Back to the Red Room.

The glamour of today's rehearsal began with pampering our faithful black-and-red rehearsal room with a vacuum cleaning. Very much necessary because we take our shoes off while we're there and the splinters from Orli's drumsticks are particularly effective at perforating the socks and the soles of our feet. "Slit my feet lover" the lyrics go, I believe. The refreshed red brightness of the cheap, but loveable floor gives off good, new beginning vibes. The sad part was realizing that the vacuum cleaner has only got a few of these cleanings left before we send it off to the vacuum cleaner farm in rural Bulgaria. 

The hot summer air coming from the ventilation forced us to open the door. Like everything else in life, a tricky trade-off. This time between some fresh air and the smell of the fast food being packaged into mysterious black boxes next door.

Then came the good stuff. Ali had almost finished adjusting the sound on his stereo IEMs (rest of us use mono) and his Tonex effect pedal. Problem was that although he got the digital effects to sound quite well in the PA/amp, in his IEM the sound was "boomy, distant, even without reverb". Before he finished, we switched to testing Schwartz's guitar sound between his default Victory Sheriff amp and some Marshalls. Using different greenback and creamback speakers. The best compromise between definition, loudness and overall smoothness came from a beautiful combo Marshall which Ali and Mitaka (another hidden gem you won't hear about unless you're an insider) got from Italy. The downside - it weighs 33kg, meaning it wouldn't work for the upcoming live performances, but it would for studio work for sure. So, going full 360, we circled back to the original Victory Sheriff and 2x12 Victory cabinet, BUT with an EQ pedal which Kalo automatically and immediately set to a sweet spot cutting of the low mids. Now experimentation with the full band will start to see if it will be an always-on thing, or yet another addition to the pedalboard stepdance routine on stage.

We used a chorussy intro to one of our new songs as reference, as played on a Gibson 335. Although it's probably more of a telecaster song, asking for that tele-twangy-ness. Time will tell.

Then we moved on to the theoretical discussion for refreshing the marketing effort of the band. Especially given a few upcoming events (including a video release). One notable even is the So Live showcase we'll take part in Sofia in front of some industry faces that could help propel the band. There's also the responsibility of representing the local, increasingly inspiring alternative scene. So, we talked about refreshing the EPK, starting a blog (whose idea was that, thought the author some 1000 words in?), changing the band tag to something more grounded than "alifromthefuture" (a medley formerly acceptable back when all we had was a band name, a single, and a day job), finding a way to make the band sell itself as a live act on video (a challenge band in their 20's wouldn't have to think about as much), finding a booking agent for festival and club shows in Europe, etc. A task list emerged and was ultimately distributed within the band.

Then Schwartz went home and straight to bed, while Kalo and Ali went back to touching up Ali's guitar sound and IEM. Successfully so, witness accounts claim.