Breaking my ‘no re-blogging’ rules for a second time, this time for a sweet as review of my band Life Pilot. Check it out!
Artist: Life Pilot
From: Adelaide, South Australia
Genre: Noise/Southern Hardcore/Math
FFO: The Chariot, Everytime I Die, Dillinger Escape Plan, Pantera
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Mathcore Powerhouses Life Pilot hit Adelaide with a bang in late 2010 with a fresh…
I’ve been so slack with this blog of late… But, now that I have a moment to breath I shall endeavour to fill it with wonderful-ness once again!
Whats been happening? Well, the last month has been pretty hectic. Both my bands booked dates for recording on consecutive days. March 31st to April 1st saw a long slog of Life Pilot recordings followed by the rest of the week busy recording with Julia Henning. This was great fun, but reall exhausting work.
The weekend with Life Pilot was physically demanding to say the least. 5 hours of tracking drums at full performance volume and intensity had me destroyed after the first day. The second, luckily, was much breezier. We’d managed to get good takes of almost everything the day before, so after a few re-takes and a run through of everything else for posterity’s sake, we left happy with our efforts in the early afternoon.
Monday was again spent tracking, having only one tune to track drums for was both a blessing and a burden. Great to only have to worry about one thing, but it seemed my mind was completely focused on doing a 110% job. Something that my tired body wasn’t happy about. Still, the job was done and I was happy with how my part sat at the end of the day. Tuesday was spent overseeing the rest of guitar and vocal parts, with some percussion tracking for a nice change. Wednesday should have been a day off, but with session players coming in to track strings the next morning, my day was eaten up by Sibelius and Cubase, writing and arranging Cello and Violin scores. The next day was great, kicking back listening to professionals play your parts and give such positive feedback is always appreciated.
The new kit shone through the days of tracking with compliments a-plenty. I’m happy to report my Epiarch has become quite a beloved set in it’s short life thus far. It’s small size meant nothing listening back to the first mixes of the Life Pilot tracks. It sounds Huge! And Matt Williams at Fattrax once again, has done a brilliant job of pulling the sounds I want out of my kit, it’s warm, well rounded and beautiful.
There will be pictures and videos of all these events soon, but this will do for an update.
I’m not a reblog-er by any means, but I’ve spent the last week recording with Life Pilot and Julia Henning and it’s been great! Julia put up some wonderful photos, so I’ll let the anti-reblog-nazi sit this one out.
juliapuff:
Some more pictures from the recent recordings. Just mixing and printing to go and then the EP is ready!
brachiate asked: You're drum kit looks sensational man. If you don't me asking (I'm not sure if you have written it before or not), how much did it set you back?
Thanks. The kit cost me about $1800. Shipping pushed it up to about $2,200. The only other cost is the 10% import tax on top of everything to get it released from customs when it gets shipped out.
Along with the Life Pilot kit refurbishment, I’ve been dabbling in some other musical DIY areas of late. We’ve had a new housemate move in and as a consequence room for instruments is tight. After no luck searching for a logical or cheap storage space for drums/cymbals/heads, I decided that making my own was the best bet.
As well as this, I picked up my old Squire P-bass the other day and felt it needed a face lift if it were to be included in our guitar rack. Standards, people. Standards.
Drum Rack:
The concept was simple enough. Build a couple of frames, 4 lengths of wood later, and you’ve got a rack. Right? Not having constructed anything like this since 10th grade Tech class, I was a little doubtful of my ambitions. Considering this thing was to hold some of my most valuable possessions, I wanted to be sure it wasn’t going to crack. After sketching out and researching frames, in the end I just had to take the plunge and see if it would hold. A bunch of metre lengths of treated pine later and construction began. I followed my sketch, more or less…
In the end it turned out well, it’s not quite done, but the basic form is complete, and it holds more than I imagined!
It needs a good sanding down, a clear coat, just for aesthetics sake and to tack some carpet around the racks to keep the gear safer and less likely to dent both the gear and the rack.
P-Bass Refurb:
I was gifted this Squire Affinity P-Bass one christmas a few years back when I showed interest in something…not-drums…
Great gift at the time, but as time goes on, tastes change and develop and I now see that, although it was a great beginner instrument and a cut above what most of my peers were using in sound, this is definitely not the case anymore.
The boring black gloss finish and the low-end pickups where doing the guitar no favours, acoustically + aesthetically.
First step was to strip the guitar of parts. The gross, rusty strings come off, unbolt the neck, unscrew the machine heads, lose the rusty low-end bridge and disembowel the body of it’s electronics. There are no pictures of it in it’s original form, mostly to save you looking at such a dilapidated instrument.
With this achieved it’s now time to think about replacement parts + what to do with the finish.
Finish wise, The paint will be stripped, sanded and primed for a cream/white body with a red tortoise-shell pick guard. As for parts, some Seymour Duncan Quarterpounders are on their way along with said loaded pick guard + some new strap buttons to replace the old ones that have long been ripped out. Bridge/strings/etc will be decided on later.
The only other interesting thing of note, is that after stripping some paint back, the black was hiding a botched sunburst finish. I guess it didn’t make the cut, so they just blacked that baby up and shipped it out.
More updates as things get done.
LIFE PILOT KIT: PHASE 2
So, with blank shells, it was time to go to work resurfacing them. The plan is to stain these shells, over wrapping them. I’ve never been a fan of wraps and they’re quite expensive unless you can find a work-around. The other benefit of this, is if I botch the stain, a wrap is an easy solution.
Before I could even start prepping these for a finish, I had to eliminate some glue residue.
The shells had been wrapped with a-lot of glue. Most companies tend to glue one spot and let the lugs hold the rest of the wrap on. Not Percussion Plus, no no. The drum was glued horizontally at both edges the entire way around the kit, and the standard vertical glue where the wrap starts.
A bottle of Goof-Off Acetone Goo Remover and we were set. It was simple work, the acetone dissolved the glue which meant a paint scraper would make short work of any remnants. Easy!
To prep the shells for staining I had some serious resurfacing work ahead of me. Some of the shells, ie. Bass drum, had some large blotches and patches of what seemed to be water damage or similar. A few days spent sanding down meant that I’d recovered almost all of the blotchy area to a more attractive state. Sanding at 60g and moving up to a finer 220g by the end meant the shells were as smooth as they’d ever been. All the machine marks had gone!
There were a few small dings and dents that couldn’t be sanded out, so some wood filler was used to blur these imperfections. It was also used to bog up the old lug holes left after drilling new ones for the 16” tom. This way I get to use matching lugs across the whole kit.
I mentioned in the last post that there were some tedious parts. I was very wrong. I’d forgotten how much is involved with prepping (mostly sanding) before a finish goes on. Thankfully, the finish will be a much less tiring and blister inducing step.
Time for the stain!
cornflour asked: Fuck your youtube stuff is insane. Keep being rad.
Seriously, thank you. Stuff like this makes my day! I’m so glad people can appreciate what I do. I know I keep saying this, but there will be heaps more youtube stuff coming. I’m just in the process of sorting out a small home studio setup before getting stuck into it. I’d rather a few high quality videos over a bunch of low quality clips anyway.
It’s DONE!!
After a long and difficult wait, my Epiarch Kit is finally done. Keller VSS Maple shells, Maple claw-style hoops, Tube Lugs, a gorgeous finish. What more could you want?
Sizes:
18x14” Kick
- Emperor/Fiberskyn
- Custom built Riser
10x7” Rack
- Emperor/Diplomat
- RIMS mount
14x12” Floor
- Emperor/Diplomat
13x7” Snare
- Ambassador/Diplomat Snare
- 32 strand Puresounds
Sadly, the wait isn’t over. Shipping time is the next wait. But it wont be long now! I’m so happy with Epiarch thus far. Jesse has been a brilliant man to work with on this project.
juliapuff asked: You sir are stupendous and I love you.
N’aww. Ain’t you cute? You are unimaginable. I love you.
LIFE PILOT KIT: PHASE 1
Remove all Hardware & Wrap.
This is the first, most tedium inducing step. To begin with, the grotty Percussion Plus heads come off and the hoops & tension rods get a quick wipe down before being sorted into ziplock bags to avoid confusion later. The lugs are unscrewed next followed by floor tom brackets, bass drum spurs and the unsightly bass drum tom-mount. The bass drum + 14” tom both have matching lugs, but the 16” was an add on drum that seems to have not only different lugs, but longer hole spacing. This will mean a decision later as to whether I match the lugs + drill new holes or leave them as is.
The next step is to remove the wrap from the shell, being careful not to pull any wood off with the adhesive left from the wrap. This is achieved by using a hair-dryer and gentle use of a paint scraper to melt the adhesive and pry the wrap off of the shell. Despite the fact that these drums were glued all the way around the shell, I managed to get the wrap off cleanly. Success!
With the wrap off I inspected the shells, looking for any imperfections. There were a few small dings and scuffs from machinery under the wrap, but nothing that some woodfiller and a good sanding wont fix. The other interesting find were some odd ‘bruises’ on the bass drum. I’m not sure whether these are part of the wood grain or water damage, or who knows what. But I’ll do my best to sand them out. The one saving grace, is that they’re only really visible on the bottom of the bass drum, out of sight.
The cat also thought the shells were good fun.
Now onto phase 2! Sand-Mania!
