Talk about a gong show. With just over a week until the CD Release Party you would think that by this time I would have the finished album in my hands, but sadly this is not the case. After going through more mixing and mastering revisions than I would ever like to admit we have finally come to the realization that we may end up putting the damn CD cases together ourselves the day of the show. Was it all worth it? You bet your ass it was!

In the end Kenton Thomas the lead singer of Portal became our savior and mixed our record at the 11th hour. He busted his ass to help us have one hell of a finished product. Every member of the band Portal had a hand in some aspect of our album and we’re stoked to have such an awesome group of musicians to work with.

Next up is getting back to our rehearsing schedule so we’re ready to go for the show. The clock is ticking and we need to get everything done in the next week. That being said, there should be a wicked batch of hoodies and tshirts coming down the line as well as the CD! I’ll post another note once I get them in hand and can set it up so every one can buy them online.

Alright, I’m done ranting – expect some new music to be posted next week!

Shane Lamotte
shane@livingillusion.com
http://www.livingillusion.com

Finally, after months of procrastination and weeks of hard work, it has arrived! The new LivingIllusion.com. With the music and entertainment industry going in the direction they are I figured it best to ensure that our new site be built around easy access for visitors to find new content from the band. I wanted this new site to reflect the constant stream of updates and content that we plan on posting while keeping the site dynamic and  giving people a reason to come back. Not to get into too much tech speak, but I used a blogging/content management system called wordpress to build the site.

So big things are in the plans for us these days. We’re going to be releasing our new album at our CD Release Party which is booked at the Starlite Room in Edmonton on April 9th 2010. We’re going to be playing with not only our friends, but one of our favorite bands, PORTAL! We’re going to be pushing to get our record on the radio with our good friends over at Oddball Productions, plus more things that I don’t want to mention quite yet. I will have a proper announcement for the cd release party in the coming weeks once we have tickets, posters and all that stuff pulled together. It’s going to be a wicked show, not to mention that we’re finally releasing our album!

Alright, well I’m off to bed, it has been a long day, but it’s great to finally have the new site finished (for the most part). There still will be lots of updates and changing pages in the coming weeks as I fill out and update old content pages plus pulling new merch together and posting songs!

Feel free to check out the site and post a comment to let me know what you think about the new site and if you think I should make any changes!! I’m always open to creative criticism and want to make the site as awesome as possible:
http://www.livingillusion.com

Shane Lamotte
shane@livingillusion.com
http://www.livingillusion.com

Alright internet, I just finished the new MySpace page for the band and figured I would let ya know. After two weeks with a designer and an awesome photo shoot with our photographer this was the end result.

You can check it out at http://www.myspace.com/livingillusion.

Special thanks to Mike Ofstedahl our photographer he did an awesome job. The picture we used as the header for the MySpace page was taken at the studio and was definitely one of the best. Sidenote: Rick our graphic designer for the MySpace page is freaking amazing.

So what do you think of the MySpace page? Does it look classy enough for ya?

Now I just have to finish the new Living Illusion website.

Shane Lamotte
shane@livingillusion.com
http://www.livingillusion.com

Winter is slowly creeping up in wonderful Edmonton Alberta and I am wishing that I was back in Hawaii (Just got back from a 10 day vacation in the sun last week). I figured seeing as it has been months since an update that I should get to it.  Lately, we’ve taking time off from album production to deal with the website, myspace, album artwork, photo shoot, t-shirt designs, radio promotions, etc. We even have a Living Illusion photo shoot tomorrow afternoon.

The new album is 92% done. Jay finished all his vocals, Kevin finished all the editing, the cello player tracked her parts, and I even went back in and tracked extra guitars for some segways. Currently we’re tweaking the final mixes of the new album and Kenton Thomas from Portal is working on an Industrial style remix of one of the songs. We still have quite a way to go to finish and it probably won’t be the new year until we do an official release and have a proper tour pulled together.

This week we signed an agreement with Oddball Productions. They are the company that has gotten many bands like Long Way Down, My Sister Ocean, Portal and many more on to radio. Speaking of radio, I did a radio interview with Barefoot Bob on the University of Hawaii Radio Station a few weeks ago, it was pretty awesome, we spun some new Living Illusion tracks . Next week I will be submitting one of our tracks to The Bear’s Songwriter Competition that they do every year.

Last, I will be putting up one more video from our sessions in the studio of the acoustic guitar and vocal tracking. After that I think we’re going to get some more viral videos rolling out, there gonna be really fun so watch for those. On a more personal note, it has been 3 months with out smoking and I am quite happy about my new addiction… my iPhone, and my lungs are pretty happy too.

And that’s what’s new.

Shane Lamotte
shane@livingillusion.com
http://www.livingillusion.com

So we’ve finally rigged up this massive lot of sweet guitar amps! We’re running a Mesa Boogie Rectifier, Marshall Plexi, Deizel VH4, Randall, Orange, Top Hat and a Burman, plus a couple more vintage tube amps. It’s going to be a massive wall of sound, and if you don’t know, yes we will be running all the amps at the same time. We’re shooting for 9 – 10 amps total, but even if we only use 7-8 it’s still going to sound amazing and freaking huge.

Today was basically a night of getting sounds, figuring out what the best sounds are from each amp and building their sound out to compliment each other. This is definitely the most exciting part of the recording process for me, seeing as I’m a guitarist that obviously makes sense. I am essentially tapping every amp resource I have available to make this possible and the fact that I got the Diezel amp is out of this world. Special thanks to Ryan Chipeniuk of Grounded Star for that one, YOU ROCK!

After we get all our sounds we’ll get started on recording rhythm guitar parts then do leads and overdubs later in the week. Any way, that’s all for now, I’ll post something next week of the guitar tracking. It’s going to take 7-10 days to get all the guitars done so I’ll have lots of pictures and possibly another cool video to post.

Shane Lamotte
shane@livingillusion.com
http://www.livingillusion.com

After an intense month of pre-production at Beta Sound with Kevin we are finally ready to start tracking! These songs have gone through so many amazing changes and we’re all really excited for what’s to come. We have one more rehearsal / pre-production session then we’re replacing all the skins and teching the drums with Bill George from Portal in preparation for drum tracking. It’s going to be a damn good birthday weekend!

My life since we moved into the studio has essentially been, work and studio… now repeat that every day of the week (well almost every day). I must admit though, it’s not all working at the studio, we do work hard but we play hard too, even Dave at Fail Safe Studio (in the same building as Beta Sound) has been joining in all the partying and playoff hockey watching. It’s one big happy family there and were this months adopted children… who pay to be there… okay not quite adopted children, lol.

It’s just crazy to think that we’ve already been in the studio for almost a month, time has flown by so fast! We will have some more studio footage posted down the line, videos and lots of pictures, but for the time being we’re all really focused on getting our parts as tight as freaking possible for the excessive amounts of recording we’re going to be doing. We’re going to use 6 – 10 guitar amps per guitar, it’s going to be a massive WALL OF SOUND

I can’t even begin to explain the advantages of working in a real recording studio. From the gear to the expertise, recording at Beta Sound has been a huge blessing, and we haven’t even started tracking yet! I can’t wait to hear the finished product, I’m going to be bouncing off the walls when we finally get to release this album and play our CD release party.

I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned much about the record itself yet in any of my blogs so here’s a litte rundown. We are still working on the track names for a couple songs but as it stands, we are recording a 6 song EP, 5 full band (guitars, drums, bass, vocals) and 1 acoustic track with some orchestral instruments. We have high hopes for the record, but with that being said we’re all doing it for our love and desire to play and write music.

Wouldn’t have it any other way.

Shane Lamotte
shane@livingillusion.com
http://www.livingillusion.com

I don’t even know where to begin seeing as life has been totally insane (in a good way when it comes to music) over the last 2 months and I have not even had time to blog! So as opposed to a full update on life, this is gonna be short and sweet and just about the band. On this coming Saturday (April 4th, 2009) we are moving all our gear from the jam space in Leduc (Thanks Again Ryan!) to Kevin Hoskin and Bill Kennedys Studio at Beta Sound. Sweet BuJesus it’s finally fucking happening!

Over the last 2 months we have been rehearsing our asses off getting our EP songs ready to go. In the last 3 weeks alone we did a whole round of Pre-PreProduction using our own low tech studio gear, and it was definitely worth it to get most of the kinks out of the way before heading into the studio. We multitracked drums, tracked both guitars, did up all the bass tracks and even got the vocals recorded. It will be interesting to compare these Pre-PreProduction tracks to the finished product when it’s all said and done.

The game plan moving forward from here (for recording) will be to do Pre-Production with Kevin at Beta for 2 – 3 weeks (about 6 – 8 rehearsals), then we’re into full on high end production mode, tracking everything as massively huge as possible. So freaking stoked I can’t even begin to explain how awesome this is going to sound.

So that’s the update, there is a lot more coming down the wire but nothing worthy of blogging about (unless you go by internet standards then everything is worth blogging about, ha). More updates coming soon and more frequently in the coming weeks and months.

Shane Lamotte
shane@livingillusion.com
http://www.livingillusion.com

Yay for four hours of sleep, gah. It’s 9am and I am sitting at the River Cree Casino / Marriott Hotel in west Edmonton running an Exhibitor Booth at an event, it’s pretty exciting. Just waiting for the day to be over so I can go pick up the guys and head to our jam space and rehearse. Speaking of rehearsing, I guess I should mention that rehearsing for the new EP has been coming along very nicely.

After getting our space a couple weeks ago I spent a few days hauling all of our gear out to Leduc (where the rehearsal space is at). I got the drums, bass, guitar amps, PA and all that stuff set up and running, even went to the local music store called The Turner Guitar Studio in Leduc and bought an extra mic stand. We’ve had a few rehearsals already and it’s nice and loud, ear plugs are much needed… we all imagine the neighbours don’t like us too much right now, ha. So next were making the space much more band friendly, posters of Hendrix, Cobain, and the likes will be plastered on the wall.

In the next week or two here I think I am going to buy myself a new laptop, that way I can take my mammoth computer to the rehearsal space and use it for what it’s meant to be, a ministudio for pre-production recording. We also have a $3,000 Yamaha Keyboard that we are going to haul down there, it’s a great keyboard for midi interface as it has as many keys as a baby grand! It’s wonderful to finally have the space to accommodate our musical creativity. At this rate we’ll be hammering out a new song every week.

I’m crazy excited for when we will finally get to share all of our new shit, it’s gonna be incredible!

All in good time.


Shane Lamotte
shane@livingillusion.com
http://www.livingillusion.com/

Hey everyone we’re looking for Photographers, Graphic Designers, Web Developers, Artists and anybody who wants to contribute Artwork to our upcoming Album… and YES, if you’re professional you will get paid (well, as long as it’s reasonable)! As opposed to just opening the yellowpages and hiring people to work with us, we figured why not send out a call to you all first and see if there’s anybody out there that wants to work with us on the LI project. So I guess I should start by giving you more of a break down of what we’re looking for:

- professional photographers (for shoots in and around Edmonton)
- graphic designers to help us develop a look and feel based around the new album
- web developers to integrate the new art and designs into Word Press & MySpace
- and last, anyone with wicked Artwork who want us to use it in the album!

And hey if you know somebody that you think would be a perfect fit, then feel free to drop me an email (shane@livingillusion.com) about their wickedness and I’ll contact them myself! Those who work with us will get full credit for the job that they do. Hope to hear from you soon.

Shane Lamotte
shane@livingillusion.com
http://www.livingillusion.com/

Holy BuJesus (Yes, that’s right, Buddha and Jesus) we found a freaking Jam Space! No, no, wait, that’s not right… we actually HAVE a Jam Space! It took months to find out that nothing was available in Edmonton, so now in this positive turn of events, I am completely relieved and totally stoked that we finally have a place to rehearse. I’m actually heading out there tonight to start hauling gear!

Special Thanks goes out to our buddy Ryan who is the one offering up the space for us. Without him we would be stuck back in the world of tirelessly trying to find a rehearsal space so thanks man!

That’s all I’m going to update for now but Ill post more as things get moving double time over the next few weeks.

Hope you had nice holidays and are ready to take on the New Year!

Shane Lamotte
shane@livingillusion.com
http://www.livingillusion.com