Bundles, Bundles, Bundles

‘Tis the holiday season and Rising Pulse Records is offering discounted bundles from artists such as Candiria, Spylacopa, Meek Is Murder and AFX. The Sale will run for one month from Black Friday to Christmas Eve.

First up, we have a poster bundle with 8 different Candiria promotional, tour and event posters.
This bundle includes these posters

Three different five borough NYC tour posters
Headlining events at The Studio At Webster Hall
Headlining event at Knitting Factory
Winter 2017 Headlining dates
Kiss The Lie promotional poster
November 2016 tour with Dalek.

You can purchase the poster bundle HERE for a huge discount!

We also have a complete Spylacopa vinyl and CD bundle. The package includes

S/T Redux deluxe colored 12" LP

Parallels deluxe colored 12" LP
Spylacopa S/T digipack CD
2008 promotional  poster
2008 1" promotional button

You can purchase this bundle HERE for a major discount.

Also available is the Meek Is Murder vinyl bundle! 3 releases in 1. This bundle includes

'Was' 12-inch full length album in coke bottle green colored vinyl
Onward / Into The Sun 2XEP 12-inch deluxe colored vinyl (Blood Red & Blue with Black splatter)

You can purchase this bundle HERE and save some bucks!

Lastly we have ONLY ONE SET of the EXTREMELY RARE AFX Analord bundle! Analord is a 12-inch vinyl series by Richard D. James aka Aphex Twin or in this case AFX. This is a great gift for a vinyl collector and at a great price!! This bundle includes

AFX Analord 1 in VG - VG+ condition
AFX Analord 4 in VG - VG+ condition
AFX Analord 6 in VG - VG+ condition

You can purchase this rare beast of a bundle HERE

We will be making more bundles available as this Black Friday Sale continues!! All of these bundles will remain available as long as the product lasts so act quick! Especially on that AFX bundle if you are interested. Thank you!!  

Tonight!!!

Rising Pulse Records presents : A Night of Terror and Doom!! 

New items in Store

Some rare and interesting items have been added to the on line store. First up we have a Pocket Piano by Critter & Guitari. An amazing and compact tool for all you synth heads who can't get enough bleep-bloop in their life. 

Next up we have three very rare pieces of vinyl just added to the on line store as well. One of Rising Pulse Records favorite vinyl series ever. Fans of electronic music and vinyl collectors alike should know a good deal about this 12-Inch analogue synth series by Richard D James or better known as AFX.

AFX Analord 1

Released in January 2005

Side A 

1. Steppingfilter 101 

2. Canticle Drawl 

3. MC-4 Acid 

4. Bubble n Squeak 2 (Unlisted and untitled until 2009 reissue)

Side B 

1. Where's Your Girlfriend 

2. Grumpy Acid 

3. Analord 158b

AFX Analord 4

Released in February 2005

Side A 

1. Crying In Your Face 

2. Home Made Polysynth

Side B 

1. Halibut Acid 

2. Breath March

AFX Analord 6

Released in April 2005

Side A 

1. Batine Acid 

2. Snivel Chew

Side B 

1. I'm Self Employed 

2. 2 Analogue Talks 

- Analogue Talks (Claknib) 

- Analogue Talks (Chorus 3) 

3. Analoggins

You can find all of these items and more at 

www.risingpulse.com

Thank you !!! XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXXOXOXOXOX

Ephemera

If you have been keeping up with this blog then you will remember that I mentioned something about selling items from my personal collection such as books, drawings, prints, records, tapes, CD's, musical instruments, effects pedals, photographs and microphones. And so it begins. The first item listed is this guitar. It is a 2007 Ibanez ARX Artist Custom. It's a beautiful guitar and needs a new home. Find more info about it HERE

I will be adding new unique items to the store very soon. In the mean time here's a picture of my co-worker Bambi hard at work keeping an eye on the birds outside the window.

Testing testing!!

Hello friends, thank you so much for your patronage and interest in Rising Pulse Records and the product we carry. It really means a lot to us (meaning me and my cat Bambi). We have a big poster sale going on at the moment and it is moving along swimmingly. You can check that out HERE if you have not been hip to that info until now.

 Next up we will be selling off some Rising Pulse Records test pressings for several releases including The Bad Wife by Julie Christmas, Parallels by Spylacopa, Toying With The Insanities Volumes II and III and Kiss The Lie by Candiria among others. Prices for each release will vary. Test pressings for each release will begin selling within the next few days in no particular order. For each release there are at the very most 5 copies. They will be hand numbered and signed by myself... I mean by me. Although I will probably be by myself when I am signing them. Here is a photo a test press of our most recent vinyl release Spylacopa S/T Redux.

 After that I would like to make some items available from my personal collection of books, records and other collectibles. So stay in the loop to see how that develops in the next week or so.
 Once again thank you all so much for supporting the label! That is all for now - John

Poster and print mania!

Rising Pulse Records will be making all posters and prints available again in the on line store at reduced prices tomorrow!! There are several different Candiria show posters as well as a few limited edition promotional posters such as this Candiria poster with art by Colin Held and design by John LaMacchia. 

Prices for each poster will vary based on the limitation of stock and other factors such as if a poster is hand numbered and signed by the artist or if the poster is autographed by the band. It should also be noted that these posters will not be reprinted and once they sell out they will no longer be made available ever again. Additionally, posters will be rolled and shipped in poster boxes or cylinders unless a poster is purchased with another item such as a vinyl record or a tee shirt. Then the poster will be folded gently to the best of our ability to assure it arrives to you safely and in the best condition possible. 

Visit www.risingpulse.com to purchase these limited edition items! 

New Spylacopa video for the song V

Some exciting developments with this blog post!

Spylacopa released a video for the song V off of the music projects 2016 album Demon John. The video was made with footage shot on an iPhone from a trip to the mid west. The main subject of the video is Andrea Horne, the singer and guitar player of the Brooklyn Grunge Gaze band Vaureen. The video is now up on Facebook and you can view it HERE. 

You can stream and download Demon John HERE via bandcamp. 

The making of “Staring at the Sound” with John LaMacchia

The Song

The music for Staring at the Sound was written pretty impulsively. I wanted something that would vibe well with the energy of what I had written for Haunting a Ghost. Something that was just as unhinged, but something more straight forward. At that time I was listening to The Desert Sessions 9 and 10 a lot and I think you can hear a bit of Josh Homme's influence in the guitar riff I wrote for the verses. The chorus is in the same key as the verse which was intentional. I just really wanted something stripped down and straight forward for this one, something that the band could let loose on.

In particular, I am really happy with the sound of the rhythm guitars we wound up with for this song. Once I described what I was going for to recording engineer Michael Barile, he knew exactly what we should use. He had a really great, vintage Sunn Model T bass amp that was really warm and loud. That combined with a Rat II distortion pedal, it was just perfect.

Greg Puciato in The Gauntlet 2008

Greg Puciato had this to say about Staring At The Sound in an interview with The Gauntlet in 2008.

"Another rock song that came really quickly vocally. John sent this, and again, the melody came really quickly. The lyrics are more or less about being in a relationship with someone in which you are criticized a lot and put under a lot of scrutiny by people trying to defame or condemn something that they don't fully understand. The world is a critic always, and older people or people stuck in conservative mindsets often don't realize that they hurt the ones they love and stifle the growth of both those people's and their own lives by adhering to antiquated and outdated beliefs or social paradigms. John's guitar solo in this song was really cool to hear, he ripped it out pretty much in one take. He has a great feel in his soloing that I'm excited for people to hear. I think everyone knows he is a great guitar player but I don't know that he ever got to be too expressive as far as playing a solo goes with Candiria. It's funny, a couple people have told me that this song reminds them a bit of Jane's Addiction, because of the soaring nature of the vocals and the guitar solo, and I never ever heard that before but now. I can totally hear that in his solo, whether he felt that way about it or not [laugh]. That's the thing about this song I'm the most excited about honestly, for people to really hear how expressive his guitar playing is."

The Influence

As Greg had guessed, Dave Navarro's playing on the early Jane's Addiction records was an influence on me as a young guitar player. It was way more emotionally charged than all of the classically influenced, metal guitar players and the Jazz musicians I was listening to and when we were in the recording studio, I felt that style and attitude would be the perfect vibe for the guitar solos in Staring At The Sound. The entire ending section of the song is very powerful to me. I think Greg’s voice sounds incredible. I also really dig the call and response aspect of that section, between the anthemic vocals and the wailing guitars. 

There is an ambient segue between Staring At The Sound and I Should Have Known You Would. Initially this was all going to be one long piece of music but Greg felt it was best to keep the two pieces as separate songs with a crossfading musical section in the middle instead. I am glad we went that route.

The Mix

The segue section was created using a guitar loop that was heavily manipulated with effects by Michael Barile and a Roland JX305 keyboard / sequencer. I really enjoy making ambient music and this piece in particular was exciting to create. I wanted something meditative but something that would also fluctuate between minor, major, suspended and so on. The thing I loved most about working with Michael Barile is that he understood how important vibe was. Bringing the lights down in the studio, making sure no one else was around for this section of the song. That sort of thing. It made for all the difference in the end.

PICK UP A COPY OF SPYLACOPA S/T REDUX HERE ON DELUXE COLORED VINYL

From Caterpillar To Moth : The making of Together We Become Forever with John LaMacchia

The Song
 Together We Become Forever was written and performed, in its entirety by Greg Puciato. When I initially heard the piece I instantly fell in love with it. It was really interesting to me that the piece never returned to the opening sequence. Instead it undergoes this metamorphosis like a caterpillar to a moth.

Greg Puciato in The Gauntlet 2008 

“I sat down at around noon one day, and then didn't get up except to eat and piss until about noon the next day, and this is what came from that block of time. The writing of this song to me is a perfect example of a state of being that I love, when you are so into what you are writing, so devoid of conscious thought, that there ends up being a complete dissolution between mind and music, time flies by, and you just get sucked in to wherever the inspiration is coming from. The piano melody initially started off from me playing the piano music to "Alfie" by Burt Bacharach, and then it just took off into something else. The slowed down string/feedback swells underneath the piano throughout the whole song to me represent something trying to break free, kind of struggling and twisting around under the surface, building tension, and then at the end of the piano finally breaks through with the loud string swells at the end of the song. This song was loosely inspired by the movie "The Fountain", with the first part's bittersweet piano melody but with tension underneath representing the struggle the characters were going through throughout the movie, and the musical resolve at the end reflecting his finally reaching enlightenment and freeing himself and reconnecting with his wife by letting go. 

The name of the song is even an homage to that soundtrack by Clint Mansell, who I have since reached out to and thanked for the inspiration. John actually also remixed this song and we were gonna put that on this EP too, but didn't due to time constraints, but we'll definitely put it out, it's really good.” - Greg

The Mix
 My role with Together We Become Forever was to mix it. It would be the only piece of music I would mix for the EP with the exception of Drop which was not included with the initial 2008 US release. So with that in mind, I wanted to make sure my mix matched the sonic integrity of the rest of the music on the EP as best as I could. In my mind this would not be an easy task because all of the rest of the music was recorded with microphones in a sound studio. The song was written and performed in a midi based music program. None-the-less, in the end, I felt I was able to come close enough so that it could be mastered to match the rest of the songs. I honestly didn't stray very far from what Greg laid down. I wanted to stay as true as I possibly could to the rough mix he had sent me. The only difference being a few EQ and volume adjustments.
 I was really inspired by this piece of music. So much so that as Greg mentioned, I did work on a remix of it. He titled it, Together We Become Voltron, which I felt was appropriate. Maybe one day we will get around to putting it out into the world for you all to hear. For now the original piece will have to do.”

YOU CAN PICK UP THE SPYLACOPA S/T REDUX VINYL REISSUE HERE! 

The Making of Bloodletting

The Song
“Bloodletting was a game changer for Spylacopa. Before the song was written the project was based more on electronic and experimental music. When Greg Puciato sent me the demo he had put together and suggested it be considered for Spylacopa it completely changed my perspective on the project’s trajectory. The song was also a real game changer for us because it would be the first song to feature vocalist, Julie Christmas.” 

Greg Puciato In The Gauntlet
Spylacopa Bandmate, Greg Puciato, had this to say about Bloodletting in an article for The Gauntlet in 2008. “A while into our writing process, when we were finding our way, we had been basically writing primarily with midi instruments, programming, making electronic music. At some point I was playing guitar, for fun, not thinking of Spylacopa really, and just came up with a chord progression and vocal melody simultaneously, that really seemed to go well together. I recorded the guitar part, and then days later, even after NOT recording the vocal, I would listen to the guitar part and would still hear the same exact vocal melody over top of it, another sign that something is working, that I should probably pay attention. So I recorded the vocals over it, did some really crazy screaming underneath it, and sent it to John, even though it was way different at the time than what we were writing. I think that was the real spark that set us off, where we realized we wanted to write guitar/vocal based songs together too, and that totally changed the vibe of this band from that point on and really opened the floodgates for us creatively, because for some reason we had been resisting doing what came naturally to us up to that point. John said that Julie heard the song and really wanted to do the verses, leaving me with the chorus and a bridge, which was fine with me. She did a great job and I think her voice and phrasing adds a great contrast to mine, and since the song essentially is a long continuous repeating of one motif musically, her added dynamic keeps it interesting.”

The Process
“Recording the song was an interesting process because we wanted to use some of what Greg had written and recorded on his own. So we had to work backwards from there and build the song around his original concept while incorporating the new bridge section of the song. After we had the song mapped out and the basic structure in place, we began laying down all of the elements of the song. Jeff Caxide's Bass tracks, which also included this cool delay overdub, Troy’s drum tracks which stayed pretty true to Greg's original idea, my rhythm, and overdub guitar tracks and finally Greg and Julie's vocals.” 

Photo by A.F. CORTES

The Voice

“Greg’s vocals happened pretty fast, it was a matter of him laying down the chorus, which he already had in the bag, and his vocal idea for the bridge section, which turned out to be one of my favorite parts of the song. The scream overdubs were already in place from the recording Greg had done on his own. It was a really great experience watching Julie track vocals for this song. I have never seen her record before, and although her process isn’t extremely complicated or unorthodox, there is a raw immediacy to her vocal performances that makes her a unique recording artist. There is a confidence and trust in her own ability that enables her to deliver something moving and impassioned when she performs and records. Her gasps, whispers and nuances are a thing of raw beauty in Bloodletting.”

The Mix
“Michael Barile mixed the song fairly quickly with just a few edits and remixes. One with and one without the screams in the chorus. We wound up going with the original concept and although I played a very small part in the creative process and the writing of this song, I am extremely proud of what we accomplished together with it. Bloodletting is a pivotal song that set Spylacopa off on a broader path than we had previously anticipated and I am really glad it did.” 

PICK UP A COPY OF SPYLACOPA REDUX ON DELUXE COLORED VINYL HERE

The Making of “Haunting A Ghost”

The Song

“I had several guitar ideas and a very rough sketch of an arrangement for what eventually became Haunting A Ghost, the first song off of the Spylacopa Debut EP / Spylacopa Redux. My plan was to work those ideas out in a rehearsal space with my friend and drummer, the late, Troy Young. At the time, Candiria was renting a space from a long time friend, Joshua Lozano, of the band Fashion Week, in South Williamsburg. It seemed at the time to be the most logical place for us to work. So we scheduled some dates and started working out each section of the song. Troy was a great drummer. His level of energy behind the kit gave the song a major jolt of intensity and after a few sessions we had something really solid to send to Greg and Jeff. I don't remember hearing any demos from either of them for this song come to think of it. From what I remember, we just booked dates that worked for each of their individual schedules and just went for it, starting with the bass.”

 The Bass

“Jeff Caxide is a very unique player. From a rhythmic perspective he is a solid-as-a-rock player but there is another aspect of his bass playing where he takes a more melodic approach and that is in my opinion, where he really shines.
A great example of this is in the ending section of the song. From a musical perspective, for me, the melody he came up with makes that whole section of the song. I couldn't imagine the song without it and yet in hindsight I never imagined anything like it being in the song before he played it for me for the first time in the recording studio.”

The Vocals
“Greg’s vocals were the last thing to be recorded for Haunting A Ghost. I was really excited to hear what he had planned for it and Greg really delivered. He is a great writer and a monster singer. I was really impressed with the verse idea he had but what he wrote for the chorus completely blew me away. Lyrically and melodically, he just knocked it out of the park. The vocals in the end of the song are really powerful. It sounds like Greg is purging or exorcising some unwelcome demon. It's heavy and really emotionally charged and it is one of my favorite moments on the album.” 

The Mix
“A mix can make or break a song and it was an imperative step of the process to get this mix right because it would set the tone for the rest of the recordings we had lined up. Having recorded and mixed many a session with Michael Barile, I knew he would come up big for these recordings and mixes.

When Mike finished the first pass of the mix, the level of the vocals was right where they needed to be. The overdubbed keys and additional guitar feedback tracks were sitting in a really nice place. The bass was filling out the bottom end nicely. The only thing that I felt was lacking a bit of aggression and edge was the drums. It's interesting how huge drums sound when you first begin the recording process. You think you will barely need to work on them at all in post-production, but once all of the guitar tracks are laid down, the bass has been recorded and you begin the mixing process, the drums start to sound really small. Mike added more compression, limiting, fine-tuned the guitars and bass, EQ'd the drums more and made the song rip! Besides some minor adjustments here and there, once we locked the drums in place it was pretty much done. We all put our stamp of approval on it and we were on to the next song.”

Pick up a copy of Spylacopa Redux HERE

In depth with John LaMacchia: Bonus track "Drop" on Spylacopa Redux

"Drop" was recorded around the same time that the Spylacopa EP was recorded and released in 2008, so I always considered it as part of that same body of work. It all happened when I came across a bunch of cassette tapes that my dad was storing for me in his garage for some years. Going through them, I came across one in particular that had this really strange, slowed down and pitched down drum beat and bass line. Apparently the cassette was used for one of my earlier recordings I did with my old Tascam 488, 8 Track Cassette recorder.

When you play one of these tapes in a regular cassette player, you will only hear part of what was recorded and it plays back way slower and pitched down, which is where the song title comes from. It really inspired me.

I loved the way it churned and twisted, like a giant crocodile writhing in mud. So I decided to record my cassette deck, playing the cassette tape, directly into my Boss BR1600 16 Track recorder. 

Then I began recording the rest of what became the finished piece. It is still one of my favorite home recordings and I hope fans dig it too.

In Depth with John LaMacchia : Making the album

In 2005 I had left Candiria for personal reasons for a time and decided I would pursue Spylacopa as a solo project based in electronic and experimental music. Around that same time, I went to see The Dillinger Escape Plan play at Virgin Mega Store in Times Square. Greg Puciato and I had become friends and he had asked me what I was working on having left Candiria, I told him about Spylacopa and he expressed interest in collaborating. We quickly began trading files and sharing music with each other. Not long after that, another friend of mine, Jeff Caxide of Isis (the band) moved to Astoria, Queens. I told him about working with Greg on this new project and he had some ideas of his own to contribute. Then I met Julie Christmas at the Tool/Isis show in New Jersey. Both guests of Isis, we wound up sitting next to each other and talked about being from Brooklyn. She then told me about her band, Made Out Of Babies. I gave it a listen and was blown away by her voice. I must have asked Julie about three times before she finally said yes to being part of the project.

(promotional image from 2008)


At that point Spylacopa began focusing more on writing in more of a rock / metal format and direction. I believe the excitement for us had become more about what the individual contributions would amount to. We began fleshing out the ideas that we were developing with drummer, Troy Young and soon enough we had a handful of songs sketched out. Greg, Julie and Jeff began developing their ideas further from the demos and before you know it we were ready to begin recording.

Spylacopa Redux is available for pre order HERE