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I Dreamt the Train

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Buzzalicious

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Whose America?

BONUS TRACK!
The Brick

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Lunatic Smile

VIDEO!
Radiation Emanates From the Box

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Radiation Emanates From the Box

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Piggy

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Hot Alien Orgy

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Luna
luna
FREE DOWNLOAD!
Birmingham Blues

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Save the Baby

VIDEO!
Save the Baby

VISIT US ON THE WEB
We're back!
We took a little time off to recoup after The Singles - Season 3 finished up in July, but we're back at it - new songs, The Season 3 Collector's Edition, and all sorts of silly shite. But first....

We'd like to know what you think about this: For The Singles - Season 4, we're toying with the idea of releasing MP3s throughout the writing process, so y'all can see how a song develops from its demo version to the final mix. If enough of you would like to see how this works, we'll set up a page on our web site and update it every time we output a new scratch mix, along with the studio notes that go out to the folks playing on the song. Email us at info@kicksville.com or leave a message on our Facebook page and let us know what you think!

Anyhoo, we've got lots to tell you about this month, so enough fiddling about....
 
The Singles - Season 3 Collector's Edition
As many of you know, at the end of each Season's release schedule, we put together what we call a Collector's Edition. It includes all the music plus some bonus tracks, and a big, fat, beautifully-printed booklet with all the cover art, lyrics, and liner notes from the original releases. Well, for Season 3, we thought we'd also make the fancy-shmancy booklet available as a PDF download. So head on over to our site at kicksville.bandcamp.com, grab The Singles - Season 3 as a full-album download, and magically you will automatically receive the PDF booklet as part of the download. If you already have all of the tracks from Season 3, we love you long time! But, you can still grab just the PDF directly from kicksville.com if you'd like....
 
Give the artist some love!
We really have to say a big thank you to Skinny Gaviar for providing the cover art for The Singles - Season 3. Not only is his vision as an artist quite striking, he's been absolutely awesome to work with, often re-coloring or re-interpreting pieces at the last minute when needed. Frankly, it's pretty damn cool that we get to work with brilliant visual artists like Skinny (not to mention Andy Ewen and Tone Deaf, who provided the covers for Seasons 1 & 2 respectively)! If any of y'all would like more info about Skinny and what he does, visit his web site at skinnygaviar.com or hunt him down on Facebook - we're sure he'd love to hear from you!
 
Speaking of artists.... You should definitely go visit Tone Deaf's newly refurbished blog page HERE. In addition to his poetry, stories, and ominous semi-coherent ranting, he's got all sorts of new art for a good viddy, and the blog posts....oh, the blog posts ;-) The usual warning applies: If you don't understand something, say it out loud with a British accent and it will all make sense (most of the time....)
 
It's official...
We've been singing their praises for a long time, but we are very proud to announce we have been officially accepted into the artist program for M.V. Pedulla Basses! We're very honored - they only accept one or two people a year, and this puts us alongside some very VERY talented folks. If you've never heard of Pedulla basses before, they're hand-built, high-end basses that are simply amazing! Their fretless basses are the most incredibly expressive instruments available anywhere - listen to Buzzalicious or I Dreamt the Train and you'll see what we mean. Of course, now The Commissioner is currently getting very itchy and agitated waiting for his new Pentabuzz to arrive ;-) If you'd like to hear more about his borderline obsession with their basses, check out the interview he did with Gearwire.com about Pedulla HERE.
 
August tracking/writing sessions
Over the last week of August, several members of the City Council flew in for a long writing/recording session. We finished tracking the basics for 13 or so new songs, plus started work on another big batch o' tunes. Of course, the tracks are turning out to be as schizo-phonic as ever: We've got a song in Zulu (sung by Vusi Mhlongo from Disney's The Lion King), a song about Charlie Manson, a song mixing guanguanco and Pink Floyd-y synth washes, and even something our resident Fireman, Andy Ewen, calls "Yiiddish trip-hop."
 
For the gearheads, here's some tech speak about what we used and abused during the sessions:
kick drum close: Audix D6
kick drum far (Foam Henge): Audix SCX-111
snare: Audix i-5
floor tom ass-rumbler: EV N/D868
drum kit center X/Y: Audix SCX-1c (x2)
drum kit overhead L/R: Marshall MXL-2003 (x2)
drum kit room L/R: AKG C 414 B-TLII (x2)
drum kit ambience: DPA 4060 (x2)
percussion mics: Audix D2, Audix SCX-1c, or AKG 414 depending on the type of drum, etc.
vocal mic: AKG C 414 B-TLII
drum kit: custom built by Precision Drum, Inc.
guitars & basses: G&L ASAT Custom, Pedulla Buzz, Pedulla MVP5, Pedulla Thunderbass ET6
especially cool FX: Audio Damage Big Seq, Sound Toys Crystallizer
multitrack software: Sonar 8.3.1
computers: HAL 9000B and A.W.E.S.O.M.-O Series K (custom built by the Kicksville I.T. Dept.)

All the guitar and bass parts we tracked were done without any amps this time around. We split the signal path in two, ran one as a direct line straight to a record input, while the other line went through a second computer running a software effects host called Forte. We used Forte for the various effects we needed, like amp simulators, delays, etc., making it really quick to make radical set-up changes. It's easy to lose the creative spark when you have stop, set up a different guitar amp, fiddle with the sound, mic it up, fiddle with the mic placement.....and... oh shit - what was that part I was playing again??? This way, two or three clicks, and we go from head-piercing distortion to a JC-120 sound Andy Summers would be proud of! The direct line is sort of like a safety in case we decide later we don't like the effects and want to try something different.... 'cause sometimes that spontaneous wonderful idea turns out to be not so wonderful after all ;-)
 
Well, that's it for now... We've actually got a lot more going on, but that news will have to wait till next time. We'll have announcements soon about new shows, more new songs, and some really cool developments with the business side of things. So, till then, go to kicksville.bandcamp.com and get your Season 3 PDF before your neighbors get there and hog up all the good ones! ;-P