Robot Rock

[electrofloss]

You can hear 4 songs off of The Van's debut cd here under "music" www.thevanrock.com

Recorded in our keyboard player's basement in Brooklyn using my old Dell computer. The basement is now flooded, the computer is now dead.

[electrofloss]

Oh yeah, the myspace site if anybody wants to actually download the songs

http://www.myspace.com/thevanrock

[stompforfuzz]

I love the music! I'm a computer is my fav, with All that you want a close second

I listened on headphones, and the production was effective. I hear a bit of brittleness on the high end. I think if I listened with the volume hot enough it might be fatigueing after a while. I'll have to listen again just to be sure it's not because I'm hung-over. The overall balance is very nice, very buttery in my ears.


Hey kid, I'm a computer...

[Randy]

Really tight. I like this stuff a lot. Usually when there is a techno-fied production, the structures are stilted and the melodies purposefully "un-human." I love that the stuff has warm melodies and organic structures. Excuse me for saying it, but if the stuff was produced in 1980's alternative rock, it would be reminiscent of REM or Pylon. And I mean that in a good way.

[Brett Siler]

I really like the glitchy synth. The songs themselve kinda remind me of Trans-Am (at least I am a computer). I thought the mixes sounded very well balanced and clear. good job. fun stuff!

[electrofloss]

Thanks for the feedback! Stompforfuzz, you are right about the brittleness. I could never quite gets things to not sound harsh and digital. We had been sitting around for a couple of months trying to scrape up money and record in a studio, and then I just sort of said fuck it. We had been playing shows for awhile and we needed to put something together, so I did it myself. I consider production value and overall sound such an important part of music that I sort of forgot that the most important thing is for the music to exist. In the end, most people don't really care or notice if it was recorded digitally or the drums sound muddy or if the highs in the vocals don't cut through or whatever it is we worry about. But obviously positive feedback from you guys who do care about such things means a lot.

I would like to get the mixes professionally mastered someday, but for now it is a self release that we sell at shows and it suits us fine. Once we get signed to Columbia records we'll have Bob Ludwig "warm it up". Right.