MutantFest 2008

ubik. partook in the Autonomous Mutant Festival (or AMF) last weekend, and man, what a weekend. We pulled in on Friday just in time to catch (A)symetric Warfar(e) start their show at Wondercamp at sundown. Then it was Red Rapture, then ubik., then In The Age Of Terminal Static, Wondercamp's hosts. That first night was fraught with difficulties as we tried to work out generator power and basic Show At Camp fundamentals (which we'd never had to deal with before). Michelle's processor hates generators, and we powered her with the electricity from (A)symetric Warfar(e)'s completely kick-ass tour van (a former bread truck).

ubik.s sound is fairly dependent on Michelle's ability to echo and distort... that Digitech vocal processor (the purple people eater) has been tweaked and customized over time to the point where Michelle really plays it like an instrument over several songs-- recording the EP (almost done!) was a crash course on how inimitable that thing is. You can't take a dry vocal and make it sound like Michelle sang it through the Purple People Eater with post-effects-- you have to use the original effected vocals. We can't live without it.

We played pretty much every song we knew that night... we didn't have a setlist, and everything ended with "what should we play next?" We didn't exactly put on a "show," but we played for a long time, to a big crowd, and everyone had a good time. We closed with The Planet's Kerploding!, and since Tyler's toes had frozen, we had to stop.

Saturday night at AMF went more smoothly, after we'd learned about generators, camp setups, and how to get all of this done. Red Rapture, ubik., and then In The Age Of Terminal Static again at Wondercamp-- (A)symetric Warfar(e) played over at Unicorn Camp that night, to one of the best mosh pits I've seen in years. ubik.s set leaned towards the mellow and the trippy, simply because Michelle's scream seems to scare off some of the more chemically enhanced campers. Of course, we still played Seven Feet Under, and we closed with No Such Thing As an Open-Ended Equation, but it was the kind of night where we brought out Silence, which isn't on our setlist too often.

The voyage was... eventful. After testing the ubik.van (now possibly named Rita, Edith, or Bruno) past Portland, plus another hundred-plus miles on Route 26, we learned that we do, thankfully, have a spare tire in there somewhere, but no jack. ubik.van was also carrying Andre, of Red Rapture, and Andre and Joel worked out a frightening-looking contraption out of a rock, a piece of lumber, and two borrowed jacks... and the wobbly, oversized spare tire happened. After limping to Madras for nearly an hour on a temporary spare (emblazoned with "do not exceed 55mph"-- I don't think we exceeded 45, due to wobble), we did learn that Les Schwab is the most awesome franchise in the country-- those guys had us rolling again in less time than it took to buy camp groceries.

We also had an odd issue where the van lost power and needed a jump. A nice woman attempted to pray over the engine (lord, please let this car start), but, for some reason, that didn't help. Jumper cables did, though. I think our van is more into Science than jesus, but, hey, whatever floats your boat. They were going to look us up on MySpace, and we don't want to seem ungrateful (we really needed that jump), but I can't imagine them digging a song like External Retraction... which is fairly overt in its anti-religious message. (unlike Glitch. I had to have that one explained to me.)

Regardless, we made it, there and back again. Andre maintains that the four of us actually manage to be more odorous than Jeremy (the other half of Red Rapture. If you're not listening to Red Rapture, it's your loss. Seriously)... but that was after a few days of camping. We're all really happy to be back in the land of toilets and showers again. Playing out of state let us meet some Oregoneons, and hopefully have a line on playing Portland sometime soon, which we've always wanted to do.

ubik.s playing in Seattle again in about two weeks, 4th of July weekend, and we're all geared up for the Autonomous Mutant Festival next year, too. We might stay longer and play later. We'll work it out.

camping gear

ubik. is packed and ready to go-- we're southbound, playing the Autonomous Music Festival down in Oregon this weekend. The festival's already underway, buy we're there and playing on Friday and Saturday... so if you're coming down, we'll see you on the grounds (and we hope you have one of those huge, house-like tents, with a full bar).

If you're not camping, wish us (and our van) luck, and a speedy return.

new song

proof that we are actually doing some mixing and will eventually deliver that EP we've been promising, a new recording of !!!!!! is up and online now.

ubik. never seems to name songs conventionally, but !!!!!! is practically Aphex Twin in its unpronounceability.

thanks for the wednesdays

Thanks to everyone that came out on a Wednesday: it's not a big show night for most people, and it was good to see so many people come out. It was a really wild line-up, too, with Blicky and Black Noise Cannon. The sonic progression of the night was very cool.

ubik.s set was fraught with technical difficulties... but that sort of thing happens. As far as we can tell, the setlist is cursed. We tried to play it at Jimmy Z's, but it got chopped because of a couple line-up mix-ups and truncated stage times. Last night we attempted to play it again... but, like I said, this setlist is cursed. If Black Noise Cannon didn't loan us a bass amp, we wouldn't have gotten to play at all (we really owe them for that one). Setup difficulties meant we had to chop songs out of the accursed setlist again...

we didn't even know a setlist could be cursed.

ubik. @ the Central on the 11th

This show was flying below radar and just popped up on us: ubik.s playing at The Central this coming Wednesday, Jun 11. Even though it was fairly short notice, we brought in some really good bands and have a solid line-up for the show. So here's the show post:

ubik. @ The Central
w/ Black Noise Cannon
& Blicky
$5 / 9:00 PM

The EP is chugging along and a ton of shows are up and listed for the near future, so we've got a busy couple of weeks ahead of us.

road gig

Yay! ubik.van made it to Everett and back without exploding or leaving us stranded, curbside, with an uncarryable amount of gear (this was a watershed event for us). All in all, we had a successful night, though something got fouled up, and our line-up was married with another to create a 6-band bill. Craziness abounded and setlists were cut short, but it turned out to be an excellent show for pretty much everyone. We have to send out super-love to The Keeper for playing the opening set (going on fairly early)... it was a rough spot to fill, but they offered to do it, and helped a lot of people out in the process. And they covered a Tad song.

It was also very, very cool for so many people to make the Seattle-Everett trip to come see us-- that rules, and we love you. We needed some support on our first ever road gig, and it was really encouraging that you came out. Also-- man, we met a lot of new people in Everett. That was a great, positive environment, with lots of new folks hearing us for the first time and really digging the ubik.thing. We love that: it was great to play for all the people who just stopped by Jimmy Z's for their Saturday out not knowing what was going to happen. People were really in rare form for this one.

Some time fairly soon, we will have another gig in Seattle, hopefully before we head south to play Mutant Fest.

Saturday Night in Everett

Tomorrow is looking like your special day for northbound fun-- face it, you just don't make it up to Everett as much as you should. And if that's not convincing enough for you (why wouldn't it be?), ubik.ll be playing a show up in the Green Room at Jimmy Z's with The Keeper and The Ever Changing sky... which makes the show post look something like this:

ubik. @ Jimmy Z's
w/ The Ever Changing Sky
& The Keeper
1712 Hewitt Ave,
Everett, WA 98201
8:30 / Cost: $7

Remember: ubik.s in the Green Room, so enter the venue at the Green Room door, or you'll end up paying for the bands on the other stage.

moons, Z's, mutants, and mixing

thanks to everyone out at the Blue Moon last night-- fun show all around, and we're always pleased when we can include the visuals (thanks to Heidi for loaning us her projector... the shows are always better with the projector running).

We're driving up to Everett next saturday (the 31st) to play The Green Room at Jimmy Z's, and we're driving down to the Autonomous Mutant Festival (in the Cascadia region... better directions are forthcoming) next month, as well as another Monkey Pub gig on the books for July (though ubik. strongly recommends you head down there daily, as the Monkey's just added a kickass white ale to their drafts, more Melvins and Ween to the jukebox, and still has the some of the cheapest PBR and Oly in town.

It's fair to say the mixing is half done for the ubik. EP-- three songs down and moving forward. Music will soon be musicing with the music on CD.

Friday night fun (no money down!)

It's another ubik-tastic friday, with everything that goes along with ubiktastic fridayness. We're playing at the Blue Moon, so it's a free show (the Blue Moon never charges at the door), and we're up with Red Rapture and Forefathers, and you're all going out this weekend since spring finally sprang, so you may as well come see a show.

The show post looks like this:

ubik. @ the Blue Moon
712 NE 45th St
Seattle WA 98105
w/ Red Rapture
& Forefathers
Free! / Doors at 8:30

ubik. at CYQO.com

check this out-- ubik is currently the #2 band sitewide on CYQO.com, which has grown and streamlined itself impressively, even in the short time we've known them (the new music players look great). ubik has no idea how these rankings are derived (we don't receive crazy amounts of plays or page visits on our cyqo page), but it is very cool that they're listing us at the top of the heap.

CYQO's been really good to us since signing up-- they really like ubik, and the community is live and supportive... which is a really rare thing. They put us on their podcast a couple weeks ago, and one of the site owners has been on us to provide new material because he's really digging what we've got uploaded so far. We'll be able to accommodate them soon...

mailing list

a pretty keen utility being offered at ReverbNation, this mailing list tool is looking like a much better way of keeping track of the ever-growing ubik.mailing.list. We've got this little guy on our home page, as well...







the mailing list, of course, is the best way to keep up with ubik-- all of our shows and upcoming events are all more reliably communicated via the mailinglist than any other source (i.e, myspace), so there it is: do the thing with the stuff.

The Mix Has Begun

ubik.s studio time is at an end: the tracks are in the can, laid down and called done. We've just broken ground on the mix. Faders have been pushed, pan pots have been turned (though we still have yet to get treasured Motley Crue drum sound. More reverb!) so the mix is underway.

This has been a long ride, so far, and there's still work to be done, but this CD will be appearing on our merch table soon.

Stay tuned.

so monday, so metal

no one can really guarantee a good turnout on a Monday, so we have to send tons of thanks to everyone who came out to see us at The Central-- that was a big, supportive crowd, and we love you guys for it. We had a good lineup with Mokshya headlining and Year of the Serpent filling that TBA slot (on super-short notice, too), both of whom are much more Monday Metal Madness than ubik...

we had a good show, which marks the first time ubik. actually raised the dead-- we've never had a zombie at a show before, so this was kind of a first for us.

In other news: we are just about done taping, and the mixing starts soon... probably tomorrow. There will be an EP. And soon.

Monday Night

ubik.s up at The Central next week, playing with a touring band from Arizona... it's us and Mokshya, along with good ole' TBA (we've played with TBA before-- they're not always great, but their unpredictability is part of their charm). The show post looks like this--

Monday, April 28
ubik. @ The Central
w/ Mokshya & TBA
207 1st Ave S
Seattle WA 98104
$5:00 / 9:30 PM

Narwhal vs. Unicorn

I know it's short notice, but ubik. is playing the Narwhal vs. Unicorn party in South Seattle this Friday. The party shall rage, and the animals (or, people in animal costumes) will fight. Or wrestle. The details are still a little sketchy, but still... Narwhals vs. Unicorns. At the very least, it's going to be better than Alien vs. Predator. We're playing some time after 9:00.

(as a brief aside, I have no idea who Carisa Swenson is, but it couldn't believe I actually found a picture for this post)

click tracks suck

ubik is now about a week and a half, 20 tracks, and one "buy it and then return it to Guitar Center" microphone into recording our EP. It's been hard going under some incredibly DIY conditions... but we're working quickly and getting good results. I know, I know: we were supposed to be done by now, but our studio recordings ended up in the garbage and here we are again, starting over on our own. So that's that: we're half done with the recording, and we'll have a CD out pretty soon. We'll keep you posted...

Risen after 3 days and now eating brains

That was a hell of a weekend, eh? Much love to all for coming out to see us this weekend... it was a bit of an endurance run, sandwiching in a Zombie Walk to The Octagon between two shows. We know Monday shows are rough (and this one was especially rough), but it was great to see you all at the Re-Bar on monday night when you could just as easily have been in bed.

Okay-- back to working on the EP. We've got a line on a few places to play in April (we'll keep you posted on the shows page, of course), and we're looking forward to the next gig. See you guys soon.

Mailing list blues...

just sent out an email to the ubik.mailing.list, which we do before every show, and... well... I have to drop the disclaimer: if you've ever signed up for our mailing list, and you don't get email from ubik., we're really sorry. Most shows, people don't sign up for the mailing list until many drinks have been consumed-- sometimes, the email addresses aren't really legible (once, someone even spilled beer on the sheet, smearing a lot of the sign-ups), so every time we send out email, a number of addresses come back as Not Recognized. Anyway... if you're one of the people who signed up but never hears from ubik., we're really sorry about that. Tell us you want to be on the list, and we'll take care of it.

And... of course... show post:

Saturday, March 22
ubik. at Goofy's
w/ Only Human
& Holotype
8519 15th Ave. NW
Show at 9:00 / $Free!

...and...

Monday, March 24
ubik. at Re-bar
w/ Imperial Legions of Rome
& Greenriver Thrillers
1114 Howell St, Seattle
Show at 9:00 / $5

Oops on the Hunab Ku

So... late breaking news on the upcoming show on the 22nd-- we just saw Hunab Ku's final show with their current guitarist at El Corazon last night (which was a really cool show: Barefoot Barnacle played after them). Because Hunab Ku requires such an odd variety of sounds from their new guitarist (and such specific and uncommon gear to get those sounds) the band isn't going to be able to make the show at Goofy's next saturday. The new poster up at Only Human's page lists the lineup as them, us, and Holotype... and we hope to have a little more info on Holotype pretty soon.

ubik.bot

Check out our ubik.bot-- you can print and construct your own robot from the template provided here:

ubik.bot.template

... it prints bigger if you print it in Landscape (as opposed to Portrait), and you should be able to print it directly from your browser.

You should definitely bring one of these guys to one of our shows next week (remember the shows... you want to come to the shows...)