Here’s a video from the guitar tracking sessions at Beta Sound. Kevin Hoskin (Our Engineer) and Nathan Kidd from Long Way Down (Our Assistant Engineer) set up the mics and teched the amps for the recording sessions. We recorded the amps so loud that we blew up the Marshall Plexi. I’d say we used a lot of amps, but I think the video speaks for itself.

And without further ado, here’s the video from the guitar sessions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mhgtii48V0c

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

Last weekend we recorded all the drum tracks for the new album. Kevin (Our Engineer) and Bill George the drummer from Portal spent their Friday night at the studio teching, tuning, and seating the drums for the Saturday recording session. They set up so many microphones on the drums, I swear there was over 24 mics set up… and some weird mics I had never even seen before (what the hell is a ball and biscuit mic!?). Needless to say their hard work paid off and the drums sound sick!

Props to Cal Beaudion (our drummer for the new record) who did an awesome job, he played drums like an animal and hammered through everything in one day, that guys a freaking machine! Also, a special thanks to Bill George for being our Drum Tech, and to Nate from Long Way Down for Assistant Engineering during the recording session. In the next couple days I’ll post some videos of Cal playing drums at the studio so you can get a feel for what the drums will be like on the new record.

Tomorrow I’m headed into the studio to hear all the edited drum tracks. We took a little break from the studio to give Kevin and Bill Kennedy some time to finish up the Order of Chaos and Chunk projects that are also on the go. It has been a good week of rest, was starting to burn out and get a little sick there for a while. Have to stay healthy and steer clear of the swine flu! LOL, hahaha.

Last, here’s a little video for you from the drum session day:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJvTzu5jz2o

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

Here’s the second of many quick little videos that we’ll be making at the studio during pre production. The pictures in the video were takin while we were hammering out song arrangements and working out all the tempos for the new tracks. Being at the studio is addictive and every thing is going really really well. I can’t wait til we start tracking drums sometime in the next 2 weeks here! Finally a new album is coming, it’s about freaking time!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuWnTVYqPs8[/youtube]

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

We are officially moved into Kevin and Bills studio inside Beta Sound! Since moving in we have already done intense amounts of pre production and our tunes are sounding incredible. We’ve been filming a lot of the process and I’ll be posting some videos of the Studio Sessions for the duration of our time at the studio. Starting with this one:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExTUQ-pnR8Q[/youtube]

Expect more to come!

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

Oddly enough at the rate its going I will have an electronic album done before the new LI album comes out, haha. So last night at about 3:30am I finished a new electronic track that my buddy DJ Terminal and I worked on. It’s sort of a heavy bass melodic down tempo chill music type song… to get the full effect it needs to be heard through good speakers Take a listen and tell me what you think: http://www.livingillusion.com/Inspire.mp3.  I have been listening to it on repeat for the last couple of hours and am listening to it as I type this.

All it takes is a little Cubase and Absynth and you’re good to go… my midi keyboard does help too. I wonder how/if some one could ever perform this live? Maybe just trigger a bunch of sounds on computers, I can’t really see any other way of doing it. I’ve heard stories of electronic musicians who do shows on the Europass Train in Europe. They play their tracks at night and the “show’ is nothing more than the view out the window. The stars, the lights, the atmosphere. Now that would be totally killer, just sink right in to your seat and take it all in.

I would love to do something like that. Of course, if I did that I would make sure my set was during the trip through Amsterdam, that way every one could get good and stoned before the ride, haha.

Hope you enjoy the new song as much as I enjoyed writing it.

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

This weekend after beating my head against the wall for about 6 hours working on music for Living Illusion, I decided to switch gears and do something different. I hooked some sounds up to my recording software and played around with it until I ended up with this: http://www.livingillusion.com/LookWhatICanDo.mp3

Definitely a deviation from our regular music that’s for certain, but what can I say I like electronic music (well some of it, happy hardcore I could do without). Sometimes I think, when I find the extra time (haha), I should write a full electronic album. It’s always fun to do something different than what you would normally do.

Although I am and always will be a rocker I’m still a huge fan of bands like Daft Punk, Jimmy Swift Band, Blue Quarter, and other electronic artists. There is just something about electronic music in how it can express an emotion or feeling without having to come right out and say it. I think that’s what I find the most beautiful.

I think this is also why I love Dream Theatre & Metallica’s Instrumental tracks. Expressing emotion purely through sound. No thinking is involved. When you hear lyrics and try to understand what they say you miss the rest of the music… and vice versa. Only amazing songs have the perfect balance between lyrics and music, and they are hard to find.

So anyway, take a listen to the track and if enough people like it maybe I’ll take some extra time to work on this stuff. Leave a comment below and let me know what you think.

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