Dec 2013 | Klangstation, Amorous for Analog, Plans for 2014…

Posted by unquiet nights on January 6, 2014 · Leave a Comment

So, 2013 is over – time for the capsule review? We spent most of the year promoting the first album “21st Century Redemption Songs”, giving a few of the tracks a single release along the way and making significant strides in radio play. We did a bunch of Italian summer festivals in July/August then went north during September and reached six countries during 2013, taking our total reached so far to eight. We sold quite a lot of albums for an independent band, and it was a pleasure in seeing people from previously unvisited countries coming out to see us specifically. A word about our plans for 2014 later, but first…

» Radio OEINS – Klangstation (02-12-2013)

We started September with some play on Radio Oeins network in Germany (Lower Saxony. “Klangstation” played “Silent Picture Show”, having already played “Someone’s Love on Drugs” a while ago. Happy for any track to be played obviously, but especially when it’s “Silent Picture Show”. Thanks Dirk.

» ZOOM H6 – Digital Recorder

Feels like I spent most of December unpacking music equipment, but got some stuff that should be useful. One thing is the ZOOM H6, which hopefully we can use to record the channels from our live gigs and release some live recordings. On the tour in September I was hoping to get more recorded than we did, because there were some unique versions of songs. So the plan is in future to record some of the live stuff…

» AMOROUS FOR ANALOG…

I had some conversations recently about guitar pedals and the usual analog vs. digital type of thing. So I thought I’d give a rundown of how I have recently furnished a Pedaltrain 2 with some new items to compliment the best of what I already had. If you’re not a guitar geek like me, you can skip this part……..

The main reason was that I wanted to give myself the best range of analog tones without being able to carry an amplifier around all the time. You might have noticed that UN like to accept gigs all over Europe (so far), so it’s best to see how much I can do inside my pedal board until we’ve scaled up our travel arrangements.

BOSS RC-3 Loop Station – Some extra sounds from the first album (“Letter From Abroad”, etc).
BOSS NS-2 Noise Suppressor – To clean up unnecessary buzzing from the other pedals.
BOSS CS-3 Compressor – To level out the guitar signal at the start of the chain. Headroom is the enemy!
BLACKSTAR HT Dual – I use this for a basic valve amp sound with 2x ECC83 valves. Warmer than digital.
DIGITECH DL-8 Delay/Looper – Normally when playing solo I loop rhythm parts to play over.
BOSS DD-3 Delay – Delay pedal I’ve had since 2004 and been with me in some of my best stage moments.
MARSHALL Jackhammer – Analog pedal for modelling some higher gain tones, useful on the last tour.
MARSHALL Bluesbreaker II – Favouring this pedal at the minute for modelling distortion after the Blackstar.
BOSS TU-3 Tuner – Maybe boring, “…but I’m in tune, right in tune”. LED’s mean I can tune over disgusting DJs.

» VOODOO LAB – PEDAL POWER 2

I was watching some of the video features on Tom Petty’s website with members of his road crew, like the obsessive I am. There was one with Mike Campbell’s guitar tech showing his pedal board setup. It’s powered by Voodoo Labs “only the best, why use anything else?”. So, I got one of those for my above setup power it & cancel out any circuit noise from the building. Also using a copper screened boutique power strip noise conditioner… so my signal henceforth should not be the subject of any frustrating soundchecks…

» RECORDING UPDATE | 2nd Album – “Parlour Tricks”

Added a Beyerdynamic TG V56C to the collection, mainly for playing live, because it has a much better frequency response than what I normally use. It’s useful for recording acoustic guitars and dropping back a 2nd mic when recording vocals in case I want to drop in where there has been a plosive. Anyway a couple of the songs written this month will probably make it onto the next album, and we had some artwork ideas mocked up which I’m a lot more confident in. Files are being sent backwards and forwards with Neal @ Manor Park with mixing ideas. It won’t be long until I’m setting a first single release date now.

» Plans for 2014…

In 2013 we made some big progress in terms of establishing UN, but the way the release schedule was for the first album, we didn’t put out any new music apart from single releases which were on the first album. 2014 will definitely be a year of new music, because we intend to release a number of singles before the next album, and in fact I don’t intend to have another year like 2013 where we don’t release new music. We did what we needed to do and got the first album (“21st…“) out as soon as we could so that there would be a full release to circulate and help us get booked, and so on. But – now that it’s out there for people to share and refer people to us while we’re working on the second, we’re working hard on making the second a big step up.

As announced by HelpMusicians.org the UK music charity, we won funding to help complete our first music video to accompany an upcoming single. We haven’t started work on it yet, but will post more when we know more. We need to compete for visibility with bands who are being funded by labels, so another step forward is having at least one video there when people search our name. Attached to a great song obviously…

There’s a lot of free music at unquietnights.com/music, but if you download there as opposed to buying the album, atleast join the mailing list, our facebook page, or follow on twitter so we can stay in touch.

Until the next one… www.facebook.com/unquietnights
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