#..including the tape recorder head thingy

[tspstuff]

still not sure how tumblr feels about edits? but I'll share this here too cause why not

another edit after a while

this time capcut only and it turned out pretty good

[doomedandstoned]

Lexington’s FORREST Astound with Musical Wizardry in ‘Final Frontier’

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

Art by Brittani Fuller

For the past few weeks, Doomed & Stoned has been treating you to the sounds of 'Final Frontier' (2019), the new EP from Kentucky's proggy instrumental post-sludge quartet FORREST, and today we get to hear the record in its entirety. It's a clever, even inventive, and electrifying spin that finds Forrest wrangling a rambunctious, sprawling sound like a veteran rodeo cowboy.

Here we have five exciting numbers that can certainly stand up as self-contained tracks, but for full impact you can't beat taking them as five consecutive shots (though you might end up just a bit tipsy by the end). There's the hot-to-trot opener, "Bubba"; the monstrous "To Lose a Whale"; the grave, but persistent doomer, "The Final Frontier (Dan II)," featuring some very tight drumming; the punchy, proggy crooner "The Intensity of Frenchness"; the folksy jig-turned-dirge, "Specialman," complete with some surprisingly warm vintage rock moments; and the vigorous album closer, "Vacation (...Don't Ever Come Back), which feels like a solemn car ride full of aching heads and reflection after a night of solid debauchery.

Congrats to Riley Logan (lead guitar), Charlie Overman (rhythm guitar, synths), Jared McIntyre, and Josh Summerville (drums) on this bold and distinct entry into the ever crowding swamp of sludgy doom! If you're anything like me, you'll find yourself binge listening this one on the daily. Final Frontier by Forrest releases on Wednesday, July 17th.

Give ear...

Final Frontier by Forrest

Peeking Under The Hood with Forrest

Photographs by Nathan Hampton

'Final Frontier' is an incredible effort, guys. What are some of your roots, musically and technically speaking?

For influences, I'd say Melvins, Deftones, Yob, and Mastodon.

I'm always interested to hear different band's experiences recording an album, especially when it sounds this damned good. Walk us into studio, if you would, and describe the whole she-bang for.

The EP’s got its fair share of progginess, but even the least doomy tracks on the record were recorded through old Sunn stuff and driven mainly by boutique fuzz pedals built by our friend Eric over at frost giant electronics -- he’s also in the band Switchblade Jesus. The production and engineering side of things was done by our good friend Will Chewning at Springhurst Recording studio. The environment was super chill, and this was the second time we’ve worked with him. We love it there. The artwork was done by Brittani Fuller.

I think it would be cool to give our readers some insight into the songs on the new record. Do you mind walking us through it?

Alright, Billy, so in regards to background on the tracks:

Bubba -- As far as thematic tie-ins, it's named after the character Bubba from the movie Forrest Gump. In fact, as you'll see, most of this EP's songs are either Forrest Gump themed or Star Trek: The Next Generation themed.

To Lose a Whale -- This song was originally going to be added to the end of the EP as a bonus track. However, once the song was finished we timed it's length and discovered it was roughly three-and-a-half minutes long, so we decided to add it as its own track. With this second song, while it does have a rather different sound than the rest of the EP, it still follows a similar formula to many Forrest songs, "Bubba" and "The Intensity of Frenchness" in particular -- the pattern being a heavy/catchy intro riff, a high, spacey post-lead thingy in the middle, and then a return to that heavy/catchy riff. The song was in part inspired by Gojira, hence the name, "To Lose a Whale." On the song "Flying Whales" by Gojira, their vocalist at one point screams, "I have to find the whales!" Riley and I were listening to it once and he goes: "It'd have to be pretty fuckin hard to lose a whale!" Beyond the Gojira reference, the sample in the beginning is from a scene in Star Trek: The Next Generation in which Data attempts to do stand-up comedy.

The Final Frontier (Dan II) -- Half the title is obviously a Star Trek reference. However, the second half is the song's original title, very simply "Dan II." There's a song off of our first EP entitled "Dan," named after Lieutenant Dan from Forrest Gump. In "Dan II" we took the bridge riff from the original "Dan" and turned it into one of the song's main riffs. The bridge section in the middle of the song, over which Riley takes a solo, was probably bit off the album which we all spent the most time obsessing over. That bridge section was inspired primarily by Yob. I can say with confidence, I think it's one of the sweetest doom riffs around.

The Intensity of Frenchness -- This is a reference to Captain Jean Luc-Picard, the captain of the Enterprise on Star Trek: The Next Generation. The song opens with a sample from the show in which Picard delivers his famous one-liner: "Make it so." The intro riff is also inspired by a French progressive rock band called Totorro. This is the third song on the record after "Bubba" and "To Lose a Whale" that follows the formula of heavy/catchy intro to weird, spacey post-lead riff and then back to a heavy/catchy riff. In this song, and in Bubba's case, they return to the same riff as in the intro.

Specialman -- This one's named as such because Forrest Gump is a special man. Maybe that's insensitive or something, I don't know. Regardless, this one's inspiration is sort of all over the place. The only thing I can say for sure is that the bridge section with the jazzy chords was written in an attempt to weave a doo-wop chord progression into a metal song, and I'd say it was done successfully. The song reminds me of the Melvins, in many ways -- the last riff of the song, the tones, and the way things are played; you know, dynamics and all.

Vacation (...don't ever come back) -- After the recording was finished, Riley described it as John Baizley and Mike Scheidt merged into one big, pretty, doomy thing. Something along those lines. It was heavily inspired by the Baroness song "Grad," and while I can't say for certain, I'd say the flute popped into his head either from Zelda or from Jethro Tull. The song gets its title from another Forrest Gump reference, in which Forrest is talking about his Dad leaving his Mom and him as a boy, and his Mom describing it to him as a vacation. I think Forrest asks something like, "What's a vacation?" and she goes when you leave and never come back. Something along those lines.

What kind of instruments, amps, and gear did you use in the recording?

Just for context, our standard rigs are:

Charlie (rhythm guitar): Epiphone SG for C standard tuning, an Ibanez rg7421 for 7-string A standard tuning, Egnater Tweaker 40 amplifier head, Way huge electronics Green Rhino, Frost Giant Electronics Massif, a 300-watt 2x12 with an Eminence Tonker and an Eminence Legend 1218. I also turned on a nano chorus occasionally.

Riley (lead guitar): Gibson Les Paul Studio, occasionally a Fender Strat, both for C standard tuning, Ibanez rg7421 for 7-string A standard tuning, Jet City JCA20HV which is a head they made in part with the Soldano brand. He uses a Laney 2x12, also 300-watts with two Eminence Swamp Thangs in it. As far as pedals for him, he was using a Frost Giant Electronics Soma Fuzz, a Leviathan which is a custom one off pedal he had made by a guy here in Lexington, which is an octave fuzz and a JFet boost. He uses an ehx canyon for a ton of the ambient parts as well. Along with a delay and chorus here and there.

Jared (bass): Squier Jazz bass for C standard, Epiphone Thunderbird bass for A standard. We tracked Jared through a DI, and then reamped him through an old Sunn Sorado head. We also used that head all over the record for guitar overdubs. For some parts Jared would use an old 90s Black Russian Big Muff as well as an EHX POG. I believe we ran him through an ampeg speaker cab, but I can't remember specifically. If you'd really like to know I can find out.

Josh (drums): Josh switches up his rig constantly, but at the time of recording he was using a drum kit with evans drum heads, and a mix of meinl, and Zildjian cymbals. He used Vic Firth sticks as well I'm pretty sure.

With the standard rigs out of the way, for the individual songs some little extra pieces of gear are:

For the song Bubba, we used pretty much only our standard rigs on this song, not really many overdubs. However, the spacey post lead section in the middle, Riley used an MXR Blue Box, an octave fuzz, to really thicken up those leads and add an extra layer to everything.

While it's probably one of the songs that strays most from doom in the traditional sense, much of To Lose a Whale was recorded through that old Sunn Sorado head guitars and bass included, along with the standard rigs of course. Josh also used some bongos on this track.

Mostly standard rigs were used for the bones of The Final Frontier (Dan II), however, we did lots of overdubs with the old Sunn head through an Emperor 4x12 loaded with Ted Webers. For this song I'd say it's also important to note we used exclusively dirt sounds from the amps for crunchy stuff and our Frost Giant Electronics fuzzes for the big fuzzy bits, i.e. most of the song. (laughs) Nothing in between, though. For this one, I put a Korg Ms-20 mini synthesizer with a bit of analog tape echo added over top of the very beginning of the song to thicken it up even more. It was a patch I'd been working on for a while, and I was glad to get to use it. Riley used his canyon pedal lots on this track, as well.

Once we transition into the clean bit right before the super heavy middle section with the same melody, Riley's tone there is his Frost Giant Electronics Soma turned on with the volume on his guitar rolled off, I think it sounds particularly amazing right there. When that riff gets giant and fuzzy over top of the fuzziness there's a Hammond organ droning and following the melody of that riff. When it goes back into the crunchy riff that was taken from the original Dan, we used that old Black Russian Big Muff for guitar overdubs when the whole band kicks in.

We used standard rigs for both Specialman and The Intensity of Frenchness, plus a banjo overdub on the middle section of the latter.

For the final track, Vacation (...don't ever come back), Riley used his standard guitar rig and his Leviathan for pretty much all the dirt. I didn't play guitar on this track and instead just did some droning on the Korg MS-20 mini synthesizer, as well as a Roland Juno-6 synthesizer. There's also a flute.

The Great Forrest Giveaway!

Forrest has some Bandcamp download codes for y'all and I do mean they have dropped the motherlode! Get 'Final Frontier' (2019) por nada while you can (redeem here).

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[saurian-game]

Saurian Devlog #37

   Hey everyone!    This week we have a smattering of news from several fronts--starting with an art book update from our own wonderful paleoartist Chris Masna!  

Chris M.

   Long time since my last DevLog entry, eh? Anyway, I continue working (hard, very hard) on the art book thingy. I can tell you that putting together a book takes much, much more time than I initially thought. Not to mention that many of the drawings I did -those originally intended for development purposes, not the published ones- had to be retouched or completely changed since then. But hey, I learned a lot about plant reproduction!     Overall, the first chapters are more or less done, and right now I’m starting to deal with the thick Fauna section. Unfortunately, I can’t give you a time estimate on this, but once all that is done, it'll be time for Tom to revise it and polish up the text he wrote, and for me to work on the so-called graphic design bit. You know--type, sections colours and all that boring stuff that will turn this pile of art and information into a proper book.

Henry

   One feature that we've wanted to take a stab at since pre-release (and which we've seen many of you request since) is more fine-grained control over your character when attempting to bite things -- both living and dead. Well, good things come for those who wait, and today we're revealing aim mode!     Aim mode is a new camera / character controller mode where you will get a much tighter view from your dinosaur's perspective, and be given much more control of where your dinosaur is pointing its head. In addition to providing a more immersive perspective, skillful players will potentially be able to use this to become more effective in combat by targeting sensitive areas (such as the neck). Don't worry if you don't think it'll be your cup of tea, though -- functionality in the default camera/controller mode will remain completely viable. With that said, here's the video footage you probably skimmed this paragraph looking for! 

Xico

   Progress on the soundtrack has been going very well and I can safely say I wrapped up all the daytime exploration music! Yay! Not only are these ready for Vol. II of the soundtrack but I’ve also finished the dynamic version of them to be included in the final release of the game, where each instrument on any given track will randomize itself, creating countless combinations on just a single song and keeping things varied and different every time you listen to them.

   I’ve also started working again on more combat tracks that have a lot of distortion. Distortion is cool. For these, I’m approaching them through a different lens, using different techniques, instruments and composition approaches but still trying to retain that Saurian feel to them. It’s a good challenge for me where I’m constantly learning new things, keeping things fresh and exciting. A lot of guitar pedals, tape recorders and tape delays are involved, so it makes everything sound fancier. Here’s a combat track I just finished with Henry playing all the string stuff!

That's all for this week. See you next time!