Friday, November 30, 2007

Studio News: ORC Photo Session

ORC was in the studio last night... the photo studio!

ORC Photo 1

ORC met at Attic Works Studio last night for the first photo shoot for their new album due out early next year. Donning masks, various outfits, and their instruments of choice, many pictures were taken over the course of the hour and a half session.

ORC Photo 2

There were two cameras going, the main camera taking the pictures and then a second camera taking "behind-the-scene" shots. The above two pictures are from the secondary camera. The main pictures are at Attic Works Studio being processed. The band has not announced what these pictures will be used for, but they will definitely have a web presence.

Near the end of the session Jason was asked how Metal XOR Studio is prepping for the recording of the new ORC album. He replied:

"Hopefully this weekend the Studio will be stripped of all cables and connections. I have a new wiring schematic drawn up and will rebuild the Studio from scratch. I won't be using half the equipment that's there for this new album, so I'm clearing it out and streamlining the recording process. I've settled on which computers to use and how to hook everything up. Now I just need the time to do it. This will be the fifth incarnation of the Studio, it's called MXOR-E. And things are going very well for the January 1 deadline. That's the day we start recording. The excitement is building!"

Keep checking here for further ORC updates.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Studio News: New Website

In October of 1994, Harry, Jason, and Darrin investigated a local urban legend. While they were there an old man drove up and told them to leave because too many people had been there causing trouble. Tempers flared and the old man and Jason almost came to fisticuffs. This became known as the Albino Boy incident.

Albino Boy site

And now, thirteen years later, Metal XOR Studio is proud to present the Official Albino Boy website. While there you can watch the video that Jason shot of the incident, various audio files, the story of what happened in the following days and weeks after the incident, and much more! It is the most comprehensive Albino Boy incident website on the Internet.

Please visit the new site and show your support.

Blog News: 100th Post

This is post #100!!!

It is safe to say the surface has been scratched on the amount of information that the Studio wants to share with the world. What began as an idea for a weekly post has exploded into a flow of content much larger and faster than I ever dreamed. Even an attempt to slow down the frequency of the posts failed. So I give up. I will continue to post whenever I feel a post is needed, which is usually daily.

It is interesting to see how much online change there has been for the Studio since the blog began. I have always wanted a way to organize all my Studio information, this is it. I now have this blog site as well as four other websites:

The Metal XOR Studio Information Source
The Traveling Deengelburys website
Albino Boy website
The ORC blog (which will become more active after January 1)

100 cake

Let's see how much more the Studio grows online in the coming months. See you at 150. . .

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Project Spotlight #14: What is X-Selsior?

Records of Jason's solo career were not kept very well from 1987-1991. There is an occasional date on a lyric sheet or some other document, but recordings usually were not dated. So that makes it tough to piece together this part of the Studio's history (before the Studio was a studio).

Harry and Jason had finished with their earliest music career (ad-libbed singing to instrumental music on the radio) by 1988 or so. In fact, their band Pheonix had been put together and they were busy with that. But at home Jason continued the radio singing. But now he was recording the music off the radio, writing lyrics to the songs, and then recording himself singing his lyrics to the music he had recorded off the radio. The solo career was evolving. He called it X-Selsior.

X-Selsior logo

There was only one album released as X-Selsior. It was titled One Way. It was a short album compiling the songs he had recorded this way on his own. It was probably finished in 1988 or 1989. There are no plans to re-issue this album on CD.


Next week: What is Parvo?

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

This Day in Studio History

It was November 27, 1997, when Jason and Jimmy recorded themselves having an acoustic guitar jam session as the band ORC in Jason's garage. The session was recorded on a microcasette recorder and became known as the Theater of Pain jam session. The significance of that session was that demos for a few of the songs that made it on their 1999 Purging the Great Abyss album were recorded that night. There were many other demos recorded that have not been polished... yet.

That decade went by fast!

Monday, November 26, 2007

Lyric Booklet #5: Equation of Time

The fifth album to include lyrics was Mune Mud's 1996 album Equation of Time. The booklet was titled "A Japanese Lullaby" and was only eight pages long. It was the first lyric booklet created on a computer.

This was the first of what was to be a new series of "mini" lyric booklets (there ended up only two in the series). It measured 4"x5.5". The print was very small so 2-3 songs could fit on each page. There was no table of contents or epilogue to this booklet, just lyrics to every song on the album.

This booklet was released on August 20, 1996, one week after the album was released. After this "mini" booklet was made, the Studio went back to create booklets for older albums, starting with NueroMud's 1994 album ...Libra 971. But the project ended after the second booklet was released.

The title came from an anagram that was printed on the inside of the Equation of Time tape sleeve. The phrase came from an old black & white spy movie Jason watched at work one day. The anagram of 'Japanese Lullaby' was added to the tape sleeve and no one was able to figure it out. Funnier yet, no one realized the answer was right under their nose when the lyric booklet was handed out.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Album of the Week #14: One Way

Project name: X-Selsior
Album name: One Way
Release date: unreleased (recorded in 1988-1989)
Release format: cassette
Studio name: none

X-Selsior - One Way

Tracks:
1. The Fly in Your Eye
2. Summertime
3. F-14
4. Jungle Fever
5. You Are the Bread of My Bologna Sandwich
6. Any Day Now
7. Trop Tard Pour Au Revoir
8. Time

Records of Jason's solo career were not kept very well from 1987-1991. There is an occasional date on a lyric sheet or some other document, but recordings usually were not dated. So that makes it tough to piece together this part of the Studio's history (before the Studio was a studio).

Harry and Jason had finished with their earliest music career (ad-libbed singing to instrumental music on the radio) by 1988 or so. In fact, their band Pheonix had been put together and they were busy with that. But at home Jason continued the radio singing. But now he was recording the music off the radio, writing lyrics to the songs, and then recording himself singing his lyrics to the music he had recorded off the radio. The solo career was evolving.

This was a short album compiling the songs he had recorded this way. It was probably finished in 1988 or 1989. No one has heard this album and possibly never will.

The album title undoubtedly came from a road sign Jason saw somewhere. X-Selsior, with the strange spelling (which he was prone to do in the earlier Studio years), is the name he gave his first solo project. And this was the first time he had compiled songs to make an "album", complete with hand-drawn album cover.

There is only one copy of this album in the world and there are no plans to re-issue it on CD. It is just an embarrassing part of the Studio's early history.


Next week's Album of the Week: Parabolic Dish Festival Volume 1 by Isthmus from 1998.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Listen Online!

The seventh installment of Listen Online features Nikki singing at church.

She and Jason have written a couple of songs in the last few years that she sang at church. This song was called "He Lifts Me Up". It was originally a song Jason had written and recorded for Nikki called "Fallen Star Wish" which appeared on their 2001 EP Love Songs. The music remained the same but they wrote new lyrics for it. Jason videotaped her singing it at church and pulled the audio from the tape for the "live" version of the song.

Click here to listen to the live version of the song.

Friday, November 23, 2007

Collector's Corner #20

Jason and Nikki have written and recorded a few songs together. A few of them were for church. Below is the March 14, 1999, bulletin that lists Nicole Meyer (prior to being married to Mune Mud) as singing the Message in Song.

Collector's Corner 20

A hand-written note by Jason says "He Lifts Me Up". That was the song Nikki sang that day at church.

This bulletin remains in the Holy Relic Wing of the Metal XOR Studio Museum.

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Just For Fun #3

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

Just For Fun 03

From all of us at Metal XOR Studio

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Project Spotlight #13: Who are the Two-Tones?

Harry, Jason, and Brad had been playing together for a while as the band Pheonix. In early 1988, Brad (the drummer) was replaced by Harry's Casio drum machine and Jason borrowed a friend's guitar. What resulted was Harry and Jason having their own jam sessions, often with their friend Jeremy as their singer. They had become the Two-Tones.

Where did the name come from? One possibility is the uniforms Jason and Jeremy had to wear for their 1988 summer job at Dairy Queen. The pants were a dark brown and the shirts were beige. They often made fun of their two-tone brown uniforms so that may be what inspired the name. Another possibility is a two-tone brown van that used to drive around their town. They made fun of it every time they saw it.

The band consisted of Harry on keyboards and drum machine, Jason on guitar, and Jeremy singing. On occasion their friend Darrin or Joe would join them. Their sessions usually consisted of them sitting around a cassette recorder playing their songs only one or two times before recording them. All three took turns at writing lyrics, usually inspired by things or people from high school.

On May 24, 1988, the Two-Tones recorded their most popular song, "Hog". It was inspired by their English teacher. Their frustration with her had been building up all school year so at the end of their junior year they wrote and recorded a song about her. They played it for many of their friends and family. People often said it sounded like the Beastie Boys song "Fight for Your Right (to Party)", which it unintentionally did.

For the next year they recorded many songs together. In June of 1989, Jeremy left for West Point. It was the summer of 1989 that Jason put together the Two-Tones album called Heimlich Maneuver, along with a lyric booklet for the album. It was then officially released on December 5, 1989. Not many people heard that album. Having graduated from high school, a lot of their friends were moving away or getting jobs, the care-free high school days were gone.

In the fall of 1989, Harry and Jason asked their friend Joe to replace Jeremy as the third official member of the Two-Tones. They got together for a few recording sessions over the next several months. Below are some pictures of the "new" Two-Tones.


(above, l-r: Jason, Joe, Harry)



May 22, 1990, was their last recording session. They recorded the first take on a song called "Midnight High" using an old mixer Jason got from work. The song needed more work and even though suggestions were made on how to improve it, the Two-Tones never played again.

By now Jason was busy with his solo music career. He had been recording his own keyboard songs for a while and in June of 1990 he would record what would become one of the earliest Mune Mud songs, "Plutonic". Harry was busy with another band that played at parties and clubs. And Joe gave up the band life and became a radio DJ.

In 2000, a detailed account of the Two-Tones was written. Metal XOR Studio is trying to acquire the rights to that story. When they do it will be updated and published for all to read.


Next week: What is X-Selsior?

Monday, November 19, 2007

This Day in Studio History

Eleven years ago...

Isthmus - Lambskin Temple

It was November 19, 1996, when the second Isthmus album, Lambskin Temple, was released.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Album of the Week #13: Ideas

Project name: Isthmus
Album name: Ideas
Release date: May 6, 1997
Release format: cassette
Studio name: Metal XOR Studio

Isthmus - Ideas

Tracks:
1. King of Pain
2. ? [drum.guitar]
3. Tim Song
4. Wicked Game [slow version]
5. Lithium
6. Bang a Gong
7. Free [version 1]
8. ? [bass.guitar]
9. ? [bass.guitar fast]
10. Basket Case
11. Your Jacket Is Red
12. Here Comes the Sun
13. Walrus
14. I Wanna Hold Your Hand
15. Love Me Do [w/Lovely Rita ending]
16. We Can Work It Out
17. Dead Phone
18. ? [bass.guitar riff]
19. ? [drums.guitar]
20. ? [drums.bass.guitar]
21. [sequence]
22. Farmer's Anguish [studio version]
23. Rap

Was this really an album? Sort of. This was a collection of unused material from the first Isthmus jam on February 5, 1995, the session that resulted in their first album, Electric Field Donut.

This was more for Jason and Harry's enjoyment. In fact, they are the only two that have copies of the album. Almost half the songs on this album were under one minute long, many of the others were under two minutes. And some of the tracks weren't even named, just listed as "?" followed by the instruments used to create them.

The tape also had some cover songs that were not good enough to be on Electric Field Donut. It also had a few originals that were not included on the first album.


Next week's Album of the Week: One Way by X-Selsior from 1990.

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Collector's Corner #19

"Etesian Wind" was a popular song on Mune Mud's 1991 album Olympus. There are more versions of this song than any other song Metal XOR Studio has recorded. Yet the same question came up time after time for years after the song came out: what is Etesian Wind?

Jason's not even sure where the term came from. He had heard it somewhere, liked how it sounded, so used it for the music he had just recorded. Then he started looking for its meaning. This was years before the advent of the Internet, so research was done at libraries and by talking to various people he knew. No matter how hard he searched, he could find no references to Etesian Wind.

Collector's Corner 19a

Steve, Jason's co-worker, brought a philosophy book to work on Wednesday, August 21, 1996. The name of the book was "An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science." It did not seem of much interest to Jason until Steve turned to page 27. There, in black and white, was the answer that Jason had been searching for for years. A reference to Etesian Wind...

Collector's Corner 19b

The last paragraph on the page reads:

"...if the Etesian Winds produced the effect, the other rivers which flow in a direction opposite to those winds ought to present the same phenomenon as the Nile, and the more so as they are all smaller streams and have a weaker current. But those rivers, of which there are many both in Syria and Libya, are entirely unlike the Nile in this respect."

It still wasn't real clear, but Jason finally had some idea what the Etesian Winds were. For further reading on Etesian Winds, you can click here for a Google result that will tell you more than you will ever want to know about the subject.

Today these photocopies of that philosophy book are locked away in the Solved Mysteries Wing of the Metal XOR Studio Museum.

Friday, November 16, 2007

Listen Online!

The sixth installment of this feature isn't a song from a band. It's a song that was put together by Jason following a real-life incident that became known as the Albino Boy incident!

Using sound clips from the video tape of the Albino Boy incident, Jason composed a song on November 4, 1994, called "Albino Boy Song". It was an instant success where he worked and among friends and family.

It was more than a year later, on December 18, 1995, when he revisited the song. Using his computer this time he spiced up the original song and created "Albino Boy Song (Dance Mix)". This version was even more popular than the first.

Click here to listen to the original song.
Click here to listen to the dance mix of the song.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

A Look Back...

Local legend has it that an albino boy was playing on some railroad tracks and was killed by a train. So now when you park your car on the road that crosses the tracks, your car rolls uphill towards the tracks. They say it's the ghost of Albino Boy pushing your car towards the tracks.

On October 20, 1994, Jason, Harry, and Darrin ventured to investigate this urban legend. With camcorder in hand, they parked the car and sure enough the car rolled towards the tracks. But skeptics Jason and Harry were conducting an experiment to prove the road sloped downwards towards the tracks and that the road sloping downwards away from the tracks was an optical illusion when a car pulled up to them, the back door opened, and a cranky old Irish man stepped out and said to them "The best thing you guys can do is get your [donkey] out of here!" Jason and Harry made their wise guy responses and it soon turned into a heated conversation. Finally the conflict came to a head when it nearly came to fisticuffs between the Irish fellow and Jason. The best part was all of this was on video!

The video was shown to most of their friends and family and was an instant classic. Jason sent the audio of the incident from the video tape to the morning show on a local radio station who had mentioned the Albino Boy urban legend. The station enjoyed the audio so much they played it on air with their commentary. It wasn't long after that Jason recorded the "Albino Boy" song using sound bites taken from the video tape. Below is the advertisement he faxed to the radio station the day before he dropped off the tape of the song.

A Look Back 4

Unfortunately the song was never played on the radio. More than a year later he recorded another version called "Albino Boy (Dance Mix)" which was more techno/dance than the original song.

To this day the Albino Boy incident is talked about and often re-enacted where Jason and Harry work. The incident and both songs will probably live forever.

Update
Click here to visit the Albino Boy website. It has the entire story and many files to read and listen to. Enjoy!

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Project Spotlight #12: What is Pheonix?

Today we travel back in time to Harry and Jason's first band. . . Pheonix. There were a couple of incarnations of the band in the late 1980's, but the core members were Harry, Jason, and Brad. And yes, Pheonix was misspelled (except in the album cover concept art below drawn by Jason).


Pheonix originally began around the year 1986. It consisted of Harry on synthesizer, Mark on guitar, and Brad on drums. They got together a few times and played songs from Genesis, Black Sabbath, Boston, and other popular groups of the time. It wasn't long until Jason had his own keyboard and started jamming with them. The jam sessions were very unorganized, usually with more than one song being played at a time, and not much musical progress was made. Only a few recordings from this time exist.


Then Jim Bob joined them with his bass for a session or two. They created a track list of original titles for their first album but only two of the songs were ever pursued, "Princess" and "Changing Man." So their Wrath of Pheonix album and their 1989 Circus Tour were never fully realized. In fact, by 1988 the band had dissolved and the only members left were Harry, Jason, and Brad. After that they went on to create other musical projects.

Will Pheonix some day rise from the ashes to finally record their Wrath album? Don't hold your breath!


Next week: Who are the Two-Tones?

Monday, November 12, 2007

Collector's Corner #18

What was the stylish new fad for the summer of '89? The Traveling Deengelburys t-shirt!!!

Collector's Corner 18a

The front of the tee sported the Deengelbury logo: a Traveling Deengelburys banner draped around the world which hid a golden eagle clutching a guitar in its left claw. No one knows what all that means, but it was cool to look at!


Collector's Corner 18b

The back of the shirt advertised their 1989 Lost in Time World Tour. Inside the circle was printed "The Brothers D" which was the collective nickname for the band. Each band member also had their own Deengelbury nickname. These nicknames were hand-written by each member around the outside of the circle. And buried behind everything is a list of towns on their tour. Unfortunately, for reasons unknown, the tour was canceled after the first stop.

There were fifty-three T-shirts printed for the show. They sold for $8 each and sold out! There were also six jerseys made but those went to members of the band and not available to the public. Each shirt also came with its own Certificate of Authenticity signed by Wally Deengelbury.

Today the Studio has one T-shirt and one jersey packed away in protective storage. Who knows what happened to the other shirts? Keep checking e-Bay, you may one day get your chance to own one of these apparel pieces of history!

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Album of the Week #12: New Mexico Igloo

Project name: Isthmus
Album name: New Mexico Igloo
Release date: December 17, 1996
Release format: cassette
Studio name: Metal XOR Studio

Isthmus - New Mexico Igloo

Tracks:
1. Run, Run Rudolph
2. A Homeless World
3. The Holiday Song
4. Jingle Bells
5. Patricia Corrigan
6. Silent Night
7. My Toy
8. Merry Christmas, Baby
9. Oh, Isthmus Tree
10. Baby, Please Come Home
11. Oh, Holy Night Blues
12. Speech Impediment Wino
13. The Christmas Song
14. Speech Impediment Wino Returns


This album came from a jam session that Harry, Jason, and Jimmy had on Tuesday, December 10, 1996. This was the third Isthmus jam. There were two things different about this jam than any other previous Isthmus jam: there was another person playing on the album and they recorded the album in a church.

Jason played guitar. Harry played bass, then guitar, then keyboards. Jimmy was bass and then drums. And Tim was the guest musician who played drums, then bass, then lead vocals. There was also another person, Erik, who showed up and played guitar but most of that was not recorded.

It was recorded in the church Harry attended. They decided to record there for the acoustics of the sanctuary. But the acoustics did not help, this album is considered to be the biggest flop in the Isthmus catalog. The mix was bad for the recording, the songs they played were nothing special, and it just did not have the "Isthmus spirit" that the other albums had.

As far as recording equipment, they ran all the mics and instruments into a mixer and from the mixer into a standard cassette recorder. So it wasn't quiet as primitively recorded as their previous album, Lambskin Temple, but they needed to work on their live mixing.

They had set out to create a Christmas album. So many of the songs they recorded that evening were traditional Christmas song, some were their version of Christmas songs, and then the rest was original material. The majority of side B is a track called "The Christmas Song" and is basically a twenty-minute free form jam with hints of Christmas thrown in.

The image on the album cover is a molecule of salt. They thought that was appropriate since salt is what you put on the road or sidewalk to melt the ice and snow. So in an Isthmus sort of way the molecule of salt represents Christmas.

An alternate title for the album was An Isthmus Christmas, but that was dropped for New Mexico Igloo. And what is a New Mexico Igloo? Harry and Jimmy's dog, Jake, had an enclosed dog bed that had a southwestern pattern all over it. So one day Harry mentioned that the dog bed looked like a New Mexico Igloo. They had their album title!


Next week's Album of the Week: Ideas by Isthmus from 1997.

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Studio News: New Website

As Traveling Deengelbury Week nears its end, Metal XOR Studio is proud to announce a new website dedicated to the 50's & 60's band that invaded a small southern Illinois town in March of 1989.

Deengelbury site

It is the Official Traveling Deengelburys website. It provides audio files you can listen to, the history of the band, members of the band, and various Deengelbury memorabilia that was produced. It is the most comprehensive Deengelbury website on the Internet.

Please visit the new site and show your support.

Friday, November 9, 2007

Collector's Corner #17

The Traveling Deengelburys performed at a high school 50's & 60's dance on Friday, March 31, 1989. The local newspaper was there and this is the picture that was taken.

Collector's Corner 17

A few observations about the picture . . .

  • The caption says "The Traveling Deengelburts". There are two hypothesis on this misspelling. The first is that the newspaper did not want to publish the word Deengelbury, even though that is not how the word is really spelled. And the second is that is was just a typo.

  • Only six of the seven official Deengelburys can be seen. The drummer, Brad, is hidden behind the lead singer, Jay. Brad's drums can be seen though.

  • A few of the Deengelburys hand-painted a large banner with the Deengelbury logo. That banner can be seen behind the drummer.

This is the only group photo of the Traveling Deengelburys that the Studio has, so it is enshrined in the Kodak Moments Wing of the Metal XOR Studio Museum.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

Listen Online!

The fifth installment of this feature features the band The Traveling Deengelburys. They were a 50's & 60's band that played at a high school dance in March of 1989.

"Heartbreak Hotel" was the 5th song they played at the show. On this track you can hear the waves of teenage fans swooning and pushing towards the stage as the band performed. After seven songs the show was over and history had been made.

Click here to listen to the song.

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Project Spotlight #11: Who are the Traveling Deengelburys?

In the late 1980's there was a band called The Traveling Wilburys. The band had an all-star line-up: George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, and Bob Dylan. So what did a small southern Illinois town in 1989 need? Their own all-star band. Enter the Traveling Deengelburys!!!

Collector's Corner 17

It started in the fall of 1988. Jason and Harry had a Spanish teacher who played guitar and bass. He would occasionally get his acoustic guitar out and play for the class. At the time, Jason and Harry had been tinkering at home with their own instruments. So for Christmas of 1988, Jason, Harry, and their Spanish teacher played a few songs in class for what seemed like half the school.

Early the next year, the school was having a 50's & 60's dance to raise money for a needy child. The music at school dances always came from tapes and new-fangled CD's, but this dance would be different. Jason, Harry, and their teacher recruited a few other musically inclined students to form a band to play at the dance. Half the members of the band were heavy into the Traveling Wilburys, so when it came time to name the band they modified the name into something more appropriate and called themselves the Traveling Deengelburys.

The Deengelburys were Mark (lead guitar), Mark (the Spanish teacher, bass), Harry (keyboards), Jason (rhythm guitar), Darrin (saxophone), Jay (vocals), and Brad (drums). They also had two background vocalists during the show, Jody and David. The unofficial Deengelburys included Jeremy and Joe.

Friday, March 31, 1989, the day of the dance, the band played one song at each of the two lunch hours to raise the hype of the "live performance" at that year's dance. And that evening, sandwiched between music from tapes and CD's, they performed their 6-song set with a 1-song encore. The crowd went nuts. And then the dance was over. They have not performed together since.

A few of the members of the band wanted to get back together in 1999 for a ten-year reunion jam but that did not happen.

There were Traveling Deengelbury t-shirts made for the show to raise additional money for the fund raiser. As far as additional memorabilia there was the concert poster that hung in the school and the large banner the band painted and had on the wall behind them during the show.

There has never been an official release of any of the recordings. Their first rehearsal was recorded on cassette. The dress rehearsal practice on the stage the night before the dance was video taped. Both of their two lunch time performances were video taped. Their final rehearsal was video taped. And the show at the dance was videotaped. There may be a compilation CD released some day. . .

A detailed account was written several years ago of the whole Deengelbury experience. Metal XOR Studio is trying to get the rights to that story so the whole world can read what it was like to be a Deenglebury.


Next week: What is Pheonix?

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Studio News: New ORC Project

Plans for a new ORC album were officially announced yesterday.

Metal XOR Studio (Jason) and Attic Works Studio (Jimmy) will soon be working together on a new ORC album. This will be the first release since ORC's 1999 debut album Purging the Great Abyss. The current plans are for each studio to start songs independent of the other one, then exchange each song for the other studio to change (add/remove parts, write lyrics, etc). The music will bounce back and forth between studios until each song is finished. The recording is set to begin January 1, 2008, and end on February 29, 2008. There may be additional post-production in March, but the album should be out by the end of March.

The next two months will be spent getting equipment set up and updated at each studio. Test tracks will be recorded to ensure the compatibility of the two studios. At least one test song has been recorded at Attic Works Studio and three test songs have been recorded at Metal XOR. In addition, lyrics have already been written for a song titled "Clunky the Fisherman". So as the ORC machine slowly gets up to full speed, keep checking this blog for further updates.

Monday, November 5, 2007

Lyric Booklet #4: ...Libra 971

The fourth album to include lyrics was NueroMud's 1994 album ...Libra 971. The booklet was titled "Anonymous Reality Tales" and was only eight pages long.

This was the second of what was to be a new series of "mini" lyric booklets (there ended up only two in the series). It measured 4"x5.5". The print was very small so 2-3 songs could fit on each page. There was no table of contents or epilogue to this booklet, just lyrics to every song on the album.

This booklet was released on August 27, 1996, almost two years after the album was released. The first "mini" booklet made was for Mune Mud's 1996 album Equation of Time, then the Studio went back to create booklets for older albums, starting with NueroMud's ...Libra 971.

The title of the booklet came from the title of unused lyrics that Jason had written in the late 1980's. The subtitle "From the Dusk Channel" is taken from the title of track #5, "Dusk Channel", on the album but the reason why that song was chosen has long been forgotten.

Sunday, November 4, 2007

Album of the Week #11: Lambskin Temple

Project name: Isthmus
Album name: Lambskin Temple
Release date: November 19, 1996
Release format: cassette
Studio name: Metal XOR Studio

Isthmus - Lambskin Temple

Tracks:
1. Pin Needles in the Eye of the Beholder
2. Fly in the Garden
3. Last Summer (Train to Chicago)
4. I Never Knew (This Is Earth)
5. Heritage
6. Sunny Days
7. Didn't See It Coming
8. Burst
9. Used to Be Like
10. Hey, Mama!
11. I Wish I Was Born in the UK
12. I Wanna
13. Angel Breaths
14. Born to Be Wild
15. I'm On Stage
16. The Sound a Tree Makes . . .
17. Wicked Game (Autumn version)
18. notEworthy
19. Harry's Symbol (w/solo + junk)

This album came from a jam session that Harry, Jason, and Jimmy had on Saturday, September 21, 1996 in Jason's driveway. This was unofficially known as "Isthmus Jam 2".

This time they did not use the 4-track recorder but a standard boom box set in the center of the trio. And this time they had a drummer, Jimmy. Jason played bass and sang some of the songs while Harry played guitar and sang the rest of the songs.

They filled two 90-minute cassettes during this jam. Most of the songs were originals created in the typical Isthmus fashion . . . "start playing and make everything up as you go along!" There were a few covers recorded and two of them ended up on the album, including "Wicked Game" which has appeared on every Isthmus album.

It was a few weeks later in October that the tapes were logged out. Then in November Jason put together a play list for the album. And since this was not recorded on the 4-track recorder there was no way to add instruments or parts to the songs, so what was recorded that day was the final take of each song. The album was completed within days of the final play list being established and was released.

On one of Jason's notes about this album, a suggestion for the album title was Bull Dozer but they went with Lambskin Temple instead when Harry mentioned that was the name of a building he saw in St. Louis.

This album was also the first to use colored paper for the album cover. All previous tape covers were printed on white paper.

Next week's Album of the Week: New Mexico Igloo by Isthmus from 1996.

Friday, November 2, 2007

Video File #1: Muffin Loaf "Crazy Train"

The first installment of the new Video File feature is a treat from the Metal XOR vaults. The band Muffin Loaf burst onto the music scene in 2003 with a warehouse show. They held one rehearsal and then the show. A video was put together using low-res pictures from the rehearsal and show and it is set to the song "Crazy Train" as it was recorded during the rehearsal session.



Click here for the YouTube post.

Thursday, November 1, 2007

State of the Studio #3: November '07

November, month of the turkey, has arrived. And much too quickly. So what’s going on in the Studio?

A couple of weeks ago I attempted to change the blog from having daily posts to only three or four a week, but I haven't seen much success with that. Since that post there have only been two days that I didn’t post, so I’ll try harder to post less this month. Haha.

The Studio’s online storage just drastically increased. I only had a small amount of space for songs and other downloadable content at the Metal XOR Studio Information Source and that was almost full already. So I recently gained a LOT more storage at a different site. I am in the process of moving the information from the Information Source site to the new host site. Although most of the changes are behind-the-scenes, you will notice some differences in the way the Information Source site is set up. When that conversion is finished a lot more content will become available for downloading. Watch for more songs (even entire albums), publications, and video in the coming weeks and months.

As far as new music, Paige’s second recording session for her new album will happen soon. And plans regarding a music project from the past are going to be announced this month. Watch for that!

For the Project Spotlight features in November I will be digging into some older music. Expect to read about projects from the late ‘80’s and early ‘90’s.

And there are other changes planned for the blog as well. So be sure to make time in your busy weekly schedule to visit the blog to see what’s going on at Metal XOR Studio.