Frantic Mantis: December 2006


New Songs / Contact

Saturday, December 30, 2006


New songs posted on our MySpace page.



Also completed CONTACT for Gameboy DS this holiday season. It contains some funny in-game social commentary about net phenomena and community sites. In particular they reference "MySpot" (a.k.a. MySpace™) and a net-hyped "band". An overall enjoyable adventure with design and contextual tips o' the hat to early gaming and computing.

Sent from the shadownet

Tuesday, December 26, 2006


We were tipped-off of a mention on the SUNY Fredonia University site in reference to us blogging about their article about mantii earlier. [here]. A welcome mention and our hats are tipped to those who work with insects. We would happily create a soundtrack for an ecosystem of mantii.

I just like this

Thursday, December 21, 2006
Image originally posted at: http://www.rareads.com/scans1/26257.jpg

[ NOTE: It looks like they took down the ad. Maybe too many people were looking at the amazing 1980s cube and increasing the site's bandwidth. Hmmph! ]

Mixing Madness: Han Shot First

Sunday, December 17, 2006


When mixing digitally.. or even in an analog setting, the "studio madness" that sets in can never be avoided. It seems though even more with digital that the concept of being able to fix and edit seems like an endless process. Self-editing in the DIY recording realm is a tricky thing to do. The learning process to this I have found to be a combination of perspective and patience. Taking breaks to have fresh ears, not being too eager to be finished and share your work with the world. So in a way one has to go against the flow in the newly found internet-age habit of instant publishing and satisfaction in one-click. And with these tools at your fingertips one also must remember to remain spontaneous and capture human energy so you don't end up with a completely edited plastic version. As Chad Clark (Beauty Pill) once said... "it's a thin line to the path of evil". The "path of evil" being overly editing things and fixing parts with clinical intensity thus sucking out the human quality of music.

Anyone remember what George Lucas did when he got too overly excited about the digital age and re-edited the early star wars films? I weep at that memory. Greedo shooting han first? Wat da faa!

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Mixing...

Thursday, December 14, 2006


We will begin mixing the new Frantic Mantis album shortly. We had some bad luck with hard-drives... one external HD died and then the backup HD with some Division Of Laura Lee data also crashed. Fortunately, the data for FM was also on two laptops. It was almost a serious situation, however it did cause delay in mixing as I didn't have my version of the album back in the US of A! But now... mixes begin in kitchens and other living spaces.

Friday, December 08, 2006
Romanian inventor creates a 100TB CD!