Iron. Cave. Graffiti. -- The Album Release

The album is officially released as of about 6 pm last Saturday, November 13th. So far we have hard copies for sale at $10 a piece. We discussed the price of the album pretty thoroughly. Because ICG is a full length album (12 songs, about 50min.), all original material including the artwork and professionally produced in terms of both equipment and production, we decided to charge a reasonable $10.

The album release show went pretty much as planned. We played through most of the album tracks, which was fun. It has been a while since the last time we had a set list like that. Some of the songs on the album are four or five years old. They've been developed over the years, but it has been a long time coming to get them on an actual record. The amateur musician in pursuit of professionalism must be patient.

We have plans to get the tracks on iTunes and a variety of different internet-based purchasing platforms. There are so many things to do before that happens, though--number one starting our own website. I imagine necessary band media used to be limited recordings, photos, some artwork and maybe videos. Now, All of these things are necessary to start your facebook page. There are so many avenues for creativity and individual expression, I find it as an artist to be exhausting. I will admit our culture is making progress, but we are losing a lot in the process (for example, who are the authorities in music anymore? Not big brother, but the places you go to find good music).

Not to shamelessly plug our own material, but I think Iron. Cave. Graffiti. is a concept album. The concept is an attempt to trace the evolution of an artist along the lines of cultural movements in artistic expression. I can't really say the brokes have reached a verdict through writing, recording, producing and performing this album, but we have grown. The best thing an artist can do is grow.     





Twitter!

http://twitter.com/TheBrokes

Weekend Recording Update

Over the past weekend, Mike's friend and coworker Lou, added violin to 3 tracks on the album. Additionally vocals and background vocals are making some progress.

Mike and I have discussed cover art recently and we plan on doing something really cool and unique for that. More details and maybe a few sneak peeks will follow.

Nick

New Post, New Author

Hey everyone, this is Nick the current drummer and former roadie of the Brokes. Just wanted to introduce myself as a contributing member of the blog. Unlike Matt I am not a writer so don't set your journalism expectations to high.

Quick recording update: Drums are done as Matt said. Over the weekend our good buddy Dave added some piano/keyboards to some songs. They sound awesome, granted I may be a bit biased. The album is finally starting to take shape. Can't wait till its done so we can share it with all of you.

Nick

Drums are Done

Drums are DONE!

I Have "Totally Been Slacking"

So this marks the first official "not for class" post on my blog. I actually had the intention of continuing posting even after my assigned quoted of posts desisted, but the Brokes and I have been revising and reworking the album so much, I have been hesistating from revealing anything before I can make some authoritative statements.

I decided to abandon that approach. The album is obviously still in the works, but from what I have observed, Mike is really making an effort to get as much recording done as often as possible. Everyone else seems to be motivated in a similar matter (minus the band's blogger of course).

These are all good things of course, but there are reasons why bands wear the merit badge of "self-produced" with honor. When you listen to a drum track for the first time, it might sound great...even better than you may have expected. However, after the 100 time that late crash in the 2nd pre-chorus sounds like a 'slap in the face everytime' (to quote Mike).

Then there are the what if questions. What if we added piano to that track? or violin? What if we supplemented that chorus with a choir, rather than just one or two vocal tracks? As someone who has written one or two things before, I can sympathize with the reality that you will never entirely be happy with a project to the point where you would call it finished (except in those rare case where you can even believe you wrote/recorded/whatever-ed something). I think this is because what drives an artist--a good artist at least--is not always selfish. there genuinely is a desire to please the audience, and this drives artists to always be better.

So...the album will get done. It won't get done because we'll all join in a sigh of relief and agree it can't be any better than where it's at. It will get done because there's someone out there--someone I don't even know--that is going to think the Unsmokable Brokes is an amazing band. Because of that, the album has to get done.