NEW TRACK: Brooklyn
Back in September, I went to Brooklyn for a live episode of the podcast Uhh Yeah Dude. This was a special trip for me and
STORY TIME!
here's why: I have been listening to this podcast since the summer of 2010, and it was a few months after I started listening that I got into co-host Jonathan's band Jogger. In the midst of figuring out what I was going to do with my acoustic project (turns out, nothing ever again!) and trying to get a band full of constantly-changing personnel to get their shit together, this exact video of one of their raido performances inspired me to try fucking around with electronic music, which at the time I was considering a "side project" to my rather shitty acoustic stuff I was subjecting innocent coffee-house-goers to. The very first song that came out of this idea became the first released Animalweapon track, Mexican Standoff. (Sidebar: I somehow still think it's a pretty good song.)
Fast forward to February of 2017.
At this point, I've been part of a Facebook group full of UYD fans and gotten to know a fair few of them (oh yeah, and also, fell head over heels in love with and dated one long distance for about a year, but that's another story as well as material for the next album) for a while now. UYD finally announces a show in Raleigh at Kings, my favorite venue to play at (at one point like two years prior I was talking to both Seth from UYD and Kings trying to get this shit to happen.) A couple dozen wonderful people from this Facebook group from all over the country and also two from Canada swarm on Raleigh for a wonderful weekend in which I both met all of them for the first time and also felt like I was spending the weekend with my best friends.
Fast forward again to September, when there's another two nights of UYD shows in Brooklyn (this is where I really should have started but I wanted to give context, I ramble and also I'm like....two and a half glasses of wine deep?) A bunch of us again form a UYD Megazord in BK, I stay with eight other people in a lovely AirBnB and we all party with the rest of them staying in another one off Flatbush, and throughout the weekend I happen to record a bunch of shit on my phone. When I got home I decided to make a track out of all of this, because of course I did.
This track is a love letter to the UYD community in general, but more specifically to everyone who was there that weekend, and I made a point to center everything around that weekend in particular. Our friend Laura is part of an amazing, all-female drum ensemble that, fortunately enough, had a performance scheduled the same weekend we were all there - I chopped up and re-sampled some of their drums for that first drum loop you hear. Besides the other musical parts that I did once I got home, the rest of the samples you hear are things I associate with that weekend: chatter from us being up late in the back courtyard of our AirBnb, the subway train we took into Manhattan, the live episode of Uhh Yeah Dude that we attended, even a little bit of the episode of Rick and Morty that aired that weekend and we watched together, since Sam, Steve and I spent the entire goddamn weekend quoting that show (much to the chagrin of Staci.)
Wrapping it up here. (I told you I ramble; leave me alone!) To everyone who was there that weekend, and really to everyone who would have been but couldn't make it, from the bottom of my heart, thank you. You are all wonderful people; I love you all very much and I don't think there's any overstating how much my time with you all has meant to me.
Seatbelts.
P.