Progress Update

So, both the horns and the guitars are about half way done. We are making good progress, and so far everything is sounding great. Demitri has been coming up with some pretty crazy ways to get the sound we want and its definitely working.
Here's some photos from last night.
After working in the studio we played along with a bunch of bands for Black Square's CD release at 39Hotel downtown. It was fun to see some old friends (especially Ben and Janzell who surprised us!) and its always great play some of our new music.

Time for the Horns

Tonight I would have to say was pretty epic. In every sense of the word.

It was the night that we were able to start recording the horns. Adam on the Tenor, Tim on the Alto, and Me(Aaron) on the Trumpet.


We really were able to communicate and get the correct articulations and phrasing down for "Sing to Me" and "Wailing and Gnashing." This proves to be quite the challenge because we don't write any of our music out on paper. Ideas are exchanged and we come up with the lines that you hear.




We have never recorded all horns at the same time so it took a little while to find what we think are the sweet spots of the room. Needless to say, when we first heard the results of our recording it literally gave us chicken skin! THIS WAS THE SOUND THAT WE HAVE BEEN SEARCHING FOR!

It's a nice raw and live sound. I think we got it this time Demitri! AURYTE! haha.


The only problem is that because the music is raw it is also revealing. We found out that it is going to be practically impossible to get 3 people to play exactly in tune with each other all the time. But we are up to the challenge. I think Demitri is a wizard at fixing things.

This is going to be a great album. I love to see the experience that we have gained really put to work boys.

Aloha readers

Drum Tracking = Complete

Finished up an hour ago. Expect some fun stuff.

Upstanding Youth at Pipeline

This past Thursday we opened for our good friends National Product at Pipeline Cafe in Honolulu. It was a great show and awesome times. We actually started playing as a band around the same time as National Product back around 1998 or so. Our very first real "gig" was with National Product at a venue that no longer exists at Puck's Alley near the University of Hawaii. A lot has changed since then, but we've kept in touch with the guys from NP and especially with the front man Danny Casler. Demitri is especially tight with NP since he grew up and worked with NP long before we knew Demitri. It was great to be able to see NP as they've developed and really taken control of their musical future.

As a little treat here is a clip from the show. It's a clip of Desperation and also an introduction of our new UY hand signal. See if you catch the symbolism of the signal. The metal sign with shaka - groove with a crunch - however you look at it it symbolizes our mixture of sounds nicely as well as the letter U and Y. Hope you love it.

Drum Tracking Updated

We are done tracking the drums on 8 of the 11 songs for the record. So far the process has been pretty smooth. On Friday we did four songs and then we did four more on Saturday. Tomorrow we'll do the last three, and work on tracking some other percussion stuff.

Anyway, here are some notable moments and random facts:
*Nailing the full band section of "Tell Me Will We" with no metronome
*Completing "Headlights" in 40 minutes
*Getting totally fried on "Flying V" two days in a row
*Using the new drum tuning system Demitri got in LA- it saved us a ton of set up time and the drums sound amazing
*I bought a used ping ride and then thought it wouldn't end up being useful but it actually sounds good!

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So here is the track listing for the record, in no particular order:

Sing to Me
Judgment
Wailing and Gnashing
Tell Me Will We
Headlights
Flying V
Detonate
Bigger Than You or Me
Electric Fence
Empty Pockets
Warning Call

Most of these songs have never been heard outside of the studio so we are excited for people to hear the finished product.

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UY hanging out before the NP show @ Pipeline Cafe

in the studio

Hey Guys! we have officially started the recording. Tom and I are tracking the drums as i am typing this. Tom is killing the drums and we are having a lot of fun. I won a whopper at burger king (thanks Indiana Jones!) Someone will get some pics on here of what we are up to and what it is like being in the studio with UY. I'd like to take some video and put it up so I'll try setup a camera or something. Hope you are all being awesome, and if you can come down to Kainoa's tonight we play at 10pm.
See you soon!

Let the tracking begin!

If you have been following this blog you've heard about the preproduction and demoing we have been doing to get geared up for the real thing. Well we are going to begin the drum tracking on Thursday. I'm pretty excited because I have thought a lot about the drum sound and how I want to approach the process. Don't worry, we'll keep you in the loop.

Writing Done

Just wanted to let those who are following the process know that today we've actually finished writing every part of the record. We've never done this much preproduction for a record before. Demitri said we now have the "treasure map" that'll lead us to a gold record since we've laid everything out with such detail. It's a trip to see how each time we go through the recording process, this is UY's 4th project, we improve drastically from what we did last time. The actual recording process should run much smoother this time since we put a huge effort into demo-ing out each song in detail before we actually begin recording. So, break out the festive beverages and make a toast to us - we did! Things should be on track for the August 25th release of "A Sense of Urgency."

Sing To Me

After UY recorded our last album Still we wrote a song called Sing To Me. It's really gotten some great attention since we've played it live for quite some time now. We can only imagine the kind of results it'll have once it's fully recorded. Someone said that it's already topping the charts in Japan from a demo version that was leaked - who knows? So the other day while we were in the studio I put together a video of the song for everyone. A little background on the lyrics of the song: At one point my wife and I were kind of homeless. I had just started working on my masters degree and working as a substitute teacher, my wife was pregnant and working, and we were homeless. One night after my wife had tried to pick up a second job working at a surf shop in Haleiwa she came home and cried her eyes out to me because everything was just piling up way too much for us. Back in those days of homelessness I would sing her to sleep at night playing an acoustic and eventually wrote 'Sing To Me.' It seems like the most difficult moments have brought out some of the best musical ideas. So, here's a personal version of 'Sing To Me' for you that'll be on our upcoming album, A Sense of Urgency. ps We won't take this one down after 24 hours. We'll leave it here so you can keep coming back and get your sneak peak of the upcoming album.

Demos and Writing...

We are really close to being done writing the record, and we have almost every thing all demo'd out. I start tracking the drums next week.
Here are a few pictures taken at the studio.

BUY OUR MUSIC!

We've added some details on the right hand column of the blog that need to be pointed out. We've really tried to make our music ubiquitous (that means found everywhere!) especially on the internet. Here is a quick list of the most common places that you can purchase our music. Take a special note of our SNOCAP store because when the new record is finally done it will be available first from our SNOCAP store before it's in a hardcopy form. You can also support UY by copying the SNOCAP store and pasting it to your myspace page or blog so that it becomes even more ubiquitous and UY begins to overtake the internet and our music takes over the world. That's our ultimate goal at least for this week. We're fickle like that. If you post our SNOCAP store on your page let us know so we can take a look at it. You might win a treat.

WHERE YOU CAN BUY OUR MUSIC:
1. At the bottom of this page!
2. On our website
3. On our Myspace page
4. On iTunes
5. On CdBaby

Nothing To Say But Thanks!

Much love to all the people who took a few minutes out of their day to check out our new song and video. We're thankful for so many good friends and fans. More to come!

Warning Call Set to Tour Footage

For all the fans that we met last summer while on tour, here is a list of places that will be seen in the video we'll be posting tomorrow.  Again, the video is a montage of footage we took last summer while on tour and it will be set to the music of "Warning Call" which will be on our upcoming album that is slated to come out in August.  Here is a list of locations and venues that are used in the video.

Hollywood, California 

Albuquerque, New Mexico - Hyper Music Festival

Farmington, New Mexico - The Rock Radio Station, The Totah Theater

Moab, Utah

Provo, Utah - The Velour

Wednesday June 4th for ONE DAY ONLY we'll post "Warning Call" on youtube, this blog, and our myspace page.

It's On - Warning Call

So as a band we've decided we'll let those of you who are paying attention preview a song off our upcoming album. The song is called "Warning Call." The lyrics touch on a bunch of different ideas ranging from unity amongst musicians, music listeners, and how music is a means of uniting people in ways that culture, language, violence, and religion can't. Music has an amazing way of bridging political/cultural divides. That's the glory of a musical revolution since it can unite people where other methods have failed. That's hopefully one of the results of our music - people of different or even conflicting backgrounds can appreciate the same music and realize that there are things that we all have in common. Far too often our differences are highlighted in order to define ourselves when what we really need to do is point out our similarities in order to diffuse conflict. I'm on a political ramble and this wasn't my intention - but there you go.

We're tossing around some video sample ideas to put the music to. So far we've gathered footage from our Summer 2007 tour and started piecing some of that together. So the idea is to present footage from that tour set to the song "Warning Call" so everyone can get a sample of what our new record is starting to sound like.

Be advised, this is just a demo version of "Warning Call." With that in mind, here are the details. The video will be presented WEDNESDAY JUNE 4TH FOR ONE DAY ONLY. It will be available on youtube, our blog, and our myspace. After that we're going to remove the video and music. So if you want to get a peek at the new song and the video we're working on you better mark your calendar. Much love and hope those who are reading this enjoy what we're working on. It's your job to spread the word now.