Album Update!

I’m posting this to keep myself accountable and because some of you keep asking. (Also, today’s the eighth anniversary of the first Animalweapon track so it feels fitting!)

As I've said before, the next project is a full-length album rather than an EP. It is "almost almost done" - lots left to do for it, but lots more behind me than ahead, and I know what those things are now.

I had originally wanted this to come out this fall, but now I'm really glad it isn't. Some of the recent additions I now consider critical to the shape of it this thing wouldn't have existed, or been finished in time, if it came out now. It does sting a little bit realizing that Flares came out nearly three years ago(!!) but it ain't like I've done nothing this whole time. It's been really hard to learn to make myself okay with the extra time it's taken, but this is sounding like my best work so far and at the end of the day it’ll make it a much better album.

So - I’ve given myself a deadline to have this thing done and off to mastering by December 31, and expecting to have to finished, mastered album in early January. Artwork - some of which I’ve now seen and looks incredible - around the same time.

Here’s the rub, though: we’re doing a proper release for this bitch and that includes a release show (that we have to book, with staff we have to to hire), preparing physical release(s - cross your fingers for vinyl), getting new merch ready, new promo shots, and most importantly shopping the album around to a bunch of outlets for that promo alley-oop. All of that requires time and planning (and a lot of work, so if you want to help, let me know.) So we’re looking at a “sometime in the spring” release.

I can’t wait to start sharing the new music with you; the several months in between finishing this and releasing it are going to be a biiiiiiitch. Thanks for still giving a shit.

- P.

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.

Click here for that track.

Seatbelts.

P.