shoshara

Again, the extremely talented Brandon Wu took some incredible photos of Dark Dissolve and the other bands that played at the Hanzel und Gretyl show.

Here they are : http://www.flickr.com/photos/brandonwu/sets/72157622437629113/

Additionally, Mick Mercer reviewed our debut EP. The review is here : http://mickmercer.livejournal.com/984784.html

I completely agree with what he says about using the more percussive nature of the harp. I haven't completely figured out how to incorporate it into the bands yet and my technique isn't quite up to par to do fast percussive (and clean) chords on the electric harp. You have to be extremely precise when the harp is amplified, otherwise you get a lot of noise and its really obviously bad. Its something I've been trying to work on. Basically, I need to practice :). And figure out what works and doesn't work. Some of the more modern harp techniques you find in Andres pieces don't work so well on the electric harp.
However, for the next punkish song Dark Dissolve is working on I was actually already trying to incorporate harp instead of keys even before reading the review.

If you missed the show and want to see it,
you can see it here :
http://app.synclive.com/
Its archived, search for "Dark Dissolve" and thats us!

The sound is a bit off (the voice and harp are really loud and kind of off and the other instruments are really low... i think there must've been a weird mix ?). Larry assures me it didn't sound like this live.

I thought the show went really well so I recommend checking it out (keeping in mind the mix is bad). We also played some awesome new tunes that I love and are in slightly new styles from our usual.


Also, tonight Lenz, Ryan, and I (the available subset of Voodoo Pharmacology) are doing an americana/folk set at The Whiskey around 9:30pm. It should be awesome. We're filling in for a band that couldn't make it. I think cover is $10 and its part of an all day festival of american music.

Here's some video from our show at Jaxx!! Taken by Jana's husband and I put the audio from the recordings Jaxx gave us from the soundboard on them.

We have new songs on our myspace! Live recordings from the Jaxx show. Thanksfully, they sounded good!

Anyways. Check them out : http://www.myspace.com/darkdissolve


Also, I found some pics someone took of the show on t3h int4rw3bz. I look like a drugged, obese, slightly goth, extremely unhappy hooker. Maybe I should smile more.... :)

And, in unrelated news, the end to Battlestar Galactica was a horrifying travesty.

Sunday we opened for Amorphis, Samael, and virgin Black at Jaxx. I think it went rather well. The few comments I've found on the internet about it were positive. However, several claimed they couldn't hear the harp. This confuses me, because Larry says he could hear it very well and I could hear it better than I've ever heard myself on stage before. I guess it depends where you were standing? Maybe they didn't know what harp sounds like... it sounds different amplified. Maybe they thought it was the guitar? I feel bad about that, because the preamp volume was actually not all the way up.
Sunday I learned that I need a smaller keyboard. And I can't wait until I have the electric harp. I hate being in the way and having a gigantic harp and gigantic keyboard is not the way to not be in the way. Thats a lot of ways. Anyways.
A photographer from the Washington Citypaper was there and wrote up a nice blog post and took some awesome photos of us. I am still reminded to continue to not eat by looking at them though :).
Here's the link : http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/blackplasticbag/2008/09/29/how-often-do-you-see-a-harp-at-a-metal-club/
And here's the rest of the photos :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brandonwu/2898076003/in/photostream/
I would really like to have some time to work on my own stuff. I have some ideas for music. And even lyrics. And my personal tastes in composition tend to be more symphonic/composed than Voodoo and Dark Dissolve are. I'm a big fan of symphonic and lyrical metal. I also tend to like the instrumental parts/themes of death metal, but I can't bring myself to be a fan of the whole growling thing. I'd also like to sing some more. Not for shows or anything. I don't want to push my opinions/style on either band. But it would be awesome for me if there was more time/composition with both. It would let me write better harp parts as opposed to just playing chords. Harp is difficult in a sense because playing fast requires actually practicing and fingering. Otherwise you just run out of fingers. It isn't like piano where its easy to just hop along the keys. Your hand will get tight and it just won't be even. But I'd love to be able to do some more complicated harp parts. Part of my problem with dark dissolve is I'm still not very good at figuring out the tonality of the pieces and just tend to stick with open chords. It doesn't leave much room for creativity on my part. But if they are happy with what I do, I'm okay with it.