June 29, 2009

Real Men...being Male

The Spinto Band has long been characterized by the media with such words as "nerdy", "cute", "dandy", "diminutive", and "young". While some of those adjectives may be apt, we refuse to let such stereotypes define us. Just see for yourself how strong and manly we can be when we break out the tools and start buildin shit.As you see here, Joe is fuckin' cuttin the shit out of this piece of wood. Why? Who knows? You'll notice the garage door has to be kept open beacuse the odor of Joe's sweat, while pleasant to smell, can be toxic to people with allergies to testosterone. Sam folds his arms in the background while quietly chanting, "Cut that shit, Joe. Cut that shit."In this next image we find a confident Nick about to drill fuck a piece of 2X4. Jeff is helping, but he doesn't have to. Joe brings a tool to him while giving him a look of "Can you handle this shit?". You can't see it in this picture, but Jeff is mouthing "I can handle anything you give me, bro"Photographed here is essentially Sam's buldging biceps holding a mirror against a wall. He's lifting a it up and down effortlessly just like he does when he's bench pressing the weight of a sumo wrestler. What's the purpose of this task, you ask?Well, if you even have to ask you probably don't know a THING about acoustic reflections. Look it up and talk to us later. This photo is just to show you that Joe is simply practicing the manly tradition of putting smoke in your lungs. It's his 64th today and it's only 11:00 AM.
In this final photo we find Nick and Jeff hoisting up a 350 lb sound baffle to the ceiling with only the aid of their tape measurers. Why? Because they can. You can't see it very well, but that's Jon in the background making a list of every taxidermied animal head trophy he's slaughtered and where he plans on hanging them up.

Well, there you go! I hope next time you think of the Spinto Band you get scared just thinking about us.

June 21, 2009

On the joy of burlap...

Well, it's about week two in the studio building process and we've been learning many lessons in the process. Introductory courses in plumbing, construction, and insulation have all been covered...But perhaps the most unexpected lesson was our first one: Burlap 101.

Don't ask us why or how, but we recently came into a gigantic surplus of free burlap...More burlap than you could ever dream of. Being the clever, resourceful and thrifty band that we are, we decided to put it to good use. It just so happens that the burlap turned out to be a perfect material for some of the sound baffles we were planning on making. The burlap could be used as a seal for the insulation filling the wooden frames.

How much do you think you know about burlap? On the surface it doesn't seem like the most exciting material, but we found it to be a lot more complex than it lets on.

First of all, its appearance. Burlap can house a great many items, but the previous tenants of our bags were cocoa beans. We were first awestruck by the charming simplicity of their design:


We were even more excited to find we had four different designs of cocoa bean bags. Each representing one of the four primary colors [taking into account both additive and traditional subtractive sets], or, sort of like the Super Famicom / SNES logo. And what a wonderful display of origins these bags had! From Ecuador to Indonesia to the Cote d'Ivoire (The Ivory Coast). What a cosmopolitan set of burlap! Here's some other examples from the internet demonstrating the diversity of burlap design


The next thing we discovered about burlap was how tricky it is to work with. We spent a good two days ripping burlap without proper tools such as scissors or knives and instantly felt like we were in Soviet Russia...[i.e: In Soviet Russia, you don't cut burlap...BURLAP CUTS YOU].

The final thing we learned about burlap is that it has the tendency to smell like sweaty locker room socks.

But they make for great sound baffles!

June 14, 2009

For IMMEDIATE RELEASE

We have a studio!

Sorry about the sparse postings, but over the past couple of months we've been on a quest for the perfect building for us to record our next album. For a while our journey seemed to consist of one disappointment after the other but we're happy to say we stumbled upon heaven.

Deep in the woods of Delaware, Spintonic Headquarters is slowly rising. We've got some pictures of the process [building, boasting, and burlap] for you but not quite yet.

I really hate to shove this word down your throats again, but we have a TWITTER and alot of the small pleasures [and pains] in studio-making can be more easily expressed in 140 characters.

But, psst: the best stuff is still on this weblog!

June 12, 2009

The People You'll Meet

When a musician gets ready to hit the road on a tour, a lot of exciting thoughts pass through their head. They get to play their music to fans, make new fans by playing to strangers, and help, first-hand, spread their music around the world. It is an exciting part of the job.

There are other reasons to get excited for a tour though. The places you'll go and the people you'll meet are of particular interest to me. Especially when it is late at night in a peculiar town and the person you meet is totally wasted. I was lucky enough to capture two of the dozens of drunk people on a spot of video, and finally, get them online. These two meetings took place during a February/March tour in which we traveled all around Europe.