TOURMIN.
I'm sitting on the floor of my parents house in Aptos, CA. For the past week or so we've been slowly making our way back home from Austin, TX. We've been staying with family members, doing 8 hour drives, listening to hours of music, discussing definitions of "lo-fi" and "punk rock", debating, planning, trying to figure out how to sleep... cleansing..... sitting still in a van... endlessly.
TOURMIN.
This has been a really incredible tour (and all tours are incredible, but this one especially so!) It is by far the longest time we've spent out on the road, and we've seen parts of the country that I've never seen before. (Lots of Desert! Lots of Scrub!) But we've met some really wonderful people and had some totally epic adventures that I'm sure we'll remember forever. (5 am, sitting at the black jack tables in Vegas... comes to mind... ALSO, playing in the middle of the Arizona desert while the sun went down... or walking around downtown austin, a little fuzzy, giving strangers high fives...)
SO I know that it was my promise to update at least every 2-3 weeks, but we've been on the road...what can i say.. it's hard to find time during tour to get access to the net for longer than a minute (HOW DO THEY SURVIVE?!?!?!)
But now... relaxing in beautiful APTOS (i just won $10 at darts, hell yeah!) I have some time to put up a bunch of stuff I've been meaning to share.
First off, TOUR SONG #1.... TOUR SONG #1 (Fall 2009) by Battlehooch
BACKSTORY ALERT!!!!! For the first batch of tours we did we talked about how it would be cool to try to write a song during the course of the tour... but we never got around to it. However, on our tour to Southern California last November we were finally able to make it happen! Huberloinz and myself used our recording devices to record little fragments of random dialog and also quick improvisations on whatever instrument we came across. Then, I cut it all up and put it together in Abelton Live. It pretty much doesn't sound like anything we've ever done, but somehow I still think it sounds like BATTLEHOOCH. Try to pick out the Charles Mingus Sample, if ya can :) :) :)
(SIDE NOTE ALERT!) - we've been working on a second tour song for this current tour, but it's not quite ready to be shown yet... but it includes recordings of screeching washing machines, dog barks, peanut butter jars, and Anton from Judgement Day freestyle rapping. COMING SOON.
To wrap up this post, I just wanted to gather together some of the videos that we've been amassing over the course of this tour. The first one is a video that a newspaper in Austin did about us street performing during SXSW...
.... the next video is something that a new fan shot while we played in a field on the first day of SXSW...
...and finally here is the first part of our own video tour journal, edited by our 7th member: Fuegodamus (i.e. the dude who does all of our trippy visuals at our live shows). We have tons of footage that we're still editing together, but like I said, it's been hard to find free time for the past week or so, so we'll be putting that stuff out ASAP.)
This tour was amazing and while I'm excited to sleep in my own bed tonight (!!!!!!) I'm sad to know that I won't be zipping all over the country playing music and meeting new friends. Hopefully these videos can give you a sense of what the experience as been like. As always it is a joy and an honor to travel the country with my brothers. For a more detailed description of what the tour was like, check out our twitter accounts HERE. We were all trying to tweet like fiends, trying to capture the intangible madness that is touring.... moment by moment.... and if i do say so myself, i think we did a damn good job.
LOVE YOU ALL!
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Monday, March 1, 2010
NEW BATTLEHOOCH REMIX - Human Ram (DJ PHYZK Remix)
(scene: the middle of the ocean on a raft)
I'm starting to see how this all works.
The planning necessary for execution.
Multiple ideas being fashioned simultaneously.
A PLAN will lead to victory.
(end scene)
So we have a new remix to drop on you all.
This time around the song being remixed is "Human Ram", from our soon to be released self titled sophomore album (editors note - coming out April 17th, 2010!!!!).
Q: And who (you're certainly wondering) is it that remixed this "Song"?
A: DJ PHZYK
Follow Up Q: Who DAT?
A:
This guy. One of my (and the whole band's) good buddies.
PHYZK and the BATTLEHOOCH crew go way back. PHYZK, myself (Archaeology Johnson) and Steamboat Ravis lived in a "Triple" dorm room on the 2nd floor of A building @ Porter College in UCSC.
INTERESTING FACTOID: BATTLEHOOCH's own Dr Spankk and Huberloinz also lived on this hall (as well as many many classic clowns such as the Guat, Punk Rock Chris, Smac, Annie and Heather, Bobby Rawson and a good portion of San Francisco's own sublimely freaky NEW THRILL PARADE, just to name a few.)
(REPRESENT A2 NORTH!!!)
(Here we are in the UCSC Electronic Music Studio... back in the day, ya'll)
After we lived together in the dorms, we later moved into a house along with Huberloinz, Dylan (from Swanifant) and the infamous G-MAPS. The house, being on Mentel Ave., was dubbed the Mental House.
(editors note: I'm currently sifting through the HOURS AND HOURS of Mental House recordings I have - jams, shows, demos, freak outs, experiments, general madness - in effort to put together a blog post on that in the not so distant future...)
Here are a couple pictures of PHYZK hurling himself off of the couch in the living room of the Mental House. THESE ARE RAW PICTURES. NO PHOTOSHOPPING, YO.
PHYZK is impressive on many levels. He plays many instruments including tabla, steel drum, congas, turn tables, and all manner of crazy auxiliary/hand percussion type doodads. He also makes FAT Beats. He was ALSO also an astrophysics major.... and word on the street was that that was the most brutal major at UCSC. Word.
Anyone that knows PHYZK was tell you that he's a daredevil (thus him constantly jumping off of our couch... the daredevil!). Be it snowboarding, mountain biking, dirt biking, or just jumping off of a really big tree stump, PHYZK always seemed to be in a hurry to throw himself off of a cliff or something.
I've made days worth of music with DJ PHYZK and spent 10 times as many days kicking it super hard with him. Getting candy at Walgreen's. Watching Mr. Show DVDs over and over.
SHTONEY.
He's a true homie.
So that's why we gave him our track to fuck with, because we knew that he'd make something EPIC.... and lo and behold he did not fail. In fact, he outdid himself.
And without further adue (the crowd: "TOO LATE!") I present... Human Ram (DJ PHYZK REMIX)
Human Ram (DJ PHYZK Remix) by Battlehooch
I'm starting to see how this all works.
The planning necessary for execution.
Multiple ideas being fashioned simultaneously.
A PLAN will lead to victory.
(end scene)
So we have a new remix to drop on you all.
This time around the song being remixed is "Human Ram", from our soon to be released self titled sophomore album (editors note - coming out April 17th, 2010!!!!).
Q: And who (you're certainly wondering) is it that remixed this "Song"?
A: DJ PHZYK
Follow Up Q: Who DAT?
A:
This guy. One of my (and the whole band's) good buddies.
PHYZK and the BATTLEHOOCH crew go way back. PHYZK, myself (Archaeology Johnson) and Steamboat Ravis lived in a "Triple" dorm room on the 2nd floor of A building @ Porter College in UCSC.
INTERESTING FACTOID: BATTLEHOOCH's own Dr Spankk and Huberloinz also lived on this hall (as well as many many classic clowns such as the Guat, Punk Rock Chris, Smac, Annie and Heather, Bobby Rawson and a good portion of San Francisco's own sublimely freaky NEW THRILL PARADE, just to name a few.)
(REPRESENT A2 NORTH!!!)
(Here we are in the UCSC Electronic Music Studio... back in the day, ya'll)
After we lived together in the dorms, we later moved into a house along with Huberloinz, Dylan (from Swanifant) and the infamous G-MAPS. The house, being on Mentel Ave., was dubbed the Mental House.
(editors note: I'm currently sifting through the HOURS AND HOURS of Mental House recordings I have - jams, shows, demos, freak outs, experiments, general madness - in effort to put together a blog post on that in the not so distant future...)
Here are a couple pictures of PHYZK hurling himself off of the couch in the living room of the Mental House. THESE ARE RAW PICTURES. NO PHOTOSHOPPING, YO.
PHYZK is impressive on many levels. He plays many instruments including tabla, steel drum, congas, turn tables, and all manner of crazy auxiliary/hand percussion type doodads. He also makes FAT Beats. He was ALSO also an astrophysics major.... and word on the street was that that was the most brutal major at UCSC. Word.
Anyone that knows PHYZK was tell you that he's a daredevil (thus him constantly jumping off of our couch... the daredevil!). Be it snowboarding, mountain biking, dirt biking, or just jumping off of a really big tree stump, PHYZK always seemed to be in a hurry to throw himself off of a cliff or something.
I've made days worth of music with DJ PHYZK and spent 10 times as many days kicking it super hard with him. Getting candy at Walgreen's. Watching Mr. Show DVDs over and over.
SHTONEY.
He's a true homie.
So that's why we gave him our track to fuck with, because we knew that he'd make something EPIC.... and lo and behold he did not fail. In fact, he outdid himself.
And without further adue (the crowd: "TOO LATE!") I present... Human Ram (DJ PHYZK REMIX)
Human Ram (DJ PHYZK Remix) by Battlehooch
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
A Taste
In case ya'll don't know, there is a new BATTLEHOOCH LP coming out in April 2010.
The (currently untitled) affair was recorded at Studio Paradiso in our fair city of San Francisco with the help of our good friend and contemporary psych rock boy wonder, Jason Kick (of Maus Haus, The Lovely Public and Social Studies fame). The album was recorded entirely over two days, and every song was tracked "live" (we did a couple tiny overdubs and rerecorded some vocals) with all the band members in "the same room" (some of us were separated by soundproof glass). Compared to our previous albums "Oof Owf" and "Piecechow", which each took months and months to record and each had literally hundreds and hundreds of tracks, this album was a walk in the park.
As of today, the tracks have all been thoroughly mixed, adjusted and mastered. In terms of the physical recordings, the album is done but there's still a couple more loose ends to tie up.
Just yesterday, the 6 members of BATTLEHOOCH put on some swanky threads and headed out to the Albany Blub in the East Bay to take some photographs that we plan on using for the cover art of the album. Once we get a album cover picture and an album title picked out, then we can send it all off to the presses and before you know it, you all will have a dandy new piece of BATTLEHOOCH music to listen to. ALSO!!!!! This album is especially exciting because it will be the first album we're releasing on vinyl.
Here is a taste of said album, the first single, "Somersaults" (Here's a link). Within the next month or so there should be a music video for this song, directed by the lovely Easton Grainer.
(Current projects being worked on:
Back to work.
The (currently untitled) affair was recorded at Studio Paradiso in our fair city of San Francisco with the help of our good friend and contemporary psych rock boy wonder, Jason Kick (of Maus Haus, The Lovely Public and Social Studies fame). The album was recorded entirely over two days, and every song was tracked "live" (we did a couple tiny overdubs and rerecorded some vocals) with all the band members in "the same room" (some of us were separated by soundproof glass). Compared to our previous albums "Oof Owf" and "Piecechow", which each took months and months to record and each had literally hundreds and hundreds of tracks, this album was a walk in the park.
As of today, the tracks have all been thoroughly mixed, adjusted and mastered. In terms of the physical recordings, the album is done but there's still a couple more loose ends to tie up.
Just yesterday, the 6 members of BATTLEHOOCH put on some swanky threads and headed out to the Albany Blub in the East Bay to take some photographs that we plan on using for the cover art of the album. Once we get a album cover picture and an album title picked out, then we can send it all off to the presses and before you know it, you all will have a dandy new piece of BATTLEHOOCH music to listen to. ALSO!!!!! This album is especially exciting because it will be the first album we're releasing on vinyl.
Here is a taste of said album, the first single, "Somersaults" (Here's a link). Within the next month or so there should be a music video for this song, directed by the lovely Easton Grainer.
(Current projects being worked on:
- A special love themed Battlehooch Valentines Day Mix
- Trying to get 3 more brand new songs learned before we head off to SXSW. If we succeed then, we'll have 8 brand new songs in our repertoire (that's not counting the songs on the new album). Album #4 ain't too far off ya'll and album #3 hasn't even come out yet!
- Making a music video of the "tour song". (What's the tour song?)
- Compiling a little video of us recording the new album (we've got some cool studio footage. or maybe it ain't cool. maybe. maybe. MAY-BAY!)
- Trying to book a tour in Germany
- Street Performing 2010 campaign.
- TOO MUCH STUFF.)
Back to work.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
The first ever BATTLE-REMIX
HELLO! Look At This! A new post in under 2 weeks. We're Setting records.
Thus is the nature of BATTLEBLOG 3.0!
There's a town called Aptos in California. Here, I'll Prove it to you. Aptos is about a 2 hour drive from SF AND it is where I (Archaeology Johnson) grew up.
Sleepy beach town. Lots of Trees and Fog. Approximately something like 8-9 Pizza joints. An old rotting WWII battleship sitting at the end of a wharf. Utterly mellow. Deliciously wonderful.
(MEMORIES, YO.)
Moving on....
I went to Aptos High School.
Here's a picture of me on a typical day hanging out with my friends during lunch.
One of my friends at AHS was Tyler MacCauley. When I was first getting into "indie rock" (most of high school was spent listening to Jam Bands... I know I know I know...) or whatever you'd call it, I used to get together with Tyler (and our good buddies Dan Merrill and "Chuck" Fenster) and do our best to stumble through playing all of "Is This It" by The Strokes. (LOVE that album, don't give a fuck what anyone says).
After AHS, Tyler and I have continued to be friends. It's the kind of bond that only two total music dorks who love talking about music can forge.
Tyler went to UC Berkeley and I went to UC Santa Cruz (and met my brothers).
Tyler formed Tempo No Tempo.
My brothers and I formed The Sex (which begat The New Rectangle, which begat Sex with Jon, which begat Platypus Rex, which begat BATTLEHOOCH and If you don't know who BATTLEHOOCH is, and you are reading this blog, you are an anomaly.)
Tyler and I stayed in touch throughout college and whenever possible our bands played together.
At this point (January 2010) we've done tons of shows together... we're serious bros. (MY CHEMICAL BROMANCE: The Battlehooch/Tempo No Tempo Incident - coming to paperback in March 2090)
Together, we've played in barns, fat clubs, coffee shops, co-ops, more barns... there have been multiple shows where we merged both our bands together into a super behemoth of FUNK (Think Power Rangers or Captain Planet). Once, we even did a show with Tempo No Tempo where we covered each others songs.
They covered our song, DEEP KNEE BENDS....
....we took 5 of their songs, chopped them up and put them back together.
YOU GET THE PICTURE? MAD MAD MAD MAD MAD MAD LOVE.
The latest development in this bromance is truly exciting!
I present the first ever BATTLEHOOCH remix, done by Tempo No Tempo. The song being remixed is "When We're Trying To Be Quiet" (from the OOF OWF EP, 2007)
When We're Trying To Be Quiet (Tempo No Tempo Remix) by Battlehooch
Cool, yes? I sure think so. This remix was actually done a couple years ago, but we never had a good opportunity to show it off. It seemed that with the new attention being paid to the blog and the fact that the new DISKO version of "Quiet" has been standard in our recent sets, it seemed like the perfect time to bust out this little nugget of wonder.
ENJOY.
Thanx again Tyler/Tempo No Tempo!!!!
Saturday, January 16, 2010
THE RETURNER....
... hath returned.
January 16th, 2010. (Twenty-X!)
Hello.
Just purchased some fine fine music (legally, thank you very much).....
Some Lee "Scratch" Perry, some Kraftwerk, "Tell me something good" by Rufus/Chaka Khan....
HELL! (close your ears, children...),
I even picked up some Lady Gaga and some Aaliyah (no joke, the Synth in the song "Try Again" is pretty much totally Divine, a la FUNK) and ..........
(can't forget fever ray either... words that make me think about the knife/fever ray: icy, remote, glaciers, haunted, ghosts, empty, cavernous, fleeting, SCARY AS $#!%)
Starting sifting through it all while cooking breaky this morning (eggs, bacon and potatoes "mckinley" style.)
THAT SOUNDS LAID BACK!!!!!! (right?)
I know what you're thinking...
"so if YOU (Archaeology Johnson/BATTLEHOOCH) have enough time to listen to music and eat eggs, surely you have enough time to maintain the flippin' blog (LIKE YOU PROMISED!!!!!)"
you're correct, invisible personage! the past couple of weeks/months whatevs have not been spent in constant state of such luxury. NO MA'AM/SIR!
we're gonna start rolling the goodies out again (STARTING NOW) and the plan is to keep this updated on an every 2-3 weeks basis.
(Hold me to this yo. I got a bunch of content lined up so I SHOULD be able to do this. if it doesn't happen, it's just cause I'm being lazy. or am engaged in some kinda of brouhaha. dig? you know how brouhaha's can be...)
First thing I'm gonna unleash is some tidbits from our New Years Eve 2009/2010 show with Maus Haus. For those who weren't there, it was a pretty ridiculous event... confetti, balloons, champagne, neck beards, smoochin' and of course a gaggle of hooch/haus collaborations:
Here's a video (shot by the infamous SOUL DONUT) of one of said collaborations, "Looks You Can't See" (from our album PIECECHOW, buy it here). We added some extra horns (thanks pope and aaron), some extra vocal firepower (thanks kick and rampage), and joe genden held it down how only joe genden can, and that's HARD.
(if you wanna see more video from our new years set, including our new DISKO revamp of "When We're Trying To Be Quiet" clicke here.)
We returned the favor later on in the night by joining MAUS HAUS for their song, "Reaction" .
Reaction (MAUS HAUS and BATTLEHOOCH Live Collaboration NYE 2009/2010) by Battlehooch
To wrap up the night we also did a gaggle of covers. While surely fun and jubilant in the moment, our collaborative "California Love" (2pac and Dr. Dre) and "The National Anthem" (Radiohead) covers didn't quite translate over to recorded formats.... a little too much of the "guess you had to be there" factor, ya feel me?
However, our cover of the B-52s "Rock Lobster", while still raw (and brother I mean RAW) is such a document of epic rock absurdity (I mean come on.... an 11 person band on the stage at Hemlock... singing about some kind of kinky mushroom trip of a beach party.... with Narwhal and Bikini Whale sound effects...) that it's worth sharing as well. Featuring Ben Juodvalkis, Pat Smith and Josh Rampage on main vocals and yours truly and the pope on the "girl vocals" Rock Lobster (B-52s Cover - BATTLEHOOCH/MAUS HAUS LIVE COLLABORATION NYE 2009/2010) by Battlehooch
Chew on that for a minute. LOVE YOU.
see... you.. in........................................... 2-3..... we.... eks.......
BABY.
January 16th, 2010. (Twenty-X!)
Hello.
Just purchased some fine fine music (legally, thank you very much).....
Some Lee "Scratch" Perry, some Kraftwerk, "Tell me something good" by Rufus/Chaka Khan....
HELL! (close your ears, children...),
I even picked up some Lady Gaga and some Aaliyah (no joke, the Synth in the song "Try Again" is pretty much totally Divine, a la FUNK) and ..........
(can't forget fever ray either... words that make me think about the knife/fever ray: icy, remote, glaciers, haunted, ghosts, empty, cavernous, fleeting, SCARY AS $#!%)
Starting sifting through it all while cooking breaky this morning (eggs, bacon and potatoes "mckinley" style.)
THAT SOUNDS LAID BACK!!!!!! (right?)
I know what you're thinking...
"so if YOU (Archaeology Johnson/BATTLEHOOCH) have enough time to listen to music and eat eggs, surely you have enough time to maintain the flippin' blog (LIKE YOU PROMISED!!!!!)"
you're correct, invisible personage! the past couple of weeks/months whatevs have not been spent in constant state of such luxury. NO MA'AM/SIR!
we're gonna start rolling the goodies out again (STARTING NOW) and the plan is to keep this updated on an every 2-3 weeks basis.
(Hold me to this yo. I got a bunch of content lined up so I SHOULD be able to do this. if it doesn't happen, it's just cause I'm being lazy. or am engaged in some kinda of brouhaha. dig? you know how brouhaha's can be...)
First thing I'm gonna unleash is some tidbits from our New Years Eve 2009/2010 show with Maus Haus. For those who weren't there, it was a pretty ridiculous event... confetti, balloons, champagne, neck beards, smoochin' and of course a gaggle of hooch/haus collaborations:
Here's a video (shot by the infamous SOUL DONUT) of one of said collaborations, "Looks You Can't See" (from our album PIECECHOW, buy it here). We added some extra horns (thanks pope and aaron), some extra vocal firepower (thanks kick and rampage), and joe genden held it down how only joe genden can, and that's HARD.
(if you wanna see more video from our new years set, including our new DISKO revamp of "When We're Trying To Be Quiet" clicke here.)
We returned the favor later on in the night by joining MAUS HAUS for their song, "Reaction" .
Reaction (MAUS HAUS and BATTLEHOOCH Live Collaboration NYE 2009/2010) by Battlehooch
To wrap up the night we also did a gaggle of covers. While surely fun and jubilant in the moment, our collaborative "California Love" (2pac and Dr. Dre) and "The National Anthem" (Radiohead) covers didn't quite translate over to recorded formats.... a little too much of the "guess you had to be there" factor, ya feel me?
However, our cover of the B-52s "Rock Lobster", while still raw (and brother I mean RAW) is such a document of epic rock absurdity (I mean come on.... an 11 person band on the stage at Hemlock... singing about some kind of kinky mushroom trip of a beach party.... with Narwhal and Bikini Whale sound effects...) that it's worth sharing as well. Featuring Ben Juodvalkis, Pat Smith and Josh Rampage on main vocals and yours truly and the pope on the "girl vocals" Rock Lobster (B-52s Cover - BATTLEHOOCH/MAUS HAUS LIVE COLLABORATION NYE 2009/2010) by Battlehooch
Chew on that for a minute. LOVE YOU.
see... you.. in........................................... 2-3..... we.... eks.......
BABY.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Battleblog M.I.A.
FOR WHAT ITS WORTH....
the following....
We're busy as (expletive) these days, due to (insert excuse). So due to (prior noted excuse) the boys and I (Battlehooch) have fallen behind on (stuff that isn't music, that has to do with our musical existence, i.e. THE BLOG). so we're aiming to have our (prior expletive) together by the end of this (unit of measuring long distances of time) and ready for (a mythical creature that is so into battlehooch and actually likes what we do, that they sought out battlehooch's obscure and poorly maintained blog and (semi) frequently check it.)
(parenthesisisisisisisisisisisisis).
Anywho, believe it or not, we're working on tons of new stuff... compiling old tour and concert footage, mixing a new album, doing tons recording experiments, learning brand new songs, traveling thai land (no joke), and plotting general revampage.
(does anyone want to take pictures of us? or shoot a music video with us? or anything cool like that?)
If you read this blog, you are AMAZING and i have no idea how you stumbled upon it.
I'm REALLY happy you found it. I hope you like it. (honestly, yo)
I still intend to keep up on it (thebattleblog), just need to get a bunch more material ready to be posted and then it'll be pumping out rare battlehooch gems (GROSS) like nobodies buisness.
don't want to publish anything SUBPAR (irony?)
love,
Archaeology Johnson
P.S. - I want to live my life like how Greg Saunier plays drums.
the following....
We're busy as (expletive) these days, due to (insert excuse). So due to (prior noted excuse) the boys and I (Battlehooch) have fallen behind on (stuff that isn't music, that has to do with our musical existence, i.e. THE BLOG). so we're aiming to have our (prior expletive) together by the end of this (unit of measuring long distances of time) and ready for (a mythical creature that is so into battlehooch and actually likes what we do, that they sought out battlehooch's obscure and poorly maintained blog and (semi) frequently check it.)
(parenthesisisisisisisisisisisisis).
Anywho, believe it or not, we're working on tons of new stuff... compiling old tour and concert footage, mixing a new album, doing tons recording experiments, learning brand new songs, traveling thai land (no joke), and plotting general revampage.
(does anyone want to take pictures of us? or shoot a music video with us? or anything cool like that?)
If you read this blog, you are AMAZING and i have no idea how you stumbled upon it.
I'm REALLY happy you found it. I hope you like it. (honestly, yo)
I still intend to keep up on it (thebattleblog), just need to get a bunch more material ready to be posted and then it'll be pumping out rare battlehooch gems (GROSS) like nobodies buisness.
don't want to publish anything SUBPAR (irony?)
love,
Archaeology Johnson
P.S. - I want to live my life like how Greg Saunier plays drums.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
"Ugh. Are they honestly Jamming?"
When Battlehooch was first getting started (back in UCSC when we were called The New Rectangle and/or The Sex) we would jam.
ALOT.
There are many shows we played (with upwards of 10+ people in the band at some points, mind you) where no more than 2 people at any given time "knew" what was going on. someone would just yell "we're in the key of G" and then we'd blatch for a a while.
bless our patient and supportive college friends and their "approval" of such musical expeditions.
yet despite the near critical role that improvisation has played in our foundation as a band, once we moved to San Francisco and started calling ourselves Battlehooch, the improvisation dried up. Sure we'd twist things around every show, and sure we'd noodle around in practice, but things became very calculated and exact (trust us, it was all for the better). we never would reach points in the set where we'd all be jamming super hard, driving ahead full bore towards a cliff, not having any idea if our parachutes would work once we flew off the edge.
...slowly it's starting to make it's way back into the fore.
here's a recording of an improvisation that we did to start off our suprise show in our buddy joe's basement.
it's based on a groovy interlocking rhythm that we've been messing around with since the new rectangle days. (BRINGING IT ALL FULL CIRCLE)
Joe's Basement (A Battlehooch Improvisation 10 24 09) by AJ McKinley
ALOT.
There are many shows we played (with upwards of 10+ people in the band at some points, mind you) where no more than 2 people at any given time "knew" what was going on. someone would just yell "we're in the key of G" and then we'd blatch for a a while.
bless our patient and supportive college friends and their "approval" of such musical expeditions.
yet despite the near critical role that improvisation has played in our foundation as a band, once we moved to San Francisco and started calling ourselves Battlehooch, the improvisation dried up. Sure we'd twist things around every show, and sure we'd noodle around in practice, but things became very calculated and exact (trust us, it was all for the better). we never would reach points in the set where we'd all be jamming super hard, driving ahead full bore towards a cliff, not having any idea if our parachutes would work once we flew off the edge.
...slowly it's starting to make it's way back into the fore.
here's a recording of an improvisation that we did to start off our suprise show in our buddy joe's basement.
it's based on a groovy interlocking rhythm that we've been messing around with since the new rectangle days. (BRINGING IT ALL FULL CIRCLE)
Joe's Basement (A Battlehooch Improvisation 10 24 09) by AJ McKinley
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