Quoting Napoleon. Album no. 2

Chapter 1:

The Next Record.
(Or, time to take the training wheels off.)

It always seems that sophomore records are often placed under a more critical microscope in the eyes of the general public and scrutinizing reviewers alike. Your first record sets a bar and is given a little latitude, like a child starting to learn to walk. Like a stumbling baby, if one song blows chunks, the audience chuckles and says: "awww, isn't that adorable." Different when the second album arrives. Think of this album as the teenage years. You have to come down hard on them or they'll walk all over you. If a band wants the driving permit they're gonna have to work for it.

As sonic artists, the second record proves either: you actually have a knack for this songwriting pursuit and are talented enough to sit at the banquet of professional talent, or, the first album was a fluke and you're still wearing diapers and you're in need of changing. As an artist, in any field, that's added pressure, and trying to graduate with honors transforms what was once a hobby or passion, into what any professional musician will describe as, dare I say it...work.

Quoting Napoleon has, in proper democratic fashion, decided to take upon itself the responsibility of creating the next album, to push new boundaries and prove that, again, a band in this day and age of recording technology can, with elbow grease and strong resolve, play, mix, and produce it's own quality product at a fraction of the cost of days ago where there was only one option - recording in a professional studio. An album's worth of material could easily cost tens of thousands of dollars.

This second time around, we are more experienced at the process and we are taking steps to ensure an even better sounding product. Sam has transformed the basement, from taking out walls and installing Auralex, to upgrading computer technology and sound recording equipment. New guitars have been purchased and I have ventured into my first big expense of buying high end drum mics to record with. We are organizing marketing strategies, budgets and building a realistic schedule to keep us on track. The songs seem to be more cohesive; darker and brooding, weighty and decadent.

The purpose of these forthcoming blogs is to invite our friends, families, fellow musicians, and most importantly, the fans of our music, to take the journey with us. We hope to illustrate the process by which a band struggles to get a product they all feel passionate about to market. So many of us take for granted slipping out a CD from its package and throwing it into an audio playing device without realizing just how many countless hours went into the development of songs, the process of recording, pressing, and designing the packaging. I equate each CD to the process of pregnancy because it takes about as long to gestate, watching you're sonic womb grow, and at the same time, there's similar symptoms of nausea, irritability, growing pains and the trauma of the final birthing process. The only difference is after that little sucker comes out, it goes straight to work, making us money, not sucking it from us for 18+ years.