"September Remembered" by Thee Iran-Contras

We recorded 6+ hours of new music this weekend, including this gem:

$55!

e350-- new faceplate

Somehow, without realizing it, we've become a digital oscillator household. Or so you'd think by looking at the current state of our modular. The imminent release of a certain VCO by a certain company I build for will slide the scales back to the analog side of things, but in the meantime, we have a Hertz Donut, a Cloud Generator and a Morphing Terrarium all in a row, which I call "perfect sine alley." We own a uLFO, too (production model #001), which holds its own just fine in terms of sound quality and sine purity (is that even a thing anymore? Am I dating myself in dredging up that reference?).

The e350 Morphing Terrarium was built from Synthesis Technology's "kit" version, which is essentially the fully built PCBs, minus the pots, jacks and faceplate-- all surface mount work is done for you, at a $100+ savings. Not bad!

I was interested in bringing the jumper pins on the back (which enable/disable wavetable interpolation and reassign the outputs into phase shifted copies) to the faceplate, a popular mod for the module, so I contacted Pro Modular about etching an extended panel for me (with an additional 2HP to accommodate the switches), and asked David from Bubblesound for Illustrator help.

After a short wait, the revised faceplate arrived with yesterday's mail. I threw some Davies knobs on there and KA-BLAM! It looks like this:



BEAUTIFUL! Thank you again to Stephen and to David for their help, and to Paul for designing such an interesting module.

We played a show!

We're so behind on this blog that I'm posting a photo from a show that happened a couple of weeks ago at The Corpse, one which I did not even post a flier for beforehand...



This is a roundabout way of saying: HELLO! How have you been? We're officially moved in here, and are adjusting to life west of the east coast. There will be new synth videos and such up this way shortly, and hopefully more news about both The Speers and Emotional Haircut Decisions, the two bands we have going on at the moment.

Speaking of The Speers, we have two shows lined up in the coming months: April 30th, at "some dude's house in Pilson" (I'll update this with details when I have 'em), we will be backing up Chicago poet Devin King during his reading there. No rehearsals yet, but if you bet on us playing feedback for most of it, you'd probably do alright.

Then, on May 13th, we'll be playing at our favorite group in town (Names Divine)'s CD release party at Mortville. YES!!

With any luck, there will be an announcement about a few more gigs between now and then. Stay tuned!

Finally, I am very very excited to say that THEE IRAN-CONTRAS ARE COMING TO CHICAGO! IN TWO WEEKENDS, IN FACT!! We'll be recording a new CD in a rented house, as is our style. If you happen to know anyone with a drum set who wouldn't mind loaning it to us for a few days, please get in touch. We really only need the flood tom and snare.