The Ether Family Presents... A Blog

The Ether Family Presents... is a four-piece indie pop band from Atlanta, GA. Want a descriptor? How about: Equal parts X, XTC and 10CC. That fits rather nicely. But don't hold us to it. Here, we talk about the thoughts and ideas behind our lyrics and album concepts, as well as, document our recording sessions (and maybe even the occasional live show). Be sure to follow our label/collective, Headphone Treats, on Twitter (@headphonetreats).

[jimmyether]

Demo for a new Ether Family song.

Semaphore Flags and Mace

It’s not me. It’s you

and my scorn you choose

to ignore all the time.

But if my bad mood

put a damper to

your day I’d be surprised.

And I’d do anything thing

to tick you off

and waste your clock.

The shattered glass

and gears will stop.

Standing frozen

you will wait

for me to fathom our stagnant life.

When I vent

you seem quite content

to press your plans despite

an indifference which

you’ve surrendered to.

I would think

that you’d see through

everything I do

to shake you up

and make you stop

staring into your wristwatch.

Hands are moving in your face.

Who knows which ones you will chase.

I have gambled guessing

if you’ll notice

anything I try.

I just bought semaphore flags and mace.

Let’s find out which will capture your eye.

[theetherfamilypresents]

Very early rough version (no lyrics yet... just mumbling) of a song tentatively titled "Amazed". It's probably going to be the opening track for How To Get Lost In A Time Consuming Ego Trip - Part 3 of 4. Jimmy Ether and John Clark featured here from the February 12th, 2011 writing session. This is the full footage of the session, bits of which may be used for edited "making of" shorts.

[theetherfamilypresents]

Picking HTGL off the floor...

John and I spent the day reviewing the songs we tracked for How To Get Lost In A Time Consuming Ego Trip - Part 3 of 4. These masters were from early 2006. God. FIVE years??! Yes.

The sessions were kinda hurriedly thrown together at the time because we were in the process of moving. I was in a rush to get as much down as we could since I knew I'd be without a studio for a while (that "while" ended up being a couple of years). I figured we could overdub in the meantime, but that didn't really happen.

Four or five of the songs are pretty strong or at least have bits we can keep. The others were either weak tunes to begin with or don't really fit the narrative. Those will probably get finished off as b-sides.

And then there are about a dozen or so demos for songs I've written potentially for the album that we need to weed through. The remaining tracks we'll write anew.

I've felt very scattered with this whole How To Get Lost... project since late 2004 -- basically around the time we finished the tracking for Part 2. Once I got to the mixing phase of that record, I was never quite happy. Things started loosing steam from that point forward. It wasn't that the songs weren't strong (I think they are some of our best) or that they weren't performed well. I just couldn't find the modus operandi for approaching the mixes.

HTGL Part 1 had a very specific sound. I was hyper-focused on it at the time and must have spent months perfecting it. I mixed 80% of it through a tiny mono auratone speaker right under my chin... popping up to full range monitors and panning in stereo only at the very end. The sound had a retro innocence to symbolize looking back at childhood and early teens. There was a unpolished grittiness to represent naiveté. And there was just this overall feeling of earthiness that I can't really explain... but, I hear it.

Now that I get ready to do the final mixes for Part 2, I have to solidify its sound. The tone has to be one of untethered freedom, reckless abandon and identity confusion (it's based on college years afterall... the getting lost). I want a sense of hovering miles above the ground. Overall, it needs to sound like air with atmospheric ambience. For this record, I've always planned for reverbs and delays to be treated as instruments themselves... taking as important a role as any other sound. But I also don't want it to be your typical washed-out verby record.

I have ideas for how to pull this off. I may end up printing a lot of very stylized reverbs, delays and effects -- then mix the damn thing backwards. Literally reverse all the tracks and mix in reverse so I can focus on tones and clearly distinguish the instrument resonance from the effects. It's an idea from Paul Stavrou's book "Mixing with your mind" (which my buddy Adam McIntyre kindly lent me). Stav points out how this process, while weird, eliminates the distraction of transient attack and lets you focus on blending these other-worldly tones. The attack (punch) is the last thing you hear, and it quickly gets sucked into a vacuum of rising resonance, so you tend not to over-compensate by smoothing out the hits. I'm hoping it helps me get the dry punch of being suspended in air while allowing the background to be smeared with earthy ambience. It's worth a shot. At least it'll be a fun experiment. I'm kinda psyched to see how compression and limiting behave backwards too.

And then there's the remixing for the 10th anniversary of Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, which I'm running behind on due to some computer issues over the last month. But the few tracks I've done so far are a dramatic improvement over the original mixes. It's tremendous to be mixing on an analog console again, especially since I essentially have unlimited access to fantastic emulations of classic audio gear on the digital side of things. It's the best of both worlds. Ten extra years of experience is pretty significant too though. I was still fairly green at mixing in 2000. So, hopefully that record will be wrapped up and mastered in February so we can get it out. There are a ridiculous amount of bonus tracks. 15, I think. Probably overkill. But, it's not like we're forcing people to listen to this stuff. :)

[theetherfamilypresents]

The Ether Family Presents... 2010/2011 Press Photos

[theetherfamilypresents]

Documenting the Ethers...

Recently, I've become a bit obsessed with the vague distinction between art and documentation. While artistic expression is a key element of writing, audio recording, filmmaking and photography, each craft is most effective when focused on capturing the thoughts, feelings, events and perspectives surrounding specific individuals, locations and points in time. Generally speaking, the intent of documentation should be prioritized over implied artistic value. Not that a work can't be both, but artistic value is subjective and changes over time. A document either exists... or it doesn't. 20 years down the road a photo, song, movie clip or blog post might be worthless. But then, it might also be precious to a select few. For every classic novel by Mark Twain, there are countless essays and letters of perhaps lesser importance, but which fans treasure. The documents of his thoughts and process heighten and enlighten his masterworks.

Not that I think anything we've done is necessarily of any importance. That's not the point. The point is, you either capture things or you don't. Let history sort out the rest. And when I think of things this way, suddenly it's not so damn important to get everything perfect. No idea is so precious that it needs to lay in wait for just the right combination of circumstances. I've wasted a lot of time over the last 10 years worrying too much about artistic merit. 

So, I'm going to try and record the things this band has done over the last 10+ years, our intentions behind it and how that has or hasn't changed over time. And moving forward. I hope to capture bits of the process of developing new material, document the sessions and just in general try to tell our story to whoever cares to listen.