The Name – Small Glowing Pig

From the Vault: The Name 2

The Name remains one of my favorite projects Blonski and I have ever worked on. The combination of samples, live performance restriction, and multiple-meaning-laden lyrics make it one of the coolest concepts we’ve come up with. On the first release, an EP with only two original songs, we explored a few different sounds without knowing exactly where we were headed. This second album was even more groovy and we were pushing what we could accomplish with our live setup.

The Name 2 or The Sequel to the Band: The title of this song perfectly sums up why I love this band. They named a song as the sequel to the band itself. It hurts my brain. It’s also possibly my favorite song we wrote as The Name. Mix one part funky guitar and bass, one part pottery/sensuality, and one part breathy vocals and you get this obvious “single” from an album that was never completed. Luckily, this one was nearly finished and is totally listenable. I think it was only missing a trumpet solo? Maybe?

Blonski Says: "The Name sessions definitely stand out as the most fun collaborative recording endeavor Mike and I have done recently. This track was a strong beginning to a second offering... unfortunately the live performance aspect wasn't realized for the newer material, and we stopped short of another EP. Very fun to listen to!"

The Quench Incident or: We couldn’t even come up with a second title for this one. The rap section would have been epic if we ever did final vocal takes. This one sounds like a combination of Jamiroquai and later-era Parliament. It’s also about the Large Hadron Collider, so there’s that. Worth noting is that Blonski claims to be the “Higga Man.” Be sure to listen for my groan of disgust at the quality of our scratch vocals!

Blonski Says: "Yikes, my rap verse! I really liked our experimentation on this one, and you can hear the fun we had recording the scratch vocals. This was maybe a bit too much to pull off without a lot more polishing, especially live, but if we had it would have been great. Gotta dust off the sampler!"

Here’s the no vocal version as a bonus:

Blonski Says: "Listening to the track without the vocals makes me think the track was a little thin sounding, but we really didn't mess much with playing it live to kinda evolve and 'fill in' the canvas. It grooves though."

The final hour… challenge(s)

A few weeks ago I took a look at the small glowing pig discography page and was immediately saddened. As of even this morning, the only release this year was an album written and recorded over two years ago that finally saw overdubs, mixing, and mastering in May of this year. Had we really not completed anything new? Was this really the most musically devoid year for small glowing pig since 2006? How did this happen?

Before building a resolve to right what was wrong, I reflected upon the causes. Surely much of the blame can be laid upon the doorstep of SpaceBase’s continued expansion into it’s third production year. Having a one and a half year old with a 7:30 bedtime also didn’t encourage late night rock and rolling. For most of the year, Steve was also busy playing in approximately three dozen bands ranging from renaissance and Celtic to blues rock. Jefim had moved to Boston and Devin and Angello continued to be busy working a ridiculous schedule and shredding the Les Paul in a new band, respectively. So, considering all this, what was to be done?

How about release that six month old two hour challenge and then do another one last minute when Jefim comes to town? Yeah, that sounds alright.

First, take a listen to “Parcel Octopus” by Parcel Octopus off of their album Parcel Octopus. We random band name generatored the name and then surmised that they were a punk band that had expanded into psychedelia and left behind their days of protest on route to their eponymous album and song. Nailed it.

Two Hour Challenge – Parcel Octopus

Next, it’s about time we released a song that Jim Hernovic and I put together about six months ago. We started by feeding the lyrics of the then-current top 10 pop songs (“Get Lucky,” “Radioactive,” etc.) into a word cloud generator.

Two Hour Challenge – Bones are Radioactive

So what’s next for us? Maybe some The Name. Maybe a new Vacation record. Maybe we’ll even get around to the Small Glowing Pig 10th Anniversary Album (13th anniversary?), who knows. I’m pretty sure that we’ll hear from Predicament again soon, and that Blonski and I will bang out at least a few more frames of SpaceBase before having a catastrophic hard drive failure that drives us to the brink of suicide. Whatever it is, hopefully it’s more than a two year old album and two challenge songs.

Well, until next time. See you next year. Ha!

-Mike

Attempting twelve seconds of dialogue and completing four…

After taking some time off, the production of SB:I resumed with a whimper today. After two hours of computer hassle, we learned ourselves some lessons and have barely anything to show for it…

Do not use 8MP stills, they each take up 8 megs and my laptop is like 7 years old.
Do not bother acting out the scenes, or at least, not like we attempted – it produced very little actual animation.
Do not move the heads while they are speaking, the computer animated mouths will either look silly or take 10x as long to produce.

Also on our to do list:

Remember to bring the prop miniatures to the “studio” next time, Cliff needs his tools!
Figure out a new way to mount the camera.
LED lights! Christmas lights! The one overhead position-able lamp is functional, but not producing the shadows and colors we want.
Make the mouths.

Enjoy the video, but don’t blink!

Finally, The Name is penning a fourth original tune. The live show will have to be delayed, but maybe it’s time for a second EP…

-Mike

We're still making SB:I, and here's the proof!

We’ve had to take a few weeks off from Spacebase: Infinity for a variety of reasons, but progress is still being made.

We made some decisions on how to create bodies for the characters. After some testing, I think we’ll be modelling a torso out of clay and baking it before adding twisted wire for the arms and legs. In testing, this should give us stability and control without making their movements overly stiff.

We tried making the bodies completely of wire, but found them to be a little too deformable (as evidenced by the Cliff’s Doppleganger murder scene.) We also tried modifying a wooden model we found at Michaels, but the proportions weren’t right.

Next week we’ll hopefully finish the final set and at least a few character bodies. From there it should only be another week or so until we can begin filming the show. Exciting!

In other news, The Name has written and mostly recorded a new track. Add in one more cover in the next month or two, and the set is up to six songs. Time for an open mic?

Until then, mind the heavy drops…

The Name Invades SpaceBase: Infinity's Communications Satellite, I Guess!

There was craziness this weekend as rock/funk/ridiculous duo The Name hijacked SpaceBase: Infinity’s communications system and rocked the house… or the base, as the case may be. Watch as Stack Dump and Cliff’s doppleganger grapple with a terrifying barrage of self-sampled mayhem!

As you can see, there are tons of mistakes in all areas – planning, photography, sequencing, editing, rendering… you name it, we messed it up. Things on our to do / remember list:

Make sure when starting a new stop motion project, set the camera recording settings to an HD picture quality and aspect ratio.
If characters are going to be talking with their backs to the camera, make them move when they are talking rather than jittering randomly.
Adjust any sampled (aka YouTubed) footage to the same aspect ratio as the stop motion stills.
Try normalizing (?) the color balance and contrast on all stills before constructing the final scene.
Find a render setting that won’t screw up the 3d transformations.

That’s it for now!

-Mike

Postmortem: Vacation

UPDATED 9/20/2011: Bonus unfinished tracks added to the end of the original write-up…

It’s been a month or two since release and close to a year since the last recording for the Vacation EP. I gave it a listen recently for the first time in months and figured I’d post my impressions of the project now that I’m removed from making it. Overall, a few things jump out at me as I listen.

Continue reading Postmortem: Vacation

The Name EP Release!

At long last Small Glowing Pig presents The Name EP, a different sound and feel from past projects on the label. On this album, musical duo The Name experiment with sampling their own music and incorporating live performance elements into a very groove-oriented sound.

Check our main website or click here for more info and a link to download the EP. Possible live performances to follow, most likely in the greater Hartford area. Stay tuned!

-Steve

New Website Kickoff

The new Small Glowing Pig website is finally here. Be sure to update your bookmarks to smallglowingpig.com, as it’ll be our home for the foreseeable future. On to the celebrations…

First up is a new release from Steve Blonski & the Victor Frankensteins. It’s the first proper followup to a “Steve Blonski & the” album. It also marks a return to a band last heard from way back in 2000. Two tracks from that year’s Not Gonna be Splitting the Atom Any Time Soon are featured on the new release, Antimony. Enjoy!

Steve Blonski & the Victor Frankensteins: Antimony

Next is the first release from Vacation. Meant to be a catch all “band” for all the random nonsense I come up with during my breaks from school. Think Desert Sessions but generally alone and not as interesting. It was originally intended to have a real “band” feel, so I restricted myself to one acoustic, one electric, drums, bass, and vocals. I don’t remember if I kept it up throughout the seven tracks, though. I did, however, only use one microphone for the whole thing – including the drums. Craziness!

We’ll have more news about The Name and about a new project soon. The 10th Anniversary album seems to be on hold. It’s already the 11th Anniversary, so what’s another year?

-Mike

SGP TCB

Updates on two bands and miscellaneous other details! Hooray!

First, The Name would like to thank Shake it Twice for letting us rock out at Musky’s with them earlier in the month. Despite technical difficulties and human error, we managed to pull off (if we’re being generous) four songs. Two The Name originals and covers of “Summertime” by The Fresh Prince/DJ Jazzy Jeff and “The Way of the World” by Earth Wind and Fire. Luckily there is no audio from the show. The next step is recording the originals and hitting the open mics.

In addition to a pending The Name release, Meat Without Feet are inching closer to their second release. Another four track EP, WPOP will likely drop within the next month or so. Recording in nearly complete, with only minor touch-ups and mixing left to do.

Friend of the label, Jefim Piekarz, is also hard at work on The Wayward Solider’s debut, which will feature some drum, bass, and keyboard from SGP members.

Black Velvet’s second disc, Reserved, is also perpetually in progress. Someday!

-Mike

New Blog and New Music…

This is our first blog post for SGP! Figured a place to keep everyone up to date on the latest SGP projects was in order.

A few things happening…

First, the second SB & the Victor Frankensteins disc is more or less finished. We’ve decided to delay the release in order to fool around with mixing/master tricks and some new plugins. All recording is done and at some point we’ll just be satisfied and release it.

Second, the SGP 10th Anniversary album is in the works. We’re recording one new track, one old unfinished track, and then tacking on some unreleased works from the past. This will be the first chance to hear some stuff from the abandoned Andre EP, and the rarely talked about Space album. Thinking about including two “discs” with one greatest hits and one rarities. The goal is to finish it before the end of 2010 so that it’s still the 10th anniversary…

And finally, The Name is making its debut Wednesday the 25th at an open mic at the Main Pub in Manchester, CT. Hoping to release a single before or shortly after the performance.