South Africa 2010

Ladies and Gentlemen.

The EP is nearing completion (still!), by the end of today we should be holding a finished record of 5 good songs. Amazing. It still needs to be mastered and partnered with some lovely artwork but the hard part is done.

We are coming along nicely on the gig front and have several shows lined up over the next month or two with more to follow. As previously mentioned, a gig at Cafe Mono is one of the highlights, as well as gigs on a tram and a boat. Hopefully we can cover all modes of transport by the year´s end, if you have any suggestions for us then please let us know.

So, the dates we have for gigs at this point are.....

Saturday 19th September - Tram - Somewhere in Oslo (we´ll let you know when we know)
Monday 21st September - Cafe Mono - Tickets are 80kr.
Sunday 27th September - Cafe Sør - with HRH Bård Watn
Saturday 24th October - OD Festivalen - Fredrikstad.

At some point in October we will also be playing on MS Innvik with Bård and Lisa in the charity event of the year and an exciting show at Samfunnet in Bislett. Stay posted kids.

Bands I have been listening to recently include - Mewithoutyou, The Antlers, Sunset Rubdown, Cymbals Eat Guitars and Les Savy Fav. Enjoy. I imagine that Baddiel and Skinner feat. The Lightning Seeds will soon be joining that list.

See you soon.

Mwah.

Finishing in the studio

We´re hoping that tomorrow will see the final day of mixing the EP "The Waldemar Thranes Debacle". That´s 27 days for 5 tracks. We´ve learned an incredible amount in that period and we are a much better band for the experience. We´ve also managed to get quite a few gigs lined up including Mono on Monday September 19th, which I´m assured is quite a coup.

We´ve spent the last two days mixing and making editorial decisions for a song called "Murilo I Love You". It was arguably the biggest challenge for us to get MILY to a place we were satisfied with and after much wizardry from Vegard, our producer, some quality decision making from the lads and some input from a special guest, I think we´ve achieved that. We asked a fella called Eivind Schou, ex-Serena Maneesh to play some violin for us and he delivered something that hardly sounds like a violin but does a fantastic job for the song. You´ll hear it soon enough but that monstrous noise that goes through the whole thing is his work.

In other news, we think we´ve got a new bass player (Rudi will be playing the electric guitar. And very well I might add), we think we might have found someone to do photography for us called Tor - check his website here www.tkorset.com. Also gigs galore.

The next big step is to make promotional copies of the EP to send out to people. We´re still not sure whether to self release the record or to form some kind of partnership with one of the many, excellent indie labels here in Oslo. Self releasing would be a great thing to do because we´d get to set up our own company, deal with a lot of the business end of things personally and learn a huge amount in the process. Of course, it´s a lot of hard work and we also want to devote a lot of our time to writing and developing as musicians. Other people with the experience and expertise in this industry that we don´t have yet would undoubtedly be an asset too. Whether we end up doing it with someone else or not, we´re coming up with ideas for how to best get into the hands of people who can actually make decisions and help us. You´ll be the first to see the results.

Live long and prosper

Casa Murilo

`99 Problems and a Rap Collective Most Certainly is One´

So last weeks time in the studio was interrupted somewhat by a gaggle of rappers who were shooting a music video in the recording room. I´m not 100% sure that `gaggle´ is the correct collective term for rappers but I don´t think i´m far off.

Anyway, what with all the slightly offensive yet rather catchy commotion going on for what turned out to be 4 or 5 hours we now find ourselves back on the first floor of the Oslo Jewish Museum putting the finishing touches to our EP, which you should all know the name of by now! (perhaps the first person to leave the correct answer in the comment box can have a free copy once we are done..)

In the meantime, here are some pictures from last week..

x

In the Studio.....

Time is flying by this week and things are going great in the studio. We played an amazing gig last night which we can talk more about later, until then please enjoy the first ever Casa Murilo video blog entry. As Denis Irwin used to say, `a picture speaks a thousand words.....´

Global Takeover feat. eardrumsmusic.com

During yesterday´s Olympic Gold Medal winning studio session we exchanged kind words with Knut of eardrums, an excellent Scandinavian music blog.

Sometime yesterday he had a listen to our demos 19th Floor and Drunken Promises (click to download) and he was apparently very impressed. In fact, so impressed that he asked if we´d like to be involved in a global project called the "Music Alliance Pact", where once a month bloggers from all over the world share a song from the country they cover and all the bloggers involved simultaneously post all the tracks. Regardless of whether or not that made any sense, check out the last "MAP" post right here.

The "MAP" post that will feature "19th Floor" is to be posted worldwide on the 15th of August.

Writing from the studio, your friendly global superstars,

Casa Murilo

Day 1 In The Studio

They say the first day in the studio is the toughest.

You arrive with grand designs but soon realise that the majority of time you spend making a quality record is in waiting around twiddling thumbs while the people who actually know what they´re doing set up lots of expensive equipment. That´s a fair description, I´d say. "They" can be very astute.

Attached are two photos. The first is of Dan and Håkon at rehearsal. Enjoy. The second is a fantastic 1970s Analogue Tape Deck that we are using to record the EP. The photograph also features a fan, one of many devices we employed to stop the tape deck from exploding in the extreme heat of the studio. We even had to get some special technician guy in to try to fix the cooling system buried deep in the dusty recesses of the beast. Today was very hot indeed.

We are very pleased indeed with how the process is going. We´ve had some very kind messages and a most pleasing response from our mailing list. We´ve even been in contact with some nice blog people, including Kurt at www.eardrumsmusic.com who you might be hearing more about soon.

All is well. Sleep soundly you good people.

Dan, Chris, Freddy and Rudi

Free MP3 of "Drunken Promises"

Tomorrow is the big day.

To celebrate we´re giving you lucky people the 2nd of the two demos we recorded in June, "Drunken Promises". Free and for nothing. If you like it then by all means send us an email with the title "My goodness me, this music marvellous! Add me to the mailing list forthwith!" and we´ll know what to do.

Here it is in all its glory. Download Free MP3 of "Drunken Promises"

Attached are a few photos from what was a monster 16 hour one day session to get these two songs done. We now have more of an idea of what we do and dont want and have booked 6 days to do 5 songs, which according to my calculations will make our EP 116% better than the demo. Sounds good, right?

Remember to go here to download "19th Floor", here to follow us on twitter and we´ll be updating regularly from the studio with all kinds of fascinating things so you´d do well to subscribe to the blog via your RSS reader of choice. The boys in the band use google reader. Google it.

FYI, the gentleman on keyboards in the attached image is one Håkon "King Of The Keys" Moller. A good man. He will be joining us in the studio this week to make sweet, sweet music.

Good things.