Recording

Lee popped round to our flat on Sunday to do some recording. He needed to record his parts for Christening, Pale Blue Dot and we had a stab at the vocals for Ghost Written - but we'd left our popscreen at Andy's so we had to do a make-shift one out of a wire coat hanger and a t-shirt. Wasn't too happy with the recording though - Lee's voice was a bit shakey and the popscreen made his sound a bit muffled. We'll try it again another time. Other than that the other recordings were successfull and we had a laugh to boot!

Bill Bailey

Me and Lisa went to see Bill Bailey at the BIC on Saturday. It was amazing. I'd completely forgot that we'd bought tickets until about 2 weeks ago. We ordered the tickets in May after we saw him on the Jonathon Ross show and he was talking about his up-coming tour.

The German Market is in town again for Christmas. We had a steak burger and 2 glasses of Glühwein before we went to the concert. Glühwein is mulled wine and is great when you mix it with a pint of strong German lager - get's ya pissed quicker!

I'll upload a clip of Bill Bailey later on.

Radiohead - Videotape (mojib remix)

Looks like someone's already remixed a track from Radiohead's latest album, In Rainbows. It's the last track on the album, Videotape, and it features a sample from DJ Shadow. I quite like it but it has to be said that it's not so much a remix as a mash-up. The original track, due to it's minimalistic nature, is probably one of the easiest to remix. Coulda done it myself!! But you have to give him credit for getting there first.

Check out mojib.net for other remixes including Ian Brown and The Go! Team

Videotape (Mojib Remix)

24: The Unaired 1994 Pilot

Just seen this on digg.com and had to show it to you. This is probably the first time the technobabble on 24 is accurate!! Enjoy.

Since Fox will not be airing a new season of "24" due to the writers' strike, they plan to air this version, originally filmed in 1994.

digg story

Lots of exciting stuff...

There's a lot of stuff I'm excited about at the moment. Just stuff that's either coming up or stuff that's just happened. Obviously my main excited thing was moving in with Lisa. The rest are as follows...

Star Trek XI
They're currently in pre-production stages of the new Star Trek movie. In case you didn't know, this movie goes back BEFORE the ORIGINAL Star Trek and will likely covers things like Spock and Kirk at the Space Academy. Recently they've done a casting call for extras. Would love to be in America right now!!
Click here for more Extras info

iPhone
I'm sure that most of you would've heard about the iPhone and that it's just come out over here in the UK. I want one sooo bad - can't wait for January 19th.. that's when I can upgrade my phone!

Super Mario Galaxy
Coming out on the 19th!! Check this clip...

...say no more.

Wanted trailer
Next up, a trailer has been going round on the internet for a film called Wanted. It stars James McAvoy (from Channel 4's Shameless), Angelina Jolie (in over-the-top clack eye make-up!), Morgan Freeman and Terence Stamp. The trailer looks good... a bit Matrix-esque but I've got a feeling it's gonna be a bit tame. Hope not. There's some amzing thought out visuals such as climbing up and falling train carriage and the bit where Jolie pulls a skid in that red car and bumps McAvoy's character into the car. It's also another in a long line of comicbook-to-screen adaptions that seem to be the in thing at the moment.


Blade Runner Final Cut
Ridley Scott wanted to re-shoot a few scene's for his classic film Blade Runner. I'm sure everyone's heard about this film so I'll skip the synopsis. Basically, in view of all the latest High Def TVs being the way forward and that older films are being converted to HDDVD and BluRay, Ridley became increasingly aware of some scenes that are 'passable' on VHS but become blindingly obvious on High-Def ultra realism... namely the scene with the stripper replicant crashing through shop glass. It was obviously a stuntman in a bad wig! There are also some originally unused footage that has been restored. It should be available to buy soon and I can't wait to see one of my favourite films of all time in the way it was originally intended.

Aliens vs Predator - Requiem
A trailer has been out for a while on this one - but recently a whole 3 minutes of one of the key scene's has been released just in time for Halloween. You can see them HERE. They are pretty graphic and with strong language so a short age verification will need to be done. Fingers crossed it will be a million times better that the first Aliens vs Predator mess of a film.


I've also been getting into podcasts recently. Namely Totally Rad Show, Smodcast and Web Drifter. The Totally Rad Show podcast is a video podcast featuring Diggnation's Alex Albrecht and is basically about films, video games and comics. Smodcast is an audio podcast with Kevin Smith and some friends. It's totally addictive listening. Web Drifter is kinda like a Louis Theroux type video podcast in that the shows host, Martin Sargent, will be traveling across America taking you behind some of the most fascinating, shocking, and groundbreaking sites on Internet.

No posts for a week...

Yep, I've sent no posts for a week! So what the hell's been happening since my last nerdy tech post?!? Well, it's a mixture of 'not a lot' and 'too much to mention'. My main thing has been preparing for moving out of mine and Scott's flat to move into Lisa's flat. Lottie will be taking my place.

Friday 2nd Nov, 2007
Went to work - it sucked. Scott and Lottie were off to London to see Carter USM supported by Sultans of Ping. Lisa came round to help me pack some stuff. We also managed to get wasted and stay up til 4am!! Not good as I've got a gig the next day!!

Saturday 3rd Nov, 2007
This was the day of the all-dayer at The Gander (oh and Rob's birthday!).



For those that don't know (shame on you) this was a day to celebrate the re-opening of The Gander as a premium local venue for unsigned bands, and to give Imogen and Chris a good send off as they're moving to Japan. Their departure will essentially be removing a leg from the Betika and Dutch Husband table. Luckily Betika have found some fitting 2 by 4 to prop up the table while they're away. Dutch, on the other hand will attempt to stand up as a three legged table. What the fuck am I talking about!??! I dunno... I think I've lost it.

Anyway, we got there at about 2ish to set up. I was starving and a bit shaky on my legs after only getting abut 4 hours kip and being hungover like a bastard. I got myself a Subway and bottle of water. We did sound check with Dave Purse on drums - Scott was still on his way back from London and apparently there were railworks on the track so his train was delayed. After all sounded good I got my frist drink of the day and enjoyed the first two bands.

I'd seen Slate Caverns before. To the untrained ear it sounds like he's making shit up on the spot. But I've seen him several times before and I know that what he's playing is pre-planned, written and sharper than a surgeon's blade. He's also the only act I've ever seen use his foot to play guitar, his knee to control a wah-wah and both hands controlling two separate pedels simultaneously. Amazing! If I ever write a film, I want a Slate Caverns "tune" in the soundtrack.

Creepythinguy was great too. Reminded me of a Graham Coxon solo acoustic gig - if he ever did solo acoustic gigs that is. It was interesting to see him using a nylon stringed classical guitar though.

We were up next. The crowd was getting big by the time we got on stage. I thought we played like shit. My bass was slightly out of tune near the beginning, even though I'd tunes up. Both the guitar amps were WAYYY too loud and I fucked up loads on the keys during Pale Blue Dot. There were more but can't remember them. Anyway, we played and entertained. And what did me in the most was that people were coming up to us and say we were awesome. One comment was "You guys should be fuckin' headlining Glastonbury, or sommat!" I'm like, "Glad you liked it!" But I wasn't gonna start putting ourselves down. If he enjoyed it then that's cool. My job was done. I just took it.



We had to get all our stuff off stage and get it home before we could relax and enjoy the rest of the day. I've played at an all-dayer before and when it came to taking my stuff home at the end of the night I was drunk and left half of my shit there never to see it again so I wasn't gonna make the same mistake twice. We dropped our stuff at James' and Emma gave us a lift back.

By the time I got back Dead!Dead!Dead! were on stage - man, I didn't think we were gone that long! But that's ok, cos I love D!x3. Such a good band. They were giving out free CD's too - which I wish we'd done. Actually, that reminds me. I spent three hours the previous night making an "Album Preview/Exclusive Demos" Blind Voyeurs CD for the raffle and I don't remember hearing it being mentioned. I think Tone might've forgot to put it in with the rest of the prizes. Oh well.

As the night went on my memory of what went on get's hazy - not that I felt drunk at the time. I remember getting my nursery rhymes mixed up with Simone at one stage and Nikki was being my clapping buddy (we were both holding drinks so we used our spare hands to clap - she was my left hand, I was her right hand)

Potts was on a mission to find the most disgusting combination for a drink - and came up with Tequila & tobasco shots! He made me his guinea pig and force fed me the prototype (the git told me it was a normal tequila) and although it was really hot it was bearable. It ended up being like an endurance test as we were challenging each other and other people to down one, too - I think I had 3 or 4 of them!!!!!



Me, Summa, Kai, Potts, Mark and JB went to iBar after for more drinks. Were were in there for a couple. Kai didn't believe me that the owner of iBar wrote the original Worms game. I had to call Andy over to prove to him that he did. Even then Kai said "I dunno.. I think you set that up!" After a drink too many it was time for us to all head home. I think I completely passed out as soon as I hit the pillow.

Sunday 4th Nov, 2007
This was a null-day. Too hungover to do anything!!!!!!!!!!! Stayed in bed - even that was an effort!

This week so far
Lottie and Scotty went to Wales on Monday for a dirty week in a log cabin with hot-tub and jacuzzi. Which was good for me cos that meant they were out of the way for me and Lisa to start doing some proper packing and shifting. My bedroom is all echoey now - all that's left in there is a matress and a check of drawers - both of which are to go to the tip.

And that concludes the summary of my week!

What is NMIndexStoreSvr.exe????

I have a yahoo widget running on my work PC called Informer. What it is is a really hand tool that sits in the background telling me how much RAM and CPU is being used up in realtime. Anyway, I was just working at work (as you do) and for some reason my computer started slowing down for no reason. I took a glace at my Informer and saw that my CPU was maxed out at 100%! I checked task manager and saw that something called NMIndexStoreSvr.exe was basically eating away my CPU, my memory and my hard drive!!

I shut it down immediately (hoping it wasn't an important system resource!)

After a bit of Googling I discovered that it's part of Nero Scout that comes with Nero CD/DVD Burning 7. Nero Scout is a database program that catalogues all of the media files on your computer (music/pics/video) and that makes this database available to other programs in the Nero 7 product package. I also discovered that it's pretty safe to stop it from ever running on my PC, as I know that it's nothing important. Here's how to get rid...

Press Windows+R (Or go to the "Start" menu and click on "Run")
Then when the dialog box appears bottom left type "MsConfig", this will bring up some built in admin controls.
Click the "startup" tab
Look for the NeroCheck and NMBgMonitor and untick the box next to it
Then click Apply/Ok
Then close and select restart
When the computer restarts it will say you have used MSCONFIG to change settings just tick the box to say "Don't inform me again" and click OK and that should be problem sorted.

Friday evening

So we got back from Southampton and got a text from James asking if me and LIsa would like to go down to Urban Beach for a few pints and to listen to some live acoustic acts. We though 'yeah, why not' but by the time we'd sat down after a long day shopping we were both knackered. I managed to rejuvenate myself enough to be able to go out but Lisa just wanted to have a bath and get an early night. But she offered to give me a lift down there, which was cool.

I met up with the guys out in the veranda. It would normally be cold but the had an array of outside heaters to keep the punters toastie-like. I didn't know many of the people there... I knew James, Emma, Potts and Ben and that was it. There were another 6 people there that were friends of James and Emma's. I recognised one of them but I can't remember his name. The bands were pretty good. Sarah Griffin doing her usual folky self-written songs reminicent of Katie Tunslut... sorry Tunstall. And the other act was two surfer dudes called Burning Shepherd (no myspace) still living in the mid 90's singing grunge ballads like Stone Temple Pilots' Plush.



(man, how 90's was that video?!) Don't get me wrong, I love Stone Temple Pilots ... or used to when I was a student anyway... and I thoroughly enjoyed the reminder. After we'd downed 2 pints and shots of sambuca me, James and Potts decided it would be fun to recreate the success of The Knights of the 31st album.

Unfortunately all my instruments and mics etc are over at Andy's in the studio so we stopped off at James to grab his acoustic guitar, acoustic bass, ukulele, USB mic and bottle of red wine. I'm not a wine expert but I know that the worst and cheapest wine to get is a merlot - avoid it like the plague. Which is why I was surprised to see that James, somebody who's pretty cultured and has european tastes, has a wine rack full of fuckin' merlot!!! Sort it out James!! Anyway, it was free wine and I was pissed so who's complaining. We stopped off at an off license to grab a bottle of vodka and some mixers. Pott's offered to pay the shop owner in the form of song. The man grinned but declined.

We got back to mine and started by doing shots of vodka and setting up the equipment. The next 6 hours were a blur... no seriously, they really were!! All I remember is seeing Potts crash out on the sofa at about 5 and getting him a sleeping bag before I went to bed. And that's it!! I don't remember anything else. All I have is nine 10 minute recordings of absolute drunkeness. Some of it is actually quite good. We even managed to record sections of bassline and loop them with some drum loops and then record over that on seperate tracks. Some of it is actually genius and will be nicked for Blind Voyeurs ... but 80% of it is utter pish! It's funny to listen to though ... if a bit embarrasing!

Friday's Day Off

I took the day off work on the 26th. I just fancied a long weekend and a trek into Southampton with Lisa. We did a bit of Christmas shopping and got a few odds-n-sods for ourselves. Southampton was full of loads of school kids 'hanging out' in the highstreet and the shopping mall on their half-term which was a tad annoying. One of my missions on this journey was to buy an external hard-drive. I had a budget of £100 and wanted to get at least a capacity of 500gb. First stop was the Apple Store - they sold them for about 160 quid!! Couldn't believe it! I came out a bit disheartened but I was spell-bound by the new iMacs. I ended up buying an external hard-drive from Argos for just under 80 quid! Brucey-bonus!
Lisa's mission was to buy a generous sized vanity case. Now I'm no expert but I was surprised to find out how hard it is to get one. Out of all the department stores and other such places like Superdrug and Boots we found just 1 vanity case that was the right size... but the pattern on it was really granny-fied! (Is that a word? Hmmm, it is now!)



I also bought something I've been meaning to get on DVD for a long time - Escape From New York. That film is sooooo flippin' good. And it still stands the test of time. It was on TV a while back but I only caught the end of it. I absolutely LOVE the feel of the film mainly thanks for John Carpenters inventive lighting and excellent soundtrack (which was scored by John Carpenter himself - something he's done quite a few times) I also bought Fisher King and Look Around You series 1.



After a long day shopping we headed back for the car via West Quay. We passed the Apple Store again as it was on the way but this time it had the shutters half shut, staff outside (except for one staff member polishing the surfaces), and queue of about 50 people with their macbooks in their hands. I had to find out what was going on so I asked one of the staff. He explained to me that Apple's new operating system, Leopard was about to be released as of 6pm. As soon as he started to say "Apple's new operating system..." I instantly knew what he was talking about. This was a relief to him cos before I asked him I saw him explaining it in full length to nosey OAP's with glazed looks on their faces. I felt sorry for him. I mean, how do you explain to someone what an operating system is to someone who has never even used a computer?!

...and now, the news!

News! I've always hated it. Lisa's all for it and says I should "watch it to keep up to date with current affairs." Fair enough I thought and started watching it occasionally. But as I was watching it I started remembering why I stopped watching it in the first place. I could go on to explain what I'm talking about but recently Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe News Special hit the nail on the head for me. Here it is...







Needless to say, I've stopped watching the news again.

Anniversary 2

This is a quick post to say that me and Lisa have been together for 2 years as of today!! Who woulda thunk it? I love her more and more everyday. Happy Anniversary baby. xx

Strong Coffee

Man, I hardly slept last night. I just couldn't sleep. I remember seeing the clock at 3:20 thinking "For fuck's sake SLEEP!!" I think it was due to the 3 strong cups of coffee I had over at Lee's earlier. Now, I don't normally drink a lot of coffee - I used to when I was at College/Uni - but I've started drinking it again recently, and last night I needed one ....or three.

I was over at Lee's doing some overdubs on Mockery. It took us probably about 4 or 5 takes before we were happy with what we've got - all recorded in nice managable chunks. Now it's really starting to take shape.

We also had a lot of time to record Lee's guitar parts to Ghost Written and play around with 2 new ideas/tune. One of which you can hear below. It was just recorded as an acoustic guitar played to a click track.... but like I said I couldn't sleep last night so I had a little fiddle around with programming some beats to it.

Have a listen and tell me if you can tell that I'd had a lot of coffee that evening...

Lee's Idea 1

Hallway Reverb

Me and Scott recorded some over-dubs for Lyposuction last night. Here's a pic of Scott 'performing' the tambourine to put on a section of Lyposuction. My plan was to get a nice active 'real' sound of a tambourine being hit on the snare on the second half of the song. We put the microphone in the bathroom and Scott played the tambourine in the hallway where there's lots of hard angles. The result sounds great. I know that nobody will ever notice it but that's the point - if it sounded 'off' or too clinical it would stick out like a sore thumb. If it's not noticable then my job is done!!

Kim and Paul's Wedding

Saturday morning we got up real early. Had a LOT to fill in this day. First I had to do a quick run to my mums to do the usual Saturday chores. Then off to Castlepoint - Lisa needed passport photos for Uni enrolment, I needed a new shirt for Kim/Paul's wedding, we both needed food and a wedding card. We tried to get some confetti but couldn't find any anywhere!

Kim's wedding - I was really nervous and it wasn't even my wedding, Paul was as cool as cucumber (must've been the pint he had beforehand!) The vicar looked like Brian Blessed ... but without the signature booming voice - he had a timid high voice with a lisp. The funniest bit was the organist! He must've been at the communion wine cos he kept playing bum notes. Jo sang a lovely song - made Kim blub.

After the service and all the photo's had been taken we went to The Bell for a few pints and some food (me, Lisa, Scott, Lots, Mat, Claire, Andy and son) There was a weird atmos in there for us though. It must've been cos we were all suited and booted! The thing that pissed me off the most was that I'm probably more local than any of the other people in the pub as I live across the road!

After the nosh Andy and son went home, the rest of us went back to mine for more booze and Wii. Claire and Mat had never played before but are now hooked. After a while, we realised we should be at the wedding reception. It was being held at the Tudor Grange. We ordered a couple of taxis - was told they'll be about 10 minutes. We stood out in the rain for about 35 mins before one turned up, we let the girls get that one. The other never arrived so we flagged down a random taxi. Got to the Tudor Grange hotel but missed the speaches and cutting of the cake - Thanks for never arriving to pick us up, Star Taxis (the only time they let me down!)

Saw the 'first dance' and the emotional 'proud dad dances with her daughter' bit. All the girls were all welling up. Time to hit the bar. After a couple of jars we did a bit of random dancing to cheesy 80's hits. Paul's Brother, Stuart insulted Claire and brought her to tears. Paul and Dave sorted that out - she got an apology.

Kim threw the bouquet from the balcony, Dunno who caught it but Glen found it and rushed to give it to Kirsty. I think that's a proposal in disguise! Details are fading cos I was pretty drunk but all in all, good times were had by all!

Here's a couple of vid clips...

Aruba Restaurant

Still on a buzz from the night before (ie, the gig at Kyps) I woke up in a real great mood. It was short lived though cos I had to go to work! Joy!

That evening I had a power nap and then woke up feeling real hungry. We had no food in so me and Lisa (sorry... that should be Lisa and I) went for a random meal at a new bar/restaurant in town called Aruba. I'd never seen or heard of it before but Lisa read something about it. It's basically a complete refurb of the Show Bar at Bournemouth's Pier.

Man, the food in there was really nice and the atmosphere was great. Best bit? The hot waitress in pigtails and hotpants!! Even Lisa said she would! (sorry, no pics of the girl!)

Blind Voyeurs Gig - at Kyps 27/09/07

On Thursday 27th, Sept Blind Voyeurs had a gig at Mr Kyps. I was real excited about it cos it's a great venue with a amazing sound system and proper lights and dry ice. I knew it was gonna feel like I was in a proper band, not a pretend one from granny-capital Bournemouth. Hahaha!!

It was good fun hanging out with the other bands backstage. Before we started some of us were a bit worried about a couple of things - the size of the venue and the projected visuals. We thought the place would be too big and the fact that we didn't have a white sheet to project our visuals on were concerning. I maintained that there was nothing to worry about. The other guys were flapping and saying we should've at leat wore white t-shirts. We told Kat our concerns and she tested the projection for us.... it looked effin' amazing! You couldn't wipe the grins off of the guys faces.

The actual gig went well. I know that I made a few fuck-ups here and there, and the guys know that they did too but they were just minor details.... except at the very end of the very last song Scotts bassdrum pedal fell apart, so we had no bassdrum for, like, the last half a bar! Nobody noticed and, to be fair, looking at the videoclip you really can't tell. Speaking of video clips, here's a couple from BHone...





We produced 50 CD's for that gig, all limited and numbered, and we didn't expect to get rid of many. In fact at the beginning of the night we put about 20 of them around the venue and a further 10 by the front door, thinking that we would need to collect left-overs after the gig. But to our amazement when we came of stage we had people asking us for CD's as the ones that we'd put out had all gone!! We gave out the remainding 20 and even then there were still people that wanted a CD!!!

All the other acts played well too. My favourite bit was at the very beginning when Chris (Little Boat) started playing. Everyone was stood at the back when he started and by the time he'd finished his first track about 30 people had creeped up to the front - it gave him a scare. He said it was like some kinda Zombie film and got everyone to give a Zombie-like moan.

All in all, It was one of my favourite gigs we've played!

Amazing birds

Last night me and Scott (gramatically tha should be Scott and I) decided that we should work on the free give-away CD's for Thursday's gig. We'd left it a bit late and time was running short. We had this great idea of putting two tracks on there and then recording a track in a couple of hours - just a random jam.

While we were writing the tune we thought it would be a good idea to grab some random samples from the TV so we did a bit of channel hopping and stumbled upon a David Attenborough programme on UKHistory. We ended up getting totally side-tracked for about an hour because this is some of the stuff that was on there. Totally amazing...







...as you can imagine, we didn't get much work done.

Homeless person

I was in Boscombe with Lisa yesterday during my lunch break and on the way to the high street from the car park I saw a homeless guy begging. I'm not a person that looks down on these people or anything - in fact I'm quite the opposite. If I'm not skint myself and I happen to have some spare change I don't mind every now and again giving them a few bob. But this guy was taking the piss - he was sat there looking all convincingly dirty with ripped up clothes and a little cardboard sign saying please help.... but he was using the hands free headset on his mobile phone!!!! What the fuck?!? It wasn't a cheap one either it was a proper new one.

Have I missed something here? Have the government started handing out free mobile phones to the homeless in order for them to be able to help themselves find accomodation or jobs? I very much doubt it. But then it got me thinking, what if his mobile was a contract phone - you need to have an address and bank account to be able to have one.

Lisa said that she heard on the news the other day that some homeless people in London can make up to £200 per day!

Fuckin' cheek! That's all my faith in homeless people gone. That prick has ruined it for all homeless-kind as far as my contribution is concerned.

Heroes

So, Heroes fever is now rampant on this side of the pond. The TV series on BBC2 is currently at episode 10 or 11 I think!? I would know but as I got so addicted to the show at about episode 6 I've now got 2 DVDs with all 23 episodes of series 1 from a friend at work. I couldn't wait a whole week to see what happens next, and there was a possibility that I could miss an episode bacause of our album recording, and I wasn't about to let that happen. Don't worry, TV people and copyright execs, I will eventually buy them on official DVD as soon as they're available in the UK but right now my thirst needs quenching more regularly than the weekly drip feed we're currently being subjected to. Besides, I think this is one of the best examples of why piracy and copying is good for the product at hand. Sure, officially it should be frowned upon but even the actors and the writers themselves have been seen on TV saying something along the lines of "I shouldn't support it but it's done the show so much good."

The programme has actually already run it's series here in the UK on the Sci-Fi channel. But, as not everyone has the Sci-Fi channel, not everyone got to see it. Also, Sci-Fi channel is known for showing mostly real bad tv shows with terrible story-lines and laughable special effects (if there are any). I'm sure their ratings will go up at the end of September, though, as they're scheduled to be showing series 2 of Heroes almost parallel to it's US showing. This is my other main purpose of getting my mitts on the whole of series 1 - so I can catch up in time for the airing of series 2.
...although I will have to wait week for week when that starts so in a way I'm just delaying the inevitable.

In the meantime, if you haven't seen it yet you are a fool. You don't have to be a science fiction nerd of comic book geek to like it as it's mainly character driven and it's soooo real. The BBC had Heroes catch up weekend starting from last Saturday night - showing all episodes back to back from 9pm. (hmmm, maybe I shoulda posted this a few days earlier so that you would've had enough warning! Oh well)
Give it a go, believe me you will be hooked too!

Battles new video - Tonto

Battles are an odd band. When JB first introduced me to them I wasn't sure how to take them. Upon listening to my first Battles track, enthused by JB, I was really getting into the style of music. Amazingly geeky jazz-like riffs with an clanky-indie edge played with mathematical precision. But when the munchkin style electronically processed vocals came in I felt a bit put out. I even laughed. But through time and exposure it actually becomes quite charming and I've actually grown to really like this band. I really respect their talent.

A quick rummage on YouTube reveals a handful of live clips and one thing that blow my mind was occassionally two of the three guitarists take one hand away from the guitar to play a keyboard - yet are still playing the same guitar riff. All this without dropping a beat. Also, I loved the fact that they have their guitars strapped so high that it's almost around their neck. Speaking of high instruments, the drummer has his crash cymbol six feet high!!

Here's a new video for their latest single 'Tonto', Enjoy.