Busy time of the year

Hey all, I've been busy as of late.
Working myself mad on Bad Happy, trying to get The Kitten's Rejoinder prepared for release, rehearsing with Ultra Death Men and Giggle The Ozone, and trying to organize Christmasasaurus Vol. 5 as last minute as I thought possible, haha

Mob Boss recording has entered the pre-recording rehearsal phase.
For various reasons, I'm just going to do everything except for drums, which will be handled by Jon of Ultra Death Men. I don't know what I'll put this out on yet, but I'm feeling a semi-free album that will come with all future merch orders is the best idea.

Jayme is not out of the band, he's just too busy right now to put effort in, and because they are my songs anyway I'm going to just record them to kick start things.

I have my Bandcamp page up and running to fill the void left by myspace turning into a complete trainwreck.
Not quite a website, but I'm still working on that.

http://bubblegumoctopus.bandcamp.com/

I'm slowly filling in all the lyrics and some descriptions of the songs.
Nothing important, just some anecdotes about their origins, the recording process, whatever.
I know some people have wanted the same treatment I gave Possible Party: Part i to be given to TAFKA8LDM

Well, that's all for now.
Sorry there's nothing exciting...

...oh wait, just kidding! I have some shows!




Bubblegum Octopus December 30th, Yspilanti, MI @ a house party. Ask me for the address.

Bubblegum Octopus January 6th, North Hollywood, CA @ Hustle House with Monomate, NVR-NDR, Halloween Swim Team, and Vyncent Flaw

Bubblegum Octopus January 7th, Isla Vista, CA @ Biko Garage with Monomate, Treasure Mammal, and Coach McGirt

Giggle The Ozone January 21st, Brooklyn, NY @ Vaudeville Park

Bubblegum Octopus & Pyrrhic January 28th, Sunderland, MD @ tba w/ Watabou

Bubblegum Octopus January 29th, Baltimore, MD @ Hexagon Space w/ TALK TO ANIMALS

In March... I'll be playing South By Southwest, followed by another tour with Yatagarasu covering Texas, Oklahoma, and more on the way back to New York!
More details on that stuff soon.

11162010

So, here's what's been up as of late:

I've been coughing myself new orifices to cough through on and off for the past month or so.
I have the vocals for a bunch of songs tracked, but progress has been slow.
My ears have been clogged, my head has been hazy, my voice has been malfunctioning, my ability to sleep has been severely damaged, my throat and nose have been full of mucus... the point is, I've had a really hard time getting work done for reasons beyond my control.
I'm hoping that tomorrow will bring better health and that tonight will bring restful sleep so that I can get back on this. My brain is exploding with ideas I can't carry out.

That said, Bad Happy is probably not going to come out until January or February now.
I was really pushing for it to be done next month, but time isn't slowing down of course, and "Flu Season" bested me this year *shakes fist at sky*

Let me take the time to apologize now for 2010 being the year of compilation albums and contributions, split EPs, and re-releases.
At the very least, I played in a good deal of the country, got two full lengths (Ultra Death Men and Hybegnu) recorded for future releases, got one fantastic split of new material out, got 15 of my free releases within the public's grasp, and made substantial progress on future BgO releases.


As far as The Kitten's Rejoinder, I decided it does indeed need some sort of bonus tracks and that I should also do some more work on the Scissor Shock split tracks.
They'll never be up to the standards of my current music, but I want to polish them however I can to at least help!
It should be out next month.

It's looking like the track list will be the following:

1. Unveil: Machine Octopus
2. Soft Sun Spots
3. Zuru??
4. Mr. Yum
5. Rembowave
6. Misconception Superhighway
7. Peace in Pious Pieces
8. Discomfort & Laughing
9. Fire Belly Bravery
10. Enjoy My Home
11. Product Amazement
12. The Fantastical Balloonopus: Sanchtïrl'ynk
13. Digidock
14. Here He is He's GONE
15. Sausage MAXXX
16. This is not Dead Time!
17. Enjoy My Home: Platinum

1 and 2 are new songs (1 being an instrumental intro track I wrote in 2007, 2 being a song I originally wrote for the Weakness Electronics split with Watabou this year.)
3 - 8 are my songs from My God Is The Cat King, the split with Dental Work (which is a fabulous release that you should still try to get, even if you get this album when it comes out)
9 - 12 are my songs from Take Control, the split with Yatagarsu from last year.
13 - 16 are my songs from the split with Scissor Shock from 2007
17 is the new version of Enjoy My Home that I've been playing live with better vocals. I was unhappy with some things in the first version and it was my favorite BgO song up to that point.

While I'm on the topic, did I ever post the revised Bad Happy track list?
If not, here it is:

1. SpazzPop Forever!!!!~
2. Distortion Castle
3. 888 Days Meow Fast
4. Sleep Void
5. Floor of Worlds
6. Tubulidentata
7. Goodbye Light (God's Fake Laser)
8. Betrayal is okay.
9. We ARE Sick
10. Shovel Piledriver
11. Metallic Sheep Nap
12. Feeler than I'm old
13. Beautiful Little Towne
14. Time Zone Proclivity
15. Loud Noise In My Room
16. Resting in the valley forever




End of release news, here's some live show updates:

[Start of Mixed Emotionz Tour. Bubblegum Octopus w/ Monomate]
January 6th - Hustle House in Los Angeles, CA
January 7th - Biko Garage in Santa Barbara, CA
January 8th - Northern California, help needed!
January 9th - Portland, OR. More info soon
January 12th - Seattle, WA. More info soon
January 13th - Oregon. More info soon
January 14th - Northern California, help needed!
January 15th - The return to LA. More info soon.
[End tour]
January 21st - Giggle The Ozone @ tba in Brooklyn, NY
January 28th - Bubblegum Octopus and Pyrrhic** @ tba in Sunderland, MD
January 29th - Bubblegum Octopus @ Hexagon Space in Baltimore, MD w/ Talk To Animals
March - Beginning of Bad Happy tour to Texas! Details as they arrive in the next few weeks.

**Pyrrhic is some kind of proggy, extreme metal band I am doing vocals for at some shows.
I will be appearing on their first album, as well. They are a pretty superb band, so I have high hopes for it.




I did art for the 2007 Fork Sister album, Savory Sauces. I still obviously haven't gotten the vocals done, but at least the art is complete!

I'm also compiling another compilation album, appropriately titled "One-Off Oddities"
It's going to be a little more than me just slapping a bunch of weird crap I've recorded together, putting it on the web, and calling it a night though.
It's going to feature songs by Hurricane Metal, The Cuddle Sluts, I Am A Hexagon, c@ Vs. Peppermint Pony, Bubblegum Octopus Vs. Scissor Shock, Rage-a-holic Tortise, Frame House, Awful Throats, a "m@ the c@" song, Mercury Syringe, a Scissor Shock cover I did as Bubblegum Octopus, and hopefully some new BgO song or something to increase the value.
It'll basically answer all of your questions about my projects that you've never heard (except for the fact that the Frame House songs will be a weird porn groove thing and a melodic death metal thing we did before the band had really found a sound. Not even sure it's fair to call them Frame House songs, in fact)

I suppose that's all I have for you for now.
Stay happy, dearest friends.

Minimum Dollar Boy

Recording with Hybegnu was awesome, seriously.
Everyone involved had something great to contribute. Their first album was mostly angular avant-noise-sludge stuff, but the new one is nothing but contrast and strangeness, without losing a central feeling of discomforting other-worldliness.
Spastic/atonal math jams, gaunt odd time metal, new wave hip-hop, hideous screeching noise, submarine drone, ambient acoustitronic free jazz... basically a ton of things that the average Bubblegum Octopus fan might not really like, but the average m@ the c@ fan will be totally down with.

I think one of the best parts of the whole thing was the fact that one song literally sounds EXACTLY like what you might expect from a collaboration between Keith (of PAK, Time Of Orchids, and tons more) Dylan (of Giggle The Ozone, Zeehas; 12 Wait, and more) and myself... and I consider that sound to be quite desirable.

I ended up doing bass, guitar with a bunch of my effects pedals, vocals, and a set-up where I had a mic running into my KP3, which ran into my DD7, and I played glockenspiel and slide whistle through it. We switched line-ups for almost every song.

As for a release, I don't know yet. We're doing more than expected with this album, so it might be a while yet.


Bad Happy is still trudging along... eh, well... actually.... it's more like it's jogging at this point, but it keeps tripping over it's shoelaces even though I keep reminding it to tie them.
I basically re-did entire drum tracks for like 5 songs, making them ridiculous elaborate, added some potentially unnecessary synth parts from the Nanosynth, and have been fighting with the frustration of mixing up to about 50 tracks of audio and MIDI per song.

After the grindiest song on the album has it's drums replaced (it's kind of like Falcon Breeze's much more sophisticated and elaborate spiritual successor,) my only obstacles in the way of having this thing done are the vocals for 9 tracks, some guitar and bass parts, some textural palette cleansers, and the very daunting mixing process.
I've got an install of Komplete 7 on the way that was donated by my father, who got it for teaching purposes, and I think Battery may be the trick for the drums on that thing.

I need to get more shirts printed. All I have left is small and girly small o_o;
Money is so tight that it's pretty hard to afford these things. If I get more of the Tubbypaws design it'll probably be the last run of 6 color shirts for a while.
I'm definitely under-charging you all for them.
I'm too nice sometimes (^-^;; )


Oh, I forgot to include this the first time I updated this post.
The Kitten's Rejoinder is actually going to be getting a "DIY style" release through the micro-label that Yatagarasu runs. He's looking to boost it up in scale and to do that he's going to release nothing but quality extreme/experimental electronic artists (I think only ones that involve chiptune elements, too.)
The Kitten's Rejoinder will be packaged in a similar fashion to Take Control:


Hand printed cover on a cardboard sleeve, xeroxed insert, nice disc.
Actually, the cover will be nicer than these (not that I didn't like them) because Chris now has access to a multi-armed screen printing press... which sounds like a good thing, haha



New Ultra Death Men material is being written, by the way, some of which will be audible at our upcoming show...

....speaking of...


Some of my upcoming shows:

• November 12th - Ultra Death Men @ The Clash Bar (21+ show, sadly) in Clifton, NJ

• December ??? - Giggle The Ozone @ ???? in Brooklyn, NY (more details on that soon, I'm just excited to be playing with them again)

• January 6th - Bubblegum Octopus @ Hustle House in Los Angeles, California (first show of the tour with Monomate)

• January 7th - Bubblegum Octopus @ Biko Garage in Santa Barbara, California (w/ Monomate)

• January 29th - Bubblegum Octopus @ Hexagon Space in Baltimore, Maryland (w/ Talk To Animals! Finally!)


Hope those of you that like Halloween enjoyed the holiday.
The weather is perfect for me right now. See-your-breath cold, without being discomforting.
Give it some time, snow will come and then I'll say that's the perfect weather.

Late update

Well, I don't have much time to write, as I'm on my way to the post office, and then I'll be in Philadelphia for the rest of the week to record with the band Hybegnu and to get some drum stuff recorded for Bad Happy.

I've actually been extremely sick for the past week, so my progress on the album was temporarily inhibited. I'm back into functionality now though, and I expect to know if it will be out in time for January's tour in the next two or three weeks.

Speaking of, plans for the Mixed Emotionz tour are coming along nicely.
A few dates are booked already, but I'm waiting for the line-ups for the shows to be assembled.

The Ultra Death Men album is coming alone nicely as well. Not sure when it will be done though.
We also have a show in Clifton, NJ at the Clash Bar on November 12th. We'll be playing songs from Muscles as well as some new material.

Giggle The Ozone also has a show coming up in early December, somewhere in Brooklyn, but I don't know many details yet.
The new GtO album will actually be out this month and it's going to rule.
I mean, I'm not playing bass on it or anything, but I am sure it's going to be the best one yet.

Fork Sister –making it's first appearance on this blog, I do believe– is actually back to being an active endeavor. Nothing substantial will probably be done this year, but Savory Sauces (the much belated 2007 album) will get some vocals recorded and a free release, followed by new material written with the project being a two piece.
Shows are also in the works.

Alright, time to be on my way!

New Song

head on over to http://www.myspace.com/bubblegumoctopus
New song from Bad Happy, titled Metallic Sheep Nap

Upcoming tours and such

Well, it's been 23 days since my last update, in which I said I'd make this a weekly thing.
I'll uh... try to keep it more frequent.
Also, if you use tumblr, I'm going to try to manage this and a tumblr account, probably posting the same things to both, but who knows.
I think my link is jazzycattime.tumblr.com but I don't know because tumblr isn't working at the moment... this bodes well for my relationship with the site.

Anyway, let me bring you up to speed before I bring you the news:

I had some shows in the south and it went pretty well overall, though it wasn't friendly to my wallet at all, and I ended up eating like one meal a day after a certain point.
I played the loudest BgO show ever in Greensboro, North Carolina, had a kind of awkward gig at a bar in Tennessee, attended a frat party in Washington DC, played a pretty cool and very late house party in Virginia, and stayed an extended period of time with a long time fan on the ETSU campus.

That was like three or four weeks ago.
This past weekend I played a show in Sunderland, Maryland that was pretty awesome.
I have some video footage that I'll get up, but the vocals are all ridiculously soft... well, except for the background vocals that I have on certain tracks, so it almost looks like I'm lip synching in certain parts. Irritating, to say the least.
I'm confused by that in general, really, as the vocals were not soft in person, as others have confirmed to me.

I do have these pictures that I can post right now before I get the video up:


(pictures by "Millasaurus Rex")




Anyway, it's news time!

First things first:
I've imposed a strict, day-by-day goals schedule upon myself and I've been pretty good about sticking to it, or at least doing something of equal relevance instead of what's on the calendar for a given day.
I'm shooting to have this out before January 5th.
"Why that date?" you might ask yourself.

Well, I'll be doing a West Coast tour with Monomate from January 6th to January 13th.
8 days covering everything we can on the west coast from Los Angeles to Washington.
We don't have a schedule yet, but we're working.

"What about Texas?!"
Patience my child, I was getting to that.
While it's not exactly happening ULTRA soon, I'm going to be FINALLY hitting Texas in the middle of next year (whenever Sparkle Fountain is done.)

My plan is this:

1. Finish Bad Happy and release it before the January tour (it's going to be hard, but I'm going to do all I can)

2. Come home and begin working extensively on Sparkle Fountain with the drummer

3. While working with the drummer, record new vocal parts, work on innovating the material a bit (It's all going to be totally new to you, but for me the album is two years old right now, so I need to make some small updates)

4. Possibly play shows with the drummer to see how it fares in that situation

5. Record drum parts

6. Release album as early in the year as is possible (hopefully, through a label)

7. Month long tour, hitting OH, MI, IL, WI, MN, IA, MO, OK, TX (multiple shows,) LA, FL (two or three shows,) GA, SC, NC, VA, and MD, as well as possibly a few other places.


That's my plan. I know I haven't gotten everything done this year that I said I would, but I still did a lot, and I'm getting better at sticking to my plans.
From The Magical Prince's Mouth is not coming out this year, as I was planning a while back. Bad Happy just became an insane amount of work and I don't want to rush it just to stick to my plans.

Additionally, all of the splits I've been talking about will be happening in due time, they just aren't as important as getting another album out.
(I'm waiting on art for The Kitten's Rejoinder, so that will happen whenever art exists.)


I have some non-Bubblegum Octopus news that I'd like to update with, but I'll save details until there is some more exciting stuff!


I guess that's all for now.
In the non-music world I've started playing RPGs again...
I've not settled on one to beat, but I'm thinking Majora's Mask and Earthbound need to finally be 100% complete, and Ogre Battle 64 wouldn't be a bad thing to play through again (maybe I can get all of the Zenobians this time...) I've also been playing Super Robot Taisen on my DS quite a bit... I hope none of this distracts me!

Onwards through the sky

My trip to California was awesome: I spent time with Bradlea's family, met her sister and hung out in her gaming command center of an apartment, spent time with the four resident cats in Bradlea's mother's house (Orange Kitty, Antwon, Panathinaikos, and Spoilsbury, who actually lives in New Jersey most of the time, but got to go back to San Diego to visit too,) went to Disneyland, traveled around LA, San Diego, and San Francisco, and got enough authentic Mexican food to hold me over for at least 6 months.
As great as all of that was, I am still able to say that, quite possibly above all of that, my shows were the best part... life changing even!

First up was Los Angeles.
The venue used to be called Vlad The Retailer, or something to that effect, but was converted in under 24 hours by Emily Blong into the Broken Velcroe Carnival.
There is no way to entirely do the venue's transformation justice, but here are two pictures from the place to give you an idea:



(I don't know who took these photos, but the entire set these come from is fantastic!)

All of that was hand-made by Emily, and that's just a small portion of everything she did.
It's been since Bubblegum Octopus' very first show in 2006 that I've wished for something comparable to that set-up for a performance, so that in and of itself was really special for me. It's only made better by the fact that the big pink guy in the second picture was apparently made specifically for my performance.
(We took some promotional photos with me leaning on that guy, but they are a bit blurry.)

My set was met initially with some problems... the amount of power strips being used created some grounding issues, preventing my theremin and the rest of my noise rig from doing anything except electrocuting me, so I just disconnected everything and played with just the KP3, my laptop, my mic, and my DD3.

Throughout the course of my set I managed to spill coke on a power strip, have my table of equipment and my theremin knocked the fuck over, and got so hot and tired that I actually had to take off clothing (I hate taking off clothing in public. It's not a self-conscious thing, I just don't like it for some reason.)
All of it was worth it though, because the audience made it probably my best set so far.
To me, having your shit knocked over by an uncontrollable and enthusiastic crowd is a milestone, so I was actually not angered at all by it... unlike Bradlea and a few other audience members.
(Nothing was broken or even hit the ground, so there was no reason for any ill-will, really.)

Here are some pictures Gabe Bautista took of my set:






I guess it was just the combination of factors that made this such a memorable and truly magical night.
The decor, being across the country, the joyous atmosphere, and the unusually appropriate line-up would have been enough, but I think it was the company that made it extra special.
The crowd was full of characters.
Not your typical weirdos and creeps, nor a group of unremarkable fellows with names I can recall; this was a party where almost everyone invited had a distinct personality that could almost be read off of their faces alone.
People from the internet that only existed as messages, comments, and pictures in my mind came to life before my eyes.
Taylor, D. Bene, Emily, Peet, and a handful of other people all felt like old friends or classmates to me too, right from the start.
I managed to be very anti-social throughout the show, as I often am, but I feel like I could have just hung out with all of them without a second thought if they'd asked me and if I wasn't in such a glorious daze.

I think it should be noted that the fact that I'm able to say that about Peet is indeed a noteworthy thing that I shouldn't let go unaddressed... I think enough people know about the semi-sordid past.
There was a time when he would have called me an uninspiring joke and I would have called him another Nintendo fanboy, digigrind wannabe chump, but all past quarrels and ill-will have been resolved and mutual respect and friendship are finally instated... and I love those things!
He really is a good guy.
The same can actually be said for almost everyone at that show, actually (with a few exceptions that probably aren't worth mentioning.)

I dunno what it is, but I just wished the show would have never ended.


It really does, by the way, feel like, between that and the dozens of other valuable connections, friendships, reconciliations, severance from toxic influences, immense life changes/decisions I've made this year, and strides I've made to curb my negativity and cynicism, that I'm transforming myself into quite a better and different person and that I really might have a happy future ahead of me.



Anyway, San Diego was pretty damn fantastic too.
There were a few fans who came for me specifically, including someone who I knew from some fan-art submission, but none of them were the people I was expecting.
Some last.fm users I've seen around the site who came specifically for Nero's Day ended up totally getting into my set, too. I really love the feeling of winning people over, especially those with good taste.

Sam, the guy behind SD Noise and Zsa Zsa Gabor, was an extremely kind host, and all artists played outstanding sets.
Take Up Serpents played a pretty entrancing ambient/drone set, Nerfbau destroyed ears with extremely harsh noise, Mincemeat Or Tenspeed rocked an extremely mental all-pedal/sampler/sequencer dancey/trancey/noisy set, and Nero's played his brand of wacky, sickening breakcore with live drums (the crowd was pretty massive for his set. Apparently SD is his home town.)

I wish I had some pictures or video to show for it, but all I have for now is the awesome poster for the show:




Last night was my first show since I've been back in NJ, and my first local show since January.
An extraordinarily short-notice show in Brooklyn at "Party Expo" with friends from Florida (Lissajou and Strangelette,) and Beta Club Field Trip.
Attendance was small, but the crowd did include chiptune all-star Bit Shifter, friend from the Take Control Tour, Rhinostrich, Dylan Sparrow (of Giggle The Ozone and other bands,) some other friends of mine, and random passers-by who were terrified by or enamored with what I was doing.

The sound guy/girl (dunno who was doing it) was kind of fucking with me I think, which I'm not so cool with, but there were no real problems, just some completely ridiculous shifts in the frequency spectrum (treble being shaved, bass blasting and then dropping off entirely, etc etc etc.) but the beginning and end of my set sounded really heavy and clean.

No pictures yet except for this wacky one with Strangelette and Lissajou, but more will exist!






In other news:
• I have more shows in Brooklyn on the 19th (Ultra Death Men @ Bar Matchless w/ Palmyra,) the 26th (BgO @ Goodbye Blue Monday w/ Xrin Arms and Speak Onion,) and the 27th (BgO @ Port D'or w/ Xrin Arms and Speak Onion.)

• The split with Les Trucs will be out pretty soon on CD instead of 7", and their side rules.
Hopefully mine will match! (out on Solace Media Corporation.)

• I will be releasing the Les Trucs split, the Scissor Shock split (remastered,) Take Control (remastered,) My God Is The Cat King, and a bonus track or two together as an iTunes only album. I don't have a name or art yet, but I will soon!

• The Ultra Death Men album (Muscles) is still being mixed

• I'm in the midst of recording Bad Happy and it's going decently. Send me good vibes so it goes perfectly!!

• Trying to do another mid-west stint in September. I have the projected schedule on Facebook. Help me out!!


West coast, I mean it now... I will be back soon... and in full force.