoopid. Time for mastering & we’re ready to release.

Have a great weekend.
Fires out.

Had a massive night last night. The latest mix of one of the new singles landed at about 5pm. Pulled the speakers out of the studio and set up in the lounge, cranked the volume, cracked a beer & sat back to listen. A couple of mates dropped over to hear the new stuff & shoot the breeze over a few quiet ones. The verdict was good. A few hours later Scotty rolled in from darts & we sat up til all hours YouTubing classic videos at volume through the studio speakers. Awesome. This was one of em –

Love it when the rock kicks in after the acapella.

Gotta make a decision today about the latest mix. To fiddle with it a little more – or to leave it right where it is. I’m thinking, the latter.

Checkya later.
Fires out.