The Silver Standard EP and more Silver Standard music

Jeff came over last night and we started hammering out ideas for our next track. It went very well and we are SUPER excited to be bringing more Silver Standard goodness to your ears!

Recently we finalized the disc art for "The Silver Standard EP". We will be ordering the discs soon and they will be available in person from Jeff or me, first-come first-served.

Expect a new track to be posted online along w/the artwork in the next week!

City Shadows now available on iTunes! (and Amazon MP3!)

From circa 2000 to 2004, City Shadows is certainly an album I am proud of even nearly 5 years later.

Now available on :

Sliptide - City Shadows

Update: Also available on Amazon MP3!

Enjoy!

Crazy weather, chilled Christmas, and a new year.

Wow.

One would think that being snowed into your house for 13 days would provide you with plenty of time and motivation to blog. Unfortunately, it's the motivation killer aspect of being snowed in that prevents one from doing much of anything but lamenting about "going out".

We figured that when it started snowing the Wednesday before Christmas week we would get a snow day or two. A somewhat early Christmas gift from the weather that would give us some additional time at home (moreso: away from work).

Little did we know that the snow would then continue to dump on us at the top of this giant freaking hill we live on (which then you go down a steep, yet not so long, street) and we'd be stuck 12 more days in our house w/out being able to get our car or truck up the hill.

Two bus trips were made during our 'adventure' in being stuck at home. We went down to Kirkland on Christmas eve to eat some Mexican food. At that point we were starting to go a bit stir crazy and needed to get out. We also needed to hit up a grocery store to pick up some food for Christmas Day dinner. The dinner at Jalisco was great, and our stop by QFC was quick and pointed. It was nice to get out and take the bus to Kirkland and back.

Our second trip to Kirkland for some food, light shopping, and a grocery trip ended up taking a bit longer than we had expected. The darn bus broke down right near the transfer "station" (it was just a uber wide side street). It only took about an hour for DOT to deliver another bus to use on the route, but it was somewhat frustrating ;)

A quiet Christmas, an enjoyable kraut, sausage, and mashed potatoes dinner, and a serious over dose on video games and home-habits made for an alright holiday season. Looking back on it, I'm glad we did not make plans to fly out to Virginia. The dates we were to fly out we would have been stuck at home or at the air port!

So now that the new year is here there is, of course, many plans and many things on my list of 'things to do for the new year' as so many other people have. I certainly don't consider myself above resolutions all be it that I don't have any, but I mostly have 'plans'.

I was able to get more than a few projects started music-wise while I was snowed in over the holiday season. Everything from thick and meaty house, to darker trance, to progressive ambient and more. Some of the samples made it up on the new website, while some of them are baking on the back burner while I get them to a more presentable stage.

City Shadows volume 1 is up on CD Baby and is making its way to other online distributors soon. Physical CDs will hopefully be available sometime Q1 2009.

Well of Souls is working through the 2nd pass of mastering and mix down. Once it is finished the artwork will be going through the final review process, then expect some announcements on the release! Digipaks, anyone? =D

Alrighty.. I'd like to keep this short, so off I go to enjoy the rest of my Sunday and prepare myself for another week at work!

Pz.

New Clips in the Fan Club

I have posted four new clips in the Fan Club. Some of them are almost full songs but require some additional production work to be completed before 'official' release.

"Solitude - An introduction with potential to morph into a full fledged Orbital-esque track with a lot of ambient power behind it. The synth was custom made in Reason from a bare-bones Subtractor.

We Move Together - A tech-house track that I'm really digging. The sound is very light and groovy with some indie flare to it (imo). Drum work, EQ, additional details and some progressive work needs to be completed before it is release worthy.

This Desert Soul - Trancey, and not sure if I'm completely behind this one but the potential is there.

House Start 1 - A song I was working on with vocals in mind. I passed this version to Jacqui Johnson to see if she would like to record with it. She said yes, so we will see what comes back and where it ends up. "

Enjoy!

Sliptide Fan Club (A Google Group).

City Shadows coming to iTunes!

It's official, folks.

City Shadows (volume 1) is coming to iTunes! Unfortunately due to they way iTunes processes their music, I won't know the exact date that my album is available online. As soon as I know I will be making posts here, the new Sliptide.com (coming out shortly), and of course make it known on Facebook, Twitter, etc. ;)

Things have been great since my last post. I have had the opportunity to take some vacation. I had an incredible week off filled with birthday fun for both Amy and I. Work has been pretty chill while being able to accomplish some major milestones and goals.

Life is grood right now. I will make a more formidable blog post soon!

The 3-Day Breast Cancer Walk

First and foremost: Thank you to my friends, family, co-workers, teammates (GO HOTTIES!), and perfect strangers who supported Amelia and I in our fund raising efforts. Even more thanks to everyone who showed support in cheering us on in training and through the 3-Day event itself.

Amy and I woke up incredibly early-- 4:00 AM, to ensure that we were dressed and ready to take our Green Cab to Bellevue Community College.

I would like to breifly state that our experience with Green Cab was a positive one: The driver was polite and helpful, readily admitted to needing some help back to the highway (Kenmore isn't easy to navigate if you aren't familiar with it), and the car was clean and quiet.. We will be taking a Green Cab to the airport next month ;)

We arrived to the event pretty early. The view from the cab was already exciting! We saw an incredible amount of pink colored banners and advertising. Early bird walkers talking, cheering, stretching, keeping warm with espresso and coffee, some eating on-the-go breakfast, some doing last minute pack or bag adjustments. All be it 5 AM, everyone seemed to exude a positive attitude.

Loading our gear onto our gear truck was a breeze. I'm not sure how many there were, but it could have been 24 or more Budget rental trucks that lined one of the walk ways off to our left. Each one clearly lettered so we knew where to drop our bags that contained our camping gear and extra supplies for the next three days.

We turned around and took in the view of the stage and the holding area where opening ceremonies were going to begin. It was already a sight to behold! Luckily, Amy and I both zoomed in on a small Starbucks logo that was near the holding area. We walked our happy butts over to this poor Starbucks van and 4 barristas that were going to be supplying free coffee for the entire crowd of ~3,500 people! Thankfully Amy and I were some of the first in line and we got our free tall drip house blend which kept us warm and infused a bit of energy in our step for the morning (we are chronic espresso drinkers.. and we will drink coffee at home when we don't feel like spending money or time on espresso out).

When it all got under way we meandered through the Bellevue Community College campus, and the three days of walking ensued.

Highlights of my journey:

• People were of all varieties when it came down to personality, politeness, and positive or negative mind sets. We experienced a lot of positive, upbeat and talkative individuals along our routes. Amy and I generally walked faster than majority of the people at the 3-Day, so it was fun passing people on the left and asking them how their day was going, finding out more about them if they were really chatty, and sharing experiences with our fellow walkers along the way.
  
  We *did* encounter negative people. Most of them were pretty rude in trying to pass us on the route (w/out saying "on your left!"), or were fairly rude when we attempted to talk or pass them ourselves. Such is life! I hope they had an overall positive experience at least.
• Camping was quite an experience. A sea of pink tents at Marymoor park, the mobile showers (which upon my first shower didn't work.. the generator was out of gas!), the giant big-top tent in which we sat and ate, joked, saw some incredible (-ly good and bad) karaoke.. and a decent nights rest after a full day of walking. It was comfy enough, though if we do this again we know that it gets COOOOLD at night and in the AM when you are trying to get ready to go.
• At the end of Day #1, I had some nasty looking blisters on my pinky toes. The medical tent (which was uber busy during the whole event) had to lance, drain, and bandage my toes. They said to try walking on day 2. Day 2 was uncomfortable from the get go. My toes were hot, and I could feel the rubbing even in my bandages. We got about 7 or so miles in, and my feet were KILLING me. It felt so hot out along the Snohomish river.. and I decided that I had to call it for the morning. We took a shuttle to lunch, and during lunch I aired out my feet-- it was pretty bad =T I tried to put my shoes back on and walk across to Walgreens from Juanita Park.. no go. My feet were done for the day. Amy was with me 100%, so we took a shuttle back to camp to spend the rest of the afternoon cheering on the walkers making it back to camp. *That* was a lot of fun and very motivational/inspirational.
• Day 3 started early early with taking our tent down, packing our stuff, dropping our equipment at the equipment truck, then getting a quick breakfast and hopping in line to catch a bus to downtown Seattle. When we arrived at the JAPANESE GARDENS (*not* the Arboretum as they kept telling us), we proceeded to do a very familiar path for the day that eventually dropped us downtown. The day was moving quick. My feet were doing well as long as we didn't stop *too* long. Unfortunately we ended up VERY far ahead of most of the Hotties, and it was hot enough (and lack of shade--) at the last checkpoint that we decided to press on. Again, we stayed at the very last steps to the end of the walk to cheer on everyone until our team arrived and we could all walk in together being cheered on by the public.

So that's the extremely condensed version.. anyone is welcomed to talk to me about the whole experience! It was a lot of fun.

Here is a link to one of our teammate's (Hottie Courtney) Picasa Albums. I have yet to get the small amount of pictures and videos off of my camera.

An Update to Talk About Future Updates

My mind is a bit hazy right now. It's 8:30 and the day is nearly over, but I'm left wondering where the hell it went!

I didn't get half of the things done today I should have, not to mention I forgot to call a best friend today. While I blame the insurmountable amount of tiredness, trying to take care of a few chores to get ready for the work week-- ah forget it.. I dropped the ball (sorry Jessica!!)

I even forgot to 'relax'. I'll take it where I can get it I suppose. Here is a list of things I have to blog about (this is my own check list.. might as well put it here, right?):

-The 3-Day experience
-Weekly Shenanigans (happy hour fun)
-City Shadows and Well of Souls progress

I also need to upload pictures from the past month or so (at least I did the ones from Rainier).

Tomorrow brings me to the Redmond Campus for some monitoring tools and analysis training. I've heard this class is awesome, so I'm looking forward to see what Microsoft can offer in the way of providing me with some new approaches to analyzing data. *nerd alert!*

I don't think it will be as cool as taking some of the CA Wily Introscope classes, but it's all goooood.