If you’ve visited the website recently, you might note that we’ve redesigned a bit. Primarily, to highlight the next album, which we hope to have ready in a few months.
The next album will be titled “Suspending Belief.” It’s almost all recorded and mostly mixed. We’ve been playing a few tracks from it live for a while now, and we’ve got a few more in the pipe.
Last year, our friend, DJ and tireless promoter of local music Gary lost his house in a fire. It was tragic, and I hoped something like this never happened again to anyone I knew.
Yesterday, it happened again, to another friend, DJ and tireless promoter of local music.
Mike Carlson, a guy who I’ve known as a DJ in Madison as long as I’ve lived here, watched his house burn down yesterday. Thankfully, nobody was hurt, but preliminary estimates put the damage at over a quarter of a million and the human damage is more – his family are now without a home, clothing, and belongings. Mike’s lost the records and CDs he uses to ply his DJ trade.
Mike, both as a DJ and as the owner of MCAudio, has been a fixture of the Madison music scene for decades. He’s also a genuinely nice guy. I don’t know a DJ or a band in town that he hasn’t helped. Certainly, he’s the guy who spun Null Device discs before anyone else would touch them, regularly throwing our poorly-recorded cover of “Wicked Game” into big night sets. Last time I saw Mike, it was sort of by accident – Wendy and I had wandered over to the Great Dane for a late snack and drink, and he happened to be DJing. He came over to our table, bought me a beer and an apple turnover (!) and talked excitedly about new dubstep records he was getting in the store. He’s always enthusiastic about music, and about the people who make music, and you can tell he’s a guy who loves what he does and loves sharing it with others.
Every few times I see him, he tells me “you know what I’m really digging these days? That acid jazz.” I usually joke that he has so much vinyl that he’s merely rediscovering stuff he’s owned for years and just forgotten about. I won’t be able to make that joke anymore.
A few people have already set up donation points on paypal:
http://www.paypal.com and send money to mikeandfamilybenefit@gmail.com
If you’re in Madison, you can donate a nonperishable food item at MCAudio on University Ave.
UPDATE:
Dane101 is on this. So is The Onion AVClub.
And there’s already a Benefit tonight at The Inferno:
Tonight (1/27) at the Inferno (1718 Commerical Ave.), a benefit show for Mike Carlson. No cover at the door, taking donations of both non-perishable food items and money. Starts at 9:00 p.m. DJs Eurotic and Alan!, + more.
I mentioned big things afoot for 2010.
One of those has been confirmed now. Null Device is going on a short tour with our compadres/former guitarist’s band The Dark Clan.
June 25th-July3rd
Dates to follow once they’re all confirmed. Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago, Pittsburgh, B’more, DC, Richmond are all in the works. A few more waiting for finalization.
If all goes well, we’ll have some brand new album goodness by then, too.
It’s 2010.
Null Device is 15 this year.
FIF-FREAKING-TEEN.
Officially, anyway. There were pre-95 noodlings, and our first album on a real label didn’t come out until 2003. But 1995 is when Dr. Goedken and I started writing together, and when we started getting rather serious about making music.
Lots has happened in those fifteen years, and a lot of things have changed. It’s been pretty fabulous so far, and we have no plans to stop anytime soon.
Happy 2010!
Last weekend the NPR “Monitormix” blog posted a challenge – write and record a song in a weekend. They had some conditions, like using a few certain words, etc.
I gave it a shot.
It’s not my finest work, certainly. The vocals are a little weak, the lyrics are a bit…um…but considering the whole thing was recorded, start to finish, in the span of about 4 hours, it’s not bad. From recording dhols and dumbeks, to programming the beats, to orchestrating the chorus and the vocoders – everything was done on a chunk of saturday afternoon and sunday morning. I’m rather pleased, especially given the bulk of the entries were of the singer-songwriter variety – not unexpected, since you can’t beat a guitar and voice for expediency in sketching a song – so the fact that I multitracked and arranged a 3-minute pop song in an afternoon makes me feel pretty danged good.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/monitormix/2009/11/these_people_recorded_a_song_i_2.html
Ordinarily I don’t post much about remixes, but I can’t help myself in this case.
The Dark Clan has just released a single on their bandcamp site, called “Real Vampires Don’t Sparkle.”. Just in time for New Moon!
The b-side is the “RPatz Nonstop Dub” by Null Device. It bears zero resemblance to the source material, but is good fun and dancetastic to boot.
Check it out, as we shamelessly ride on a pop cultural tsunami.
