We’re playing Psych-Rock festival Deep Heaven Now, and we’re very pleased to be included in Friday’s line up at the Precinct. We’re on second, at 9:30; the rest of the bill looks awesome too. Paul Wisner will be manning our projectors, as usual!
We’re excited to be playing Radio again! This time we’re with Brian Carpenter & the Confessions (whose new record Rafi engineered), and Larking Grim!
We’re playing with the Weisstronauts! It’s the first time since our CD Release bash in 2009.
We’re happy to have found this review of our set from July of 2011. It’s from a great little blog called what i like is sounds. It is complete with a couple of sweet pictures of us!
We know, it’s a school night, and we’ve got three bands… But it’ll be a good time. This might even be Uranium Daughters debut, and at least one member of the iRays plays in that band, so it’s worth the headache in the morning…!
We’re proud to unveil the first two video singles from our live taping at Bob’s Welding.
We set out to video tape a live show for a certain composer who had expressed interest in seeing what an Invisible Rays show looked and sounded like. We decided, since this was a time sensitive project, that we’d perform the show without an audience, not unlike Pink Floyd’s Live at Pompeii. We’d play four songs, four times, use four cameras, and put something together pretty quickly. The date was set: Labor Day.
We are very lucky to have some incredibly talented friends. Matt Koestner graciously allowed us to use his metal shop and provided invaluable assistance. Filmmaker and musician Doug Demay filmed and co-directed the shoot with us and pulled out his dolly, jib arm, and awesome lights. Before we knew it, we also had a great crew in the form of Mark Dyde, Mike Plante, Nell Ma’luf.
We ended up playing more than four takes of each song, and I think we used six cameras, and editing is still going on at full steam, but we believe that short of the shrieks of our audience we are presenting you with a faithful representation of what we’d like an Invisible Rays show to feel like.
Here’s the song Combinations:
Combinations – The Invisible Rays Live at Bob’s Welding from The Invisible Rays on Vimeo.
Watch Dynamation online at our Vimeo or Youtube pages.
Thanks for visiting us online!
From time to time we try to document how a song came to be. This is from an older blog, and was written by both Rafi and Ned about the writing and recording of Don’t Run. Click here to listen to Don’t Run and the reprise, Run.
This song ended up as track two on Put Your Gun Away, and I can’t remember why. It was originally a sketch that I recorded onto my 1/2″ eight track at the old Segue space using Ned’s drums, ron’s bass, and dan’s crappy casio keyboard. It even had a vocal section (“…Run…Don’t…”). It was derived from an open tuning song I had written in New Orleans about old friends changing to the point where they become different people (spiral into addiction plays a big part in the transformation). I think this track was possibly the most difficult to get just right for this project. It actually appears in another incarnation towards the end of the record as Run. More on that later.
Don’t Run was recorded initially in my bathroom on Bragdon St. (aka Blue Room Brain). Ned played the snare drum in there, and I both close mic’d it and distance mic’d it from the shower curtain. I recorded some dobro and numerous unplugged electric guitar tracks, all in the bathroom. Just assimilating those elements into coherent tracks was time consuming, because the song really had and still has no structure to speak of. I think this was early in my learning curve in terms of figuring out how to compose and edit my own performances using pro tools. It’s a fine display of the ABAB:|| phenomenon that we are so often guilty of…
Bass soon followed; but since Don’t Run was made at home from scratch using pro tools, it had a grid and thus the bass is heavily looped and sequenced. Oh, that’s also because I played it, and I’m a crappy bass player:)
For samples, I pulled some stuff from Roger and Me. Initially I used the rabbit lady, but we decided that sample was too cliche. We ended up with the deputy sheriff guy who evicts people; he has great cadence in his delivery. He’s very melancholy, and if you think of eviction in the context of the title of the song maybe you’d have some sort of narrative there. Also guesting towards the end of the song is Roger himself talking at a workers Xmass meeting or something (“In the hopes that nature will accommodate our longing for a Total Experience”). Now he’s a slimy fuck! I kept other samples around from that movie that have made appearances in unpublished Ray Loops, such as Wouldn’t It Be Nice.
Since the track kicked around for so long without us feeling as though it was properly completed, it endured many overdubs. A few things stuck; kick and floor tom were recorded using dan’s weird old cocktail kit, but we did that in our new practice space on Brookside. Those tracks are woefully out of phase… Also at the Brookside space (Sunshine Studio) we recorded some electric guitar through the Cordovox rotating speaker cabinet. A highlight of the recordings on this track was the invention of the Voice Changer Toy inside the Coffee Can effect, which is the feedback sound that dominates the intro of the song. While this sound continues to amuse my clients to no end, I have yet to have recorded it on anything else! Also added at Blue Room Brain is the little static guitar amp noise heard at the very beginning of the song, which corresponds to the dobro part. I spent quite a few minutes on that little nothing!
At some point I was so frustrated with the song that we tried recording the track again at another session at the barn, with JD and I both playing along with Ned. I played guitar while I think JD played bass. JD took those recordings home and messed with them using his digital recorder. Those recordings resulted in the track Run. They also provided us with a great synth line that we had JD perform onto the final version.
Three minute pop rock instrumentals. That’s right. With so many instrumental rockers concerned with the extended jam, The Invisible Rays ask the following: why make a song ten minutes long when you can make it in three and make it rock? The textured instrumental expanses (created by guitars, bass, drums, well-placed samples, and electronic elements) serve as musical building blocks while the actual songs swoon, hum, and buzz with some catchy pop prowess. While there are hints at Yo La Tengo, Sonic Youth, and Calexico, this record does stand alone; it is instantly appealing, and there’s plenty for you guitar geeks to dissect over the long term.
Badassmospheric rock that your friends haven’t heard yet
Reviewer: Justin A.
Admittedly, even the website is badass – and the album deserves it. The opener track “Fete Fatale” gave me an idea of what it could sound like if Sonic Youth, Portishead or maybe even My Bloody Valentine ever tried to soundtrack a Philip K Dick novel or redo the music for Patrick McGoohan’s spy/mindf*** show “The Prisoner”. The rest of the album is similarly evocative, with a compelling signature sound.
