I’m collaborating with some people here in Tokyo on a new music project, called the East Village Project, and wanted to share our first track. It’s mainly me and a guy called Ted Nova (aka Mr Ratboy) who played guitar in NYC for a long time in a band called Sour Jazz, as well as touring with Marky Ramone from the Ramones, Bebe Buell, and many others. He managed a record shop on St Marks for a long time and I used to live in NYC’s East Village as well back in the day, hence the name.
We’re doing a sort of lofi jazz/experimental thing (we bonded over Strata East over beers one night, which is how this began). I played the Moog (Grandmother) and Rhodes. He’s on the bass and played the piano. I also did the drum arrangement and mixing as well. I’m still learning Final Cut, so don’t view that video at too high a resolution. Haha.
This is great, I really enjoyed this track. I love jazz, and this also feels like it has some atmospheric elements to it. It sounds well mixed, and warm and inviting. Keep doing what you all are doing there.
Thanks, man. I really appreciate the kind words. It’s actually really nice to collaborate with someone, as it’s easy to get stuck doing the same thing when mostly doing solo projects at home. It will be a learning curve to mix horns, but I’m looking forward to giving it a go.
Very cool. Texturally, there’s a live room feel there. Can you talk about your recording process at all? Was some of this recorded in a live room or is it all sound design?
Kind of hilarious actually. The guy I’m recording with is Swiss and he lives at the Swiss embassy. He’s able to record in kind of an underground garage/bunker, so yeah, some is in an actual space. He’s even recorded videos down there for his other bands.
I don’t know his mic setup for his piano. It’s a real piano though that he said he used a lofi mic setup and, of course, reverse reverb.
That would be great. The guy I’m doing the project and I met through a mutual friend that has a little record label in Australia. He mostly puts out rock and punk albums, and occasionally presses 7”. It would be a dream to be able to put out something on vinyl, but it might be a hard sell to convince him. Haha. We’ll see.
Thanks very much! All this positive feedback is really motivating me to get some more tracks done. Hopefully we will dial in our sound over the course of the next few tracks.
