From the yearly archives: "2006"

Tour Journal:

We went into this show blindly, and it turned out to be fantastic. Got to see a slew of fans and friends from the general area, and were impressed with the space. Bucky’s “helmet cam” is working out perfect (see Mr Magfest’s pictures in previous post). Got some amazing new band photos on top of a heavily egyptian themed night club that used to be a weird cult gathering space. Again, will get these up sometime later.

Have a long drive all day tomorrow, must make it to dallas early on friday!

Tour Journal:
We arrived today at the Adam’s Mark Hotel in center city, dallas texas. The convention is gigantic… in both size and attendance. Roughly 12,000 attendees are here. The hotel is overbooked, and people are coming in from all over the country staying whereever we can. Fortunately we have a few band suites and a green room to retreat to. With plenty of air conditioning to escape the texas heat (the tour van was heating up on the way here, even with a newly repaired air conditioner). Spent the day sorting out lots of minor problems and checking out the booths and panels and etc.

We attended opening ceremonies and let Bucky whip his hair on stage in front of a couple thousand people during our introduction. Lets hope our show tomorrow goes just as well!

Tour Journal:
Holy crap… today was a whirlwind. As is with so many conventions, scheduling and operations were running all over the place trying to keep everything in order. 12,000+ con attendees equals a massive mess, with no specific person to blame. We ended up playing much later than originally scheduled, but the grand ballroom was totally loaded, and the reception equally great. Lots of videotaping was done, along with pictures… not sure if we’ll get time to load them while on the road, but they’ll be available soon. We’ve meet old friends, new ones, shizzers, and more by the time we went on.

So far, everyone has been overly enthusiastic for our new set, and our new tour poster/anime group shot (Chris, hope you’re reading this, hundreds of people have your artwork in their hands by now)!

Flyers:

Tour Journal:

Today we finally got to relax a bit more. This was the last day of the con, so a lot of stuff was getting wrapped up by late afternoon. Attended the breakfast buffet social-mixer, where a number of con attendees paid to get in and eat/talk with all the featured guests of the convention, including us. Also held a booth for more merch and autographs, although the vast majority of the people got this done right after our show last night.

Following this, we got special treatment, as the featured guests and con staff sort of claimed sunday night as their own. After the attendees have left the convention center/hotel, the guests and staff traditionally go out to eat, all expenses paid by A-KON (this time it was a swank kobe-beef japanese steakhouse, with all the trimmings and sake to spare). Then after being shuttled back on the merry drunken buses, all night was spent in a massive hotel suite with an open bar, where much griping and congratulations were due for everyone that participated and made the convention happen.

Everyone, attendees staff and guests altogether, were extremely nice and appreciative of our efforts as a touring group doing fringe music… one of the many reasons why we love playing conventions of all sorts. Lets hope the budding invitations to come back next year come into fruition!

We’ll miss you, A-KON….

Tour Journal:
After what seems like living forever and being treated so nice at A-KON, we’ve moved on to continue the road part of the tour. Amarillo is fairly sprawling considering the location (north texas, middle of nowhere?), but erieely has few cars or people on the streets and endless bail-bond stores. We were barely able to find the venue. Despite all this, the show came through in the end (considering the place and time, a monday night). Some of the people watching ended up being the most decent folk in the area, and were more than welcoming in taking care of us during and after the show. When all the smaller stops on tour turn out to be just good enough like these, touring seems feasible for us once again…

Tour Journal:

This venue was crazy…. an ex 70’s gay bar, turned into a punk rock cage match dive bar with an entire arcade to boot. The show itself was great (Mr Pacman was a fury of leather jumpsuits and nintendo punk rock, and Magic Cyclops was hilarious), and the attendance was again just enough to keep us going. Many thanks to the club and bands and fans, getting merch and making sure we got enough from the door to survive.

We love Denver, but we had to get a shower and some laundry done before the tour van becomes a biohazard. Fortunately Mr Pacman accomodated this. This is another reason why we love touring: such open welcoming friends (new and old alike). Spending months and months conversing online is nothing compared to finally enjoying a night or two while on tour with the people who make it happen for us.

Also, the best idea of tour thus far has been the fact that we all got Nintendo DS (gameboys) beforehand. With its wireless capacity (vulgar pictochat and Mariokart are current favorites) the long drives seriously have shrunk so much. 8 guys crammed into a van have now become a nonstop video game tournament featuring 8 guys crammed into a van.

Ah, and our van is getting really good gas mileage (because we sunk hundreds of dollars into pre-tour repairs, that we have yet to make back, but we’ll see). Maybe it’ll balance out in that respect. Having functional air conditioning this time around (with the new gameboys) just about keeps things bearable.

Tour Journal:
RIP Monkey Mania

Our friend and Denver celebrity of rock n roll best dudeness, Josh Taylor (of Friends Forever), moved a while ago, and despite this, we still wanted to give the “new” monkey mania a try. Long story short, after we literally got the show UN-cancelled (they tried to cancel it that day, fortunately we arrived early), cleaned the hell out of the venue (mysterious piles of shit? dog or human?), the show actually happened to a very small crowd. It felt very sad to us though, as if going through the motions of something good that was long past. One new guy living there was trying to give his honest help, however.

Ironically, Josh ended up moving to LA and working @ The Smell and Amoeba Records, both places we’ve hit and loved, so best of luck to him… hope to catch him there sometime in the future.

Thankfully Mr Pacman and co. saved our asses, and we had a good time later on. Much thanks to Avery.

This tour has been going amazing thus far! Even when the shows haven’t been incredible, we’re getting just enough support from everyone to keep going. Check the shows for a last minute tour addition for this friday in Chicago! As always, our tour journal has more info on our daily goings-ons….

Tour Journal:

This show was a last minute addition to fill in a gap. Unforunately, it was as disappointing as was Monkey Mania. We had done very well in Chicago on all previous tours, but this was a late addition on an ill-matched show, at a venue that wasn’t quite right for us (despite being booked all the time, The Blue Note is literally the Chicago version of Philly’s Grapestreet Pub, for those who know our area). The staff and other bands were friendly enough however, and once again we ducked out with a chunk of gas money. This tour is still proving to be the best ever, seeing as the very few “bad” shows still provide some fuel in the van.

Too bad the show wasnt up to expectations, because we drove 24 hrs (all day thursday into friday from denver) to get there! Agh. At least that was the only mega drive of tour, all the rest has been less excruitating.

Also, this entire tour we’ve seen some weird coincidences… such as the Power Rangers. Toys, puzzles, etc where ever we go, and we actually met and ate dinner with the creator of the Power Rangers @ A-KON last week (and the actor for Chewbacca as well!). The other coincidence being this really creepy painting of a cat playing with a unicorn at several venues, the very same picture as seen in the comedy central show STELLA (the episode where the guys flood the apartment below them, and the downstairs girls end up sleeping over).

Tour Journal:
This is in the top list of places we look forward to. Jeff @ The D.A.A.C. has always taken care of us, and the show was good enough for a sunday night (especially seeing all the shizzer fans coming out for us, and playing with The LSDudes was great as usual). All the guys from The LSDudes are some of the best around, and we partied two nights and three days with them when all was said and done. We baked a pornographic series of cakes featuring Pac-Man and friends at one point. We will miss the guys here, too bad Grand Rapids is a long drive from Philly.

Also forgot to mention earlier, on the way to driving to Chicago the other day, we were pulled over big time. Literally right before we got to the Mississippi river (the border of Iowa and IL), 4 cop cars and a narcotics squad surrounded us and pulled us over. After separating Dino and Denny (who were pilot and wingman at the time), and keeping the rest of us in the van, we went under some rigorous but silly questioning, and damn drug sniffing dogs went all over our van and in the trailer. Apparently they were looking for more big ticket arrests, and assumedly our ratty looking tourvan and trailer (and temp registration, long story) was suspicious looking. In any event, it was a long, tense pain in the ass, but we walked free. If anyone else remembers, this happened way back during our 1st US tour, in another middle-of-nowhere state (idaho), where the state trooper made us stand 50 feet away from the car (in a field, in the rain), while he combed our van hoping to bust us for something. Too bad he failed too!

Tour Journal:
We spent monday hiking through the woods to reach a secluded beach on lake michagan… it was incredibly serene. We ruined it by swimming in our clothing and making lewd sand sculptures (Pacman yet again, seeing as we baked a lewd Pacman cake the previous day).

Tuesday we once again hit Kings Island, our favorite theme park… we were tired as hell and ready to go home, but couldnt pass up one last chance to hit up SON OF BEAST and the rest.

Tour Journal:
Our final stop before heading home. Was able to see a handful of friends and get some all-you-can-eat-crummy-pizza and finally watch POINT BREAK, the brunt of inside jokes for almost 3 weeks now. The show went ok, definitely fell into the small disappointing catagory of the tour, but to give the people and the venue credit, we definitely were supported both live and gas wise.

Now we can finally go home…. once again, the miserable all night drive from Pittsburg to Philly lays ahead of us. We will see the sun rise in our own city.

Photos:

Tour Journal:

Well… we’re home safe now, and very happy. This tour was by far the most successful one. Even during the very few rough times, we had enough to survive, and at best we saw so many friends and fans everywhere, new and old alike. Fortunately, these times were the majority of the trip, which made the drives so much more tolerable (although, having the wireless gameboy DS’s definitely helped).

So many thanks to all of you, we wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t for your support. Extra thanks to Bucky (Pat) and Phil for coming along to help fill out the empty spaces in the music/performance.

We took 2 video cameras and 3 digital ones with us, thus far only one album has been posted (thanks Bucky!). Already one can see how big A-KON was (can’t believe we ate dinner with the creator of the Power Rangers and the actor for Chewbacca), the sexual Pacman cake we baked, day off at lake michagan, cooking in the tourvan, our rooftop trespassing on a closed down egyptian nightclub/cult center, and more. Explanations will come about when more albums are posted online.

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v281/abstartselect/chrome%2006%20tour/

Best of the best,
CHROMELODEON
Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting
Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

We are home from tour! This time around, either luck or hard work paid off, because it was the best to date. So many thanks to our friends and fans cross-country. Catch up with more details and incoming pictures at our tourjournal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/chromelodeon

Setlist:

  1. Red Max [4:17]
  2. Polygon Sun [3:41]
  3. Higgeldy Piggeldy [4:32]
  4. Wackadelly [3:41]
  5. G. A. H. [3:47]
  6. Aluminum [5:55]
  7. Triangular [6:34]
  8. V. S. [2:35]
  9. Doom [4:27]

Audio:

Video:

Youtube:

After a handful of shows and temperatures too hot to practice in, we’re about ready to wrap up summer with a few big video game themed events in the end of August. Check out the shows page. Also be sure to check us out on Drexel radio tomorrow night. They stream live online, so catch us either way you can.

Photos:

Press Coverage:

Originally published on www.philadelphiaweekly.com on August 23 2006. Written by Jennifer Kelly.
It’s arcade night at the Church. Philly’s Chromelodeon will take the joystick early on, going for a new high score with their multi-instrumental, Game-Boy-enhanced brand of overstuffed spazz punk. But the smart money’s on Spencer Seim of Hella’s new(ish) project the Advantage, which play classic video game themes like Super Mario Brothers 2 and Mega Man 2 on the standard rock lineup of two guitars, bass and drums. French Toast, as far as we know, have no video game songs, and as such are the odd band out.

Originally published on phillyist.com on August 25 2006. Written by Jim Genzano.
Music in Video Games, and Video Games in Music

metroidmetal08-25-06.jpg

If you read Phillyist regularly (and if not, why not?), you’re probably already aware that we’re partial to both music and video games, so when the two come packaged together, we get rather excited. And that’s just what’s happening at a couple of upcoming shows at First Unitarian.

First up on Sunday night is the Advantage/French Toast/Chromelodeon show. French Toast has nothing to do with video games as far as we know, but they do have Jerry Busher of Fugazi, which is pretty cool. The Advantage, on the other hand, are a straight-up Nintendo cover band who play great versions of the themes from Megaman 2, Contra, Metroid, Super Mario Bros. 2, Blaster Master, and…well, we could go on, but it would take a while; according to the R5 site, the band’s ambition is to record every Nintendo game song ever. For those of you scoffing at the idea of playing Nintendo music, listen to some of the samples on The Advantage and R5 sites. Some of that music is actually really fantastic, and sounds even better when you play it super-loud on guitars and drums.

But after you’ve covered the classics, what then? Chromelodeon takes it to the next level with original music inspired by video games. They have eight people in their band, one of them on accordion, and their live show is apparently quite a spectacle, including visual accompaniment via a hacked Game Boy. Awesome! The music, if it matters, is epic instrumental fantasy metal with a great atmosphere to it.

And the video game fun doesn’t end Sunday night. The following Tuesday, Final Fantasy is coming to the church! Yes, the name was inspired by the famous series of role-playing video games, but the music not so much; it’s actually got a quirky, orchestral, Sufjan Stevens-type of sound to it. Still, the lyrics are quite geeky enough, with some serious fantasy and sci-fi flavoring – “The Chronicles of Sarnia” talks of water gods and nymphs, while “Arctic Circle” repeatedly warns us, “shields up, shields up.” Did we mention that one of the main purposes of Final Fantasy’s latest album, He Poos Clouds, was to “attempt to modernize each of the eight D&D schools of magic?”

Final Fantasy’s sound is just as dramatic and epic as Chromelodeon’s – perhaps even more so – but with more of a pop vibe. Oh, and if you’re still not excited about Final Fantasy, you should know that it’s composed pretty much entirely of Owen Pallett, the guy who plays violin for awesome indie band Arcade Fire. The first show sold out, so R5 added another one later that night. Rock!

 

Winter is fast approaching, and we are busy behind the scenes. We are preparing to record a lot of material (2 albums?) by 2007. In turn, we’ll only be playing a few select shows, so don’t miss out! We are also running a new club in Center City Philly with suprizing success! Check it out @ http://www.myspace.com/upstairsatsals

Originally published on Philadelphia City Paper on November 10 2006.  Written by A.D. Amorosi.
Kicking up Sawdust with avant-garde rockers Chromelodeon.

Philadelphia octet Chromelodeon manipulates its sound as if fiddling with an old-school joystick. It’s a music fraught with twitching and twirling, blipping and barking, theremin-fueled juking and blissing out within glacial cinematic space-capades. There is also, of course, a touch of kitsch in a chaos-driven orchestra named after instrument inventor Harry Partch’s quirky reed organ (hence the Sprite Slowdown offshoot, which dedicates itself to video game soundtracks). Either way Chromelodeon is a group that utilizes violins and accordions with the same ardor as guitars. But this band — best heard live, great on Bloodlink label CDs In the Year 20XX and the new Heart of Sawdust — is cluttered, clustered and hard, with little comparison to much else within avant-garde circles. One of its hairiest synth players (under the guise of anonymity and group expression) sat us down to tell us that the Chromelodeon sound is as hopped-up as he is on Sparks.

City Paper: What’s the biggest difference between 20XX and Sawdust?

Chromelodon: For Sawdust, we had a cohesive agenda. There was a soundtrack we wanted to present that had evolved from months of hard work and two U.S. tours as a trial run of the finished material. 20XX came at an early stage for the band — we had good songs in mind, but they just didn’t connect.

CP:How does the idea of Partch’s chromelodeon suit you guys?

C: A little-known fact is that Harry Partch was a big part-time bum, which applies to most of our group. Of course, he also had his personal take on how music should sound and honest to hell didn’t really care how other people interpreted or adapted his musical inventions.

CP: What’re the three most inspirational film soundtracks to the band’s way of thinking?

C: Cat People, Suspiria and Once Upon a Time in the West. They all have a particular emphasis in them, and are epic enough to stand alone. They tell a full story without words. Same thing with video games like the Ninja Gaiden series, the Megaman series and the Sonic the Hedgehog series. There are many games in each, but they all maintain a continuous feel.

CP: I hear the show on the 11th is a set of exclusively video-game covers. What game are you most into covering live?

C: We’ve had so many ideas for video-game arrangements we kind of had to form a side project for it [Sprite Slowdown]. We do a couple of rare performances per year. It’s very fun. Most of us respect the game Chrono Trigger to the extent we would never even consider covering it! But, the game Tetris is continually a huge focus of arguments and gambling, and additionally is applied in theory to the packing up of our trailer.

CP: When I listen to you, I always feel as if you’re studiously, theatrically trained. What gives?

C: Between the band and our visual collective, there are graphic artists and those involved with film and mass media. In a general sense, we’ve always been actively critical of the media, far more than just your usual level of sarcastic humor. This sort of explains our tongue-in-cheek approach to our sound and image. We think most people get the joke.

Press Coverage:
Originally published on www.philadelphiaweekly.com on November 29, 2006. Written by Jean Luc Renault.

Chromelodeon: an instrument invented by Harry Partch that plays chromatic pitches through a reed organ. Chromelodeon: a Philadelphia-based band known for playing epic music that combines the manly glory of Braveheart and He-Man with the playful familiarity of video game music. Less 32-bit than their side project Sprite Slowdown, the octet still bring to mind the clash of digitized swords with music that’s heroic, tragic and facetious all at once. While the group doesn’t actually utilize Partch’s unique instrument, Chromelodeon’s mix of finely orchestrated keyboards, hard-driving prog-rock-ish guitars, wailing squeezeboxes and solid no-frills drums combines to create a distinct sound that places them light years ahead of your typical rock band. (Jean Luc Renault)

Note: Chromelodeon dropped out of this show at the last minute according to their website.

Hi everyone. Apologies about the last minute dropoff on the Khyber show this weekend. We are experiencing the culmination of many terminal issues right now. May or may not mean a permenate hiatus. More to come soon. Hopefully we’ll be at MAGFEST. Best wishes for the holidays, will have an update by the end of the month.