A New Split 7"! This Time with HONEY RADAR!
purchase the record by clicking the cover here
You heard right, folks! Earlier this week, our good pals at Flannelgraph Records - alongside our buddies at Third Uncle Records - co-released this beautiful specimen...a brand new 7" split between Mike Adams At His Honest Weight and Philadelphia, PA's Honey Radar!
I first became aware of Honey Radar head honcho Jason Henn as the long suffering drummer for one of my favorite music groups, Elephant Micah. Jason and I have hovered around the same small scene of folks here in Indiana for many years, but only met and became fast friends in the fairly recent past. I think it's safe to say we're still in our honeymoon phase. I say that mainly because I still think the dude is tops (he's yet to cross me). Jason's music is lo-fi and gritty, aurally, but sensitive, observant and thoughtful beneath the surface. That seeming contradiction - as well as his sense of humor and stream-of-consciousness approach to performing live - are some of the things that draw me to Honey Radar the most. I love the band, and I'm extremely happy to be sharing this hunk of toxic plastic with them.
About our side...
Our side of this split features two recordings we made while on tour in Los Angeles, California (you know...Hollywood...home of the Stars) in 2015. We were doing a two-week west coast tour with our pals Sound of Ceres. We played a show in LA, and we were supposed to be in San Diego the following night, but we got word that the owner of the venue had sold the place the night before our show and all previously booked shows were immediately cancelled. Very weird and dumb.
So, with a newfound day off, our friends Triptides kindly invited us to their studio space, Sun Pavilion, to do some recording for the fun of it. We had a weird version of the band going at the time due to the availability of some of The Boys and to my own creative urge to shake things up a bit, so we thought it prudent to document our strange configuration. Weeks before the tour began we entered Sleepwalk Recording studio with our old friend Eric Day to track Ben Lumsdaine playing our entire set in a controlled environment. Then, AD and myself spent some time re-mixing, effecting, and sampling Ben's recordings for use on the road. We loaded the recordings onto a Dr. Sample recording device, AD played guitar, David Woodruff played bass, and I played a small Casio keyboard for the duration of the tour, including the Sun Pavilion sessions. We recorded three songs, "Weather On" and "Lehrpez", which are released here, and also "The Lucky One", which was previously released on a Joyful Noise subscription 7" leading up to the release of Casino Drone. The sessions were engineered by Glenn Brigman, Bryant Fox, and Alex Bulli in Los Angeles, mixed by me - Mike Adams - back in Bloomington, and mastered by Eric Day in New York City.
I should also mention that Jared Cheek was our tour manager for this particular tour and that he did 100% of the driving from Kansas City to LA and back due to our bonkers rental-van situation. The entire saga is documented in Tan Van Tour Talk Season 11 and I highly recommend listening to it all right after you purchase and listen to this new 7".