Parlour Steps

Vancouver, Canada's Parlour Steps blabber on about all things Thought-Rock! www.parloursteps.com

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

NXNE Madness and Canada Day Show!

We just returned from rainy Toronto and its massive and incredible North By Northeast Festival of Music and Film. I think we've all finally caught up on our sleep after the ear-splitting, ass-shaking, alcohol-fuelled, sweaty good times.
With 500 bands in attendance for the festival, spotting the tight-panted, beardo-brodown, rockstar hipsters wasn't hard - they littered the city's core, eager and overwhelmed. Hand-pumping, flyer distro-ing, beer swilling madness!
Our first show at The Hyatt Regency on Thursday afternoon was a strange one. Yes, we rocked it hard. Yes, we got to blast the ears of a few unsuspecting conference-goers who wouldn't have seen us otherwise. But tearing out a new one for some really sober people in a brightly lit hotel ballroom was a little strange.
Our evening show was much more pleasing. The Cameron House is a cabaret theatre style venue, intimate and wonderful sounding (thanks Frank!). We packed it, sharing the evening with some amazing performers (Twilight Hotel, The Abramson Singers, Language-Arts). We love the Toronto night life - they do it so well!
We spent the remainder of the weekend frolicking about, using our all-access passes to hop from band to band, drink to drink, wet street to wet street. Some notables of our adventures:
Mark Berube getting his crowd so worked up, so intensely focused.
Dan Mangan wading into a tightly packed room to serenade the adoring crowd acappella.
The Dudes front man rocking it hard with a drug-addled, broken collarbone. That is fuckin PUNK!
Sure the traffic the horrendous, you can't park anywhere in the city, and there's no woods to get away to, but Toronto knows how to open its city up to an incredible festival of new music and good people.

In other news, we're playing the Man Stage this Canada Day, July 1st at Cananda Conference and Convention Centre (Canada Place, @ the end of Howe Street) . It's free, there'll be all the usual clowning about, fireworks etc. We're on at 1:30pm sharp!

Love,
Yr Parlour Steps

Monday, June 01, 2009

Recording our new Recordalbum and a Historic Offer!

North By Northeast Festival of Music Showcase!
Parlour Steps play The Cameron House (408 Queen Street West, Toronto) Thursday, June 18th at midnight.

While we continue chipping away at this massive granite block stamped "The Next Parlour Steps Album", we have noticed that over our amazing 9 (!) years in this crazy business of making music we've amassed a small treasure of rare and live recordings, b-sides, and curious demos. In writing this next chapter of the P Steps experiment, we've realized an opportunity to provide you with our back story; our prologue up to this point, if you will.

So, we are putting together a little digital ZIP file compilation of our first 3 albums plus a bundle of illuminating goodies that haven't been available until now, plus some embarrassing videos and other P Steps oddities. In two weeks you'll be able to buy it here. Check back!

Get the latest P Steps tweets at
twitter.com/parloursteps

Now we pull back the sheets on our latest recording endeavour...

The sun blazes in the windows down here at Ogre Studios in Vancouver, glazing the live room in glorious orange shafts. This is exceptional in its re-writing of the recording experience, an activity overwhelmingly associated with cave-like structures inhabited by pale-skinned engineers and light adverse, hungover musicians. No, we drink tea and break for sushi on the lawn between takes.

Ogre Studios is tucked away in an industrial workshop row of luthiers and paint splattered artist's studios. It's owned and run by one very amicable John Raham, who administers an excellent mic selection and sagely advice in wrestling with the archaic Ampex tape machine buried in the chest of this place. Approaching a respectable 40 year middle age, the analog 2 inch tape machine is a massive, heavy, heat-sink of a beast, requiring more attention and TLC than an infirm, bed-ridden patient. Instead of full bedpans, this thing, if not watched and stopped after its 16 minute maximum run time, will swiftly spool off your 2 inch tape into a mighty expensive and concerning nest on the machine room floor. This requires a strenuous attention to the clock, how much time we have on the tape, whether this next song would fit, who's turn it is to bound down the stairs and stop the tape machine...

This would be a frustrating and, to an outside observer, ridiculously frivolous and esoteric exercise were it not for the sound coming out of those speakers during playback.

Oh, the sound! Our music, our creations in all their bombastic glory, magnetically imprinted on this discontinued tape stock is like hearing the God of Rock and Roll whispering in our ear. The way the tape embraces our sounds in heavenly and positively recasts the experience. What BALLS! Tape gives our music weight and a physical presence over purely digital, as if we were creating a real imprint in the aural plane, not just some computer representation.

The live room, where we situate Rob to record his drums, fills with his thunderous, jazz-incensed aural exorcisms. You'll hear it in the recordings, a great sense of dimensional space and air - a real drum kit in a real room, pounded on by a real drummer.

Julie lays her grooves down with the drums, unhinging such bounce and drive we feel it moving our nether regions.

Later I will "prepare" the baby grand piano in this room, placing a snare drum on the sounding board, a small cymbal on the larger bass strings, all for the effect of a wonderful "SPACK" sound when hit. I braid loose pieces of paper into the strings to encourage a buzz and resonance.

We amass a covenant of guitars and effects, borrowed and begged for: Gibson Les Paul, Fender Telecaster, Gretsch Nashville, vintage 1960's Fender Stratocaster, Ibanez Artcore... For amplifiers we enlist the valuable technical assistance of one Mike Zobac and the wonderful people at Backline Musician Services, who loan us the ingredients to that ever-elusive guitar sound of our dreams - Orange amp and cab, a vintage Vox AC30, a meticulously maintained Rhodes keyboard... We rattle the walls, shake the floor, startle visitors, and illicit excited expletives from the building's other residents.

Now I find myself nearly naked, robed only in a Brazilian sarong, singing into a crazy expensive microphone in my bedroom. This is where we've continued this project - The K Lab. I overturn the bed's mattress and hang blankets from the walls to try and deaden the horrible flutter that accompanies apartment recording. I'm nearly naked cause a hot spell has hit Vancouver, and I'm a nudist in my own bedroom. If Ryen wasn't threatening to drop by to film some of this, I'd be fully buck, singing with my junk out.

These songs are starting to gel and solidify, becoming real under our hands. They will start to take on life and personality, demanding different things for themselves, developing personality before it's mixdown time in July. Next week we lay some saucy horns on them. Cool.

More later...

Much Love,
Caleb
June 1, 2009
The K Lab, Vancouver

Friday, May 30, 2008

Eastern Tour Spring 2008

Our Eastern tour of the cities most Sonically Hungry!!

We are flying, driving, rawking, and rolling through some of the best clubs in Ontario and the eastern/central US. Below is our itinerary. We hope you can make it out to see us in our finest, most contemporary form.

June 13-14th
We schmooze the saucy industry types and those who love them at NXNE,
Toronto, ON
June 15
Zaphod's Beeblebrox, Ottawa, ON - 9pm w/ Summerlad
June 17
The Middle East Upstairs, Cambridge (Boston), MA
WERS Radio performance @ 3pm
June 18
Club Cafe, Pittsburgh, PA, 7pm w/ Love Tara
June 20
Lager House, Detroit, MI, 8pm
June 21
Phog Lounge, Windsor, ON, 9pm
June 22
Trepid House, Waterloo, ON, 8pm
June 23
Salt Lounge, London, ON, 8pm
June 24
Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto, ON, 7pm
June 25
The Casbah, Hamilton, ON, 9pm
CIUT (Toronto) Radio performance @ 8am


We hope in our little rocknroll hearts that if you are around, you will participate in our jovial ongoing exercise in aural communication. We'll rock your rocks off!!

Love, Yr Parlour Steps

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Parlour Steps " Thieves of Memory" Video!

Yes, Dear Steppers,
We have finally P Stepped into the video age!

" Thieves of Memory" was made with the gracious help of Ryen Froggatt (DOP), Deborah Sidney (make-up), Steve Therrien, Delia Brett (the Woman in White), and a devilish chap going by the name EvenSteven.
Please enjoy and spread about fruitfully!


For those concerned, the book He tears up is a Reader's Digest Condensed; the records are Barbara Streisand and Boney M. Some sacrifices for Art had to be made.

Love,
Yr Parlour Steps

Friday, November 16, 2007

Industrial Music Machine

November 16, 2007

They've found us!

The nameless monsters of the grinding musical industrial machine! They want to powder our bones and chamber their instruments with our skins!

Well, maybe not so dramatically...
The nameless monsters, well, they have names actually - Nine Mile Records. And they're not monsters, they're quite lovely - considerate, passionate, and creative people who love music and want to put their money where their articulate little mouths are.

Nine Mile Records, lead by the courageous Mr. Rick Pierik, have signed us to their record label. Based in Massachusetts, in that evil empire to the south (inhabited, paradoxically, by some of the coolest and most creative people), NMR is set to internationally release and distribute our latest record, Ambiguoso. This tickles us pink. This makes us dizzy and giddy (wanna make out with us?). Those poor Belgians will no longer have to live in a dim, Parlour Steps-less world.

NMR is also intent on us touring the belly of the beast more often, bringing the most able-bodied Thought-Rock available to our American brethren. We love them and wish them a quick return to health. For this process we will provide a dreamy soundtrack. Watch here for dates/ venues.

Call Out to Video Makers, Vid-iots, and Crazed New Media Creators!!
Send us yr brash, stirring, and visceral video/visual ideas for one of our songs - yr choice. Maybe we'll get together over a few whiskeys and write a grant proposal. Maybe we'll play a game of naked Scattagories - who knows! info@parloursteps.com.

Other local, Vancouver news sees us rawkin' The Railway Club with Hot Little Rocket this Saturday November 17th; hosting Victoria's Justin Hewitt and other greats at The Backstage Lounge December 7th; and bashing in the optimistic New Year, December 31st , at RIME with Mother Mother.

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Central Canadian Tour Summer, 2007

Tour Dates, 2007

June 21 - Hamilton, The Pepperjack Cafe
22 - Toronto, Mitzi's Sister w/ The Metal Kites
24 - Windsor, Phog Lounge
25 - Ottawa, The Rainbow w/ Eisenhauer
26 - Montreal, Cafe Chaos
28 - Montreal, L'Absinthe
29 - Toronto, Ciao Edie

We're out playing to all open ears, in support of our newly released album, Ambiguoso.
Highways, croquette, truckstops, and burrito shacks.

Monday, February 19, 2007

Recording our new record, Ambiguoso!

The Recording of Our Most Contemporary Humours,

Or How I Learned to Love the Most Blessed Language of Digital Discourse

We book three days in Vogville Recording, across the tracks in Port Coquitlam, cozily located near Riverview Hospital, with an intent to start in on our record. Nels, God Bless him, is there for our set-up to assist my indulgences. My first order of business, while Rob tunes his drums, is to find the whistling sound in the chamber, finally, after years of recording it, thinking it was the SSL computer fans. Nope, it was air getting sucked into the air conditioner. I tape a peice of cardboard in a bridge over it, diverting the air and creating a hushed drum chamber. Wicked.

Lyrics are gathered and embellished and whittled and starved and fattened up…Songs are deconstructed and trimmed and dieted. Brevity is considered.

Drums go so smoothly, Rob Linton filling greedily his 15 tracks of digital space. We go with the astronomical, file-size hungry resolution of 24 bit, 88.2 kHz. The air of our instruments, the ensuing acoustic flourishes of the rooms and chambers we used, are given a generous and open sound stage. Yum.

Minimal editing was done to Rob’s drum tracks. They didn't need it: masterful, human in their movement, groovy as hell. I decided early that we would allow the performances the space to breath and move a bit; there was no beat detector; there was no B Rock ProTools Extraveganza. As you will hear on the record, it sounds like a real man playing that DW trap set. The following is the signal flow for our set-up:

Kick: D112 in, Re20 in, NS10 cone out – each through API pre’s, with Distressors and Avalon compressors inserted.

Snare: sm57 over, AKG 451 under – each through API pre’s and dsitressors compressors.

Toms: Senn 421’s through Vintech 1073 pre’s and Summit Tube compressors.

HiHats: SM7 through the SSL

Ride: Octavia pencil through SSL

Overheads: Neumann KM184’s through SSL pre’s, Amek compressors

Mono Rooms: an sm57 taped to the floor, Rode K2 out front, each through Vintech 1073’s, squashed through UA 1176 compressors.

Chambers: Neumann TLM 103’s through API’s, Joe Meek SC1 inserted.

(Mono rooms sent through a MXR envelope filter at times)

After we have drum takes we are grooving on, as well as all the scratch guides of vocals and guitars, we move on to bass. Julie’s Squire short scale is surprisingly massive sounding.

Bass:Squire shortscale through Millenia STT solid-state pre (with transformer engaged), through UA LA-2A compressor set to limit. Huge!

Again, very little editing. Rob and Julie lock well, the bass lending a bouncy and flexible juice to the strident drum grooves. I fear there may be way too much low end building up, a challenge layed out for me and the mixing stages.

Guitars are next, staring at us from the corner of the control room, stood upright and set-up, new strings gleaming in the track lights, each offering their voices to Rees and I.

Guitars: Gretsch 6120 Nashville, Fender Telecaster (modded with double humbuckers), GnL Stratocaster, Epiphone SG.

Amps: Fender Twin 100 watt through Mesa 4x12, VHT Pitbull all-tube, Amplitube VST

Signal chain: a mixture of sm57, Senn 421, and sm7 through API, Vintech 1073 pres, with 1176’s and Amek compressors inserted.

Room sounds: Neumann TLM 103 through API and Joe Meek

The guitars are a blast, throwing enough acoustic energy into the live room to rattle the windows and scare the piss out of anyone unknowingly ambling through the rawk zone. We have the heads/amps in the control room for better communication with the player, with the amps feeding the Mesa Boogie 4x12 cab in the live room. We use the Gretsch and the modded Tele the most, favouring their ballsy, large sound.

That took us to the end of our weekend of play. About 40+ hours later, we had some definite songs emerging from the ether. I slept greedily and dream of tube squeal.

We take a few days off (went back to day jobs, husbands and lovers, jogging through the park) and then fired up our process in The K Lab, the den of inspiration that is my one-bedroom apartment. There I start to fill out our skeletal songs with some synths and organs and keyboards, moving between what analog models I could get my hands on, and digital replicas. Everything went through the Millennia STT tube pre. It was pricey so I try to use it a lot.

I cart my recording rig over to Mark Berube’s house and record him on his upright piano, hammering keys or plucking the strings like a monster banjo. We had him resuscitating his Accordian. We had our friend Aijineen come over to the K Lab and bow a little violin.

We decide to involve the illustrious past and rent the venerable Neumann U47 microphone off of Jonathan Fluevog, who bought it off of The Hit Factory in New York. This is the very mic that Ray Charles, Mick Jagger, and countless others sang through when they hit NYC for vocal recording. At least that is what I tell myself as I stare into it for a few days.

We lay down some Gretsch acoustic first, tracked through the Millennia STT solid-state pre, producing a wonderfully vibrant, almost harpsichord, sound. It cuts through everything like a chiming tickle of clarity.

After I amass the clutch of lose-leaf lyrics and over-worked notebooks, I start singing. Julie and I get to gaze out my bedroom window at the twinkling lights of Grouse and the North Shore range. Much tea and scotch is consumed while sending our voices through the U47 into the Millennia tube-pre. It was as warm as a desert sunset and satisfied my deepest audio gear fetishism. When we weren’t using the mic, it’s historical weight and considerable (!) cost motivated me to hide it under my bed when I slept.

So we now had most of the songs sounding nearly complete. I started ornamenting them with tambourine, shaker, and more synth flourishes. It is these trinkets and baubles of sound that make it sound all big-budgety, no?

Compared to the our previous albums and their glacial production schedules (Hours of Tremor took a year and a half to complete: Great Perhaps the better part of a year), this five weeks was fast and furious and huge.

Mixing over five days, again back at Vogville Studios, I was moved to glutony, using nearly every compressor, EQ, and effects processor in the rack, delighting in the expensive lights and flickering displays, twitching VU meters and LED’s…

Nels can testify that I eat far too many donairs during this time. I get OCD with the donair place down the street. Nels buys them for me, the helpful enabler.

Five days for mixing is a luxury not afforded every project I work on, so I take some time. I set up a PA system in the live room to feed various sounds into the chamber, bouncing a guitar here, a vocal there, around inside this room. The mics in the chamber pick up a bunch of unwanted noise as well - roadcrews digging deep into the ground, woodworkers next door cutting wood, and sometimes these mysterious snaps and crackles that our assistant Nels gets spooked by.

Then it was time to mix, amassing all the recorded elements and helping them find a home in the greater sonic city of the song (ah, urban planning as a metaphor). Pablo Picasso once said that a piece was done when you couldn’t take anything more away. Mixing was very much a process of peeling and trimming and fermenting into the song’s fittest self. Oh, alright, we left a few pleasure pounds hanging around the middle.

So, I ‘ve just sent the mixes off to Boulder, Colorado to Airshow Mastering and our man there, Dominick Maita. UPS screwed me over a desk under some seriously bright and unsexy lighting. But they will get there. Boulder. The mountain air creates especially talented mastering engineers, with lots of red blood cells.

We'll be sure to let y'all hear some of the tracks soon. Yup, WHEN YOU BUY EM, YA PIRATES!

Just kidding. Rob doesn't want to sound too political.

Much Love,

Caleb and Parlour Steps

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