Mar 23
2017 is the Ten-Year Anniversary of DISFUNCTION‘s first show – Specifically, April 2017. DISFUNCTION is celebrating A DECADE OF DISFUNCTION: Ten Years of Thrash and Horror with a large show on April 1st in our home city of Sanford, Florida, along with some other special treats yet to be unveiled… SO STAY TUNED FOR MORE SOON!
Nov 02
Disfunction had shows in October 2016 opening for Children of October and the One Way System / Total Chaos tour, and you can watch them below!
Both of these shows were a great time with many good local and touring bands.
Oct 31
Here is a high quality thrash / hardcore punk cover of “Thriller” by Wolf’s Endeavor. (All real instruments played by Lance)
This was recorded for the 2013 Wolf’s Endeavor album, ‘The Horror’. Other tracks from this album have been played & recorded by DISFUNCTION (horrorpunks in 21).
Happy Halloween!
Oct 21
It’s been a while, and we’ve all been very busy with new releases, new professional audio/video services, and some shows opening for some pretty cool well-known bands. Here’s what’s new:
DISFUNCTION released a new single CD with 2 songs: “The Creeping Horror” and “Last Request of 21”. These were recorded with Gus at Maverick Studios, and there are currently 3 versions of the artwork released, as of the re-pressings on 10-15-16 and 10-17-16. 21 copies of each artwork version have been made available at our live shows. We plan do do some similar recordings with Gus & Maverick Studios very shortly.
So far this Fall (2016), DISFUNCTION has also opened for Michale Graves (2nd time this year), Children of October, Total Chaos, and One Way System. We have found lately that we are playing the songs better and better with the current lineup, and we have been adding more songs back into the set, such as “The Blood Never Lies” and “3 on a Meathook”. We have had some really good responses from the crowd in the past couple of shows, especially at Uncle Lou’s when opening for Children of October alongside lots of our friends’ bands, such as the newly-regrouped DNA.
I have been shooting video for most of the other bands at these shows, and I am now offering video shooting & editing services, including Multicam, Lighting, and Audio Adjustment options. More information on these and related services will be posted here soon.
As usual, I am writing new songs and working on recording projects. I just released an old experimental 4-track indie-rock/anti-folk album that was recorded 8 or 9 years ago, and new full-quality EPs or LPs are expected soon, with a return to high-end production techniques. More coming soon!
Here’s a taste of Total Chaos and One Way System from the Orlando Show on 10-17-2016:
Oct 20
Approximately 8 or 9 years ago, when I was still primarily recording via 4-track cassette recorder (as I did for 10 years before going digital about 5 years ago), I recorded several songs I had written on acoustic guitar with heavily-effected drum loops and vocal effects, plus a clean electric bass. I wanted to have “decent” recordings of these songs, and I wanted to take a different approach that would give the recordings an interesting style, even if these versions with the described instrumentation may not ultimately be the “final” or “official” studio versions of the songs.
I have often embraced this type of creative approach to writing and recording. There are some differing schools of thought when it comes to this type of thing: Some would say you shouldn’t release a record if you “have to explain it” or “have to make excuses”. While I see the point in such an assertion, this can have the result of preventing interesting creative approaches and ideas from being heard and appreciated.
To be fair, a major reason these recordings have never before been heard outside a group of 3 or 4 people is that there was terrible “tape hiss” throughout the recordings (an unfortunate result of the 4-track cassette method), and this had made them unlistenable. The levels were also a little off. However, I now have the means and know-how to reduce and mostly remove unwanted “tape hiss” noise, and I was also able to adjust EQ levels digitally, substantially bringing up the bass on several of the tracks – so a little bit of the acoustic guitar’s richness can come through and so the song recordings don’t sound too thin.
One funny thing about this album is that I had pretty much forgotten about it until I sat down with my acoustic guitar for the first time in quite a while and decided to play along with some drum loops. I got into it, and started thinking I should record something like this… Then I remembered I had already taken a very similar approach previously. I located the existing rough version of the album, did my magic over the course of a few days, and we now have something that is arguably listenable, if experimental… 🙂
In all seriousness, the album mostly consists of very traditional acoustic guitar pop songs accompanied by weird percussion and vocal effects, so the heart of the music you’ll hear is not really out-of-the-ordinary. It’s just peppered with some pretty hot & tangy seasoning! This could probably be described as “folky indie-rock”, or perhaps “anti-folk”. I like that it provides a sort of stepping stone between the ‘Acousticore’ album (all acoustic guitar and vocals) and the ‘Positivity’ album (full-band, high-quality sound).
The album cover features man-eating African lions.
One more thing about the album and its approach: I approach this as a singer-songwriter, and from a “punk-rock” tradition. I also had a sort of “K Records” mindset toward recording this, with a touch of ‘Surfers and ‘Pumpkins looming as well. The line between “demos” that help to establish a song’s existence and “lo-fi punk or indie-rock” has always been pretty blurry to me. I think lo-fi has its place, and it can be respectable. Such an approach represents an opportunity to create something that is very different from the product of fancier approaches, and sometimes it sounds more “real”. As for what this sounds like, it’s some weird mix of “natural” and “warped distortion”. I hope you enjoy it.
After about 9 years, here it is: ‘We Are Not The Government’.
(The title track, “We Are Not The Government”, is essentially about the frustration of a normal person’s reactions to news regarding war overseas and the way people and the media interact with and affect that situation. It is an interesting anti-war protest song that focuses on the cheap talk surrounding such wars and the common mistake of ordinary people to identify with the government that seeks to wield the military in the peoples’ name, while soldiers and their families and the host countries feel the consequences… Further, there is a strong distinction between The People and The Government, and any attempt to blur the line implies lying, malicious intent. Other individual song descriptions & commentary will follow…)
Oct 19
DISFUNCTION (horrorpunks in 21) has released its 2-song single on CD, featuring new song “The Creeping Horror” and a new version of “Last Request of 21” (formerly “Last Request of 2012”).
These were both recorded with Gus at Maverick Studios (using ProTools), and we plan to do another, larger batch of recordings with him at Maverick very soon.
We have been releasing 21 copies at a time, limited per show (plus an additional 4 copies going to the band members), and with different artwork colors each time. There is the original pressing with Purple/Green/Sepia/Black cover and black/white/green CD face, which was released at our late September show opening up for Michale Graves (for the second time this year!) at West End Trading Co.
As Disfunction’s first proper limited-edition “re-pressing”, Necro21 has put out “The Creeping Horror” with black/white & yellow text covers (available at the October 15th, 2016 show at Uncle Lou’s, opening for Children of October) and with black/white & red text covers (available at the October 17th show at Bombshell’s Tavern, opening for One Way System & Total Chaos). For both the “Yellow” and “Red” re-pressings, the CDs themselves are black/white with white text instead of the green text found on the CD face of the original pressing.
If you haven’t gotten one, you better hurry up, because they were almost gone at last count. A BandCamp release of the single may occur at a future date.
Jul 01
Dave Jerden discusses working with The Offspring on ‘Ixnay on the Hombre’ and ‘Americana’:
“I was down in the Bahamas, recording at Compass Point, and I got a call from my manager telling me that Dexter from The Offspring wanted to meet with me. Dexter flew down the next day and told me that his band and Rancid had just been offered $10 million apiece to move from Epitaph to Sony. Rancid said no – they didn’t want to lose their audience – and Dexter was afraid of the same thing. But he knew that I could work with alternative bands and bring them to the mainstream.
“We did Ixnay On the Hombre, which was pretty satisfying – it was kind of a crossover from their old production sound to their new sound. After that, we did Americana, which kind of picked up where Ixnay left off. But see, I never made a record for the money before, and this time I couldn’t say that.
“I made a ton of dough, but I was now making corporate-like records. I didn’t like that feeling. It threw me into a spin and off-balance. I always tried to do something different, but now I wasn’t. I was going for what everybody else would have. This has nothing to do with Offspring, and it’s nothing against any of them. They’re great guys, and they were fun to work with. But when I finished the record, I didn’t have the same kind of satisfaction that I once had. All of a sudden, I said, ‘Who am I? Am I the guy who’s expected to feed the radio system and make these big records?’ I kind of lost my bearings after this.”
Jun 28
http://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/production-legend-dave-jerden-on-13-career-defining-records-586973
“They were the big buzz band in Los Angeles, getting a lot of press. I’d seen them a few times – sometimes they were OK, other times they were great, and sometimes they were just crappy. They were all over the place.
“I went to see them on this one particular night at a club called Scream – it was actually in a hotel ballroom. There was a line of people around the block at 3:30 in the morning. I went in, sat in the back by the soundboard, and let me tell you, Jane’s Addiction took the stage, and they were awesome. I’d seen Jimi Hendrix at the Hollywood Bowl in 1968 – I’ve seen a lot of great concerts – and Jane’s Addiction were as good as Jimi or anybody on that night. They blew my hair back. I told my manager I wanted to work with them.
“They’d talked to a bunch of producers, but I got the gig because I didn’t want to change anything. One producer wanted to make them sound like U2’s Joshua Tree, because that was the big record at the time; another guy wanted to kick Perry out of the band. But after seeing that show at Scream, I didn’t think they needed any kind of ‘fixing.’
“I had a demo tape of 18 songs, and I listened to it every night all summer. I picked nine songs from the tape and put them in an order, and then I said to the band, ‘Let’s do these nine songs. You’ll rehearse them in this order, and we’ll record them in this order.’ And that’s what we did.
“It gave a structure to the band, which was helpful, because I knew that once we got into the studio it could become a bit like Sgt. Pepper, with the band trying everything and getting a bit scattered. I kept things organized, but I still gave them free reign to do what they wanted. Like with Perry’s vocals, I’d say, ‘Just go out and sing whatever you want,’ and I’d wind up with nine different vocal tracks on every song. I had so much great stuff to work with.
“I had this theory: Instead of making an album that people would love, I made a record they would hate. As a kid, I remember my favorite records were the ones that were always voted the worst by certain magazines, so I figured I couldn’t go wrong if I went that way.”
Jun 26
When you are recording audio (or video with audio), there are often background sounds such as air conditioning (try to avoid that) or the sound of traffic from nearby busy streets. Sometimes you will also get electric guitar amp hiss.
If you are doing multitrack recording and these sounds are present on several tracks, that presence is multiplied when the tracks are played back together. If you are recording on tape, you may also get a static sound – what is commonly referred to as “tape hiss” that plays back along with your recording. It is important to know that there are ways to remove this background noise using programs like Audacity or Audition. (For video, you can use Adobe Premiere and an effect like DeNoiser)
If you are working with tape, you will first need to get your audio in the form of .wav files or similar high-quality audio. Be sure to leave some of the noise on either or both ends of the recording – don’t simply cut it out right before the recording, as many will often make the mistake of doing, as we need to reference the noise in the removal process.
If you are working with multiple tracks and not simply removing noise from a final mix, you can digitize the individual tracks as “stems” that will need to be realigned later. If you will be digitizing the tracks separately and realigning as stems, be sure you have a mark by which to align them, such as a 4-count or single clap before the song begins.
The noise reduction/removal process is almost identical in Audition and Audacity, and it is a two-step process. Once you have your audio as .wav files, you will need to choose a selection that only contains the noise you want to remove. In Audacity, go to Effect > Noise Removal. Click “Get Noise Profile”, which is the first step. This creates the noise “profile” or “signature” that the program will then search for throughout your entire clip in the second step.
Once you have clicked “Get Noise Profile” and Audacity has your noise signature, you will complete the second step, which involves first selecting your entire clip within which you are removing the noise. Once selected, again go to Effect > Noise Removal, and look at the bottom section that allows you to choose to remove “less” or “more” noise.
While you will be tempted to choose “more”, you almost always will want to slide the fader all the way to the left, reducing the “least” amount of noise during this step. The reason is that removing more than this will tend to negatively affect the sound of the recording you are trying to salvage.
You can preview what the track will sound like without the noise and adjust if necessary. Then click to finish the process. It may take a moment to complete the noise removal. If you do not like how it turned out, in most cases you can click Edit > Undo and restart the process.
Of course, you should take steps during actual production recording to remove or limit noise from the environment so this step will not be as necessary. The more noise you have in the original recordings, the more it tends to affect the quality of the audio after this process is completed.
Jun 25
DISFUNCTION recently had a show in Orlando with Baltimore’s DEAD END LANE. It was a fun show, and we should have some video from that show fairly soon. They also released their new album in conjunction with their tour, which I have embedded for streaming below. It’s pretty good! (I had nothing to do with this one)
We hope to play with them again in the future.
