--Ada Wofford
----Released 28 August 2020
With all the dread and horror brought about within the past several months, it's inspiring to see all the cool stuff that's been happening too; particularly in the music community. We just reviewed the quarantine recorded LP Creature Comforts from The Honeymoon Killers, IDLES have THREE different YouTube shows they regularly release since they can't tour, Jim Adkins from Jimmy Eat World has been doing Zoom interviews with musicians he knows, quite a few channels created some jam-along videos for everyone stuck at home, and here at MLU we had a virtual fundraiser and starting 9/15/20, monthly virtual shows on our Facebook page—Lots of cool things have been born out of this awful time and one of those cool things is this new EP from Philly's Bad Shapes, appropriately titled, Quarantine EP.
This is a quick release considering their Self-Titled LP, which we absolutely loved, was actually released at the beginning of lockdown, March 27. The EP only consists of two tracks but there's no lack of content to dig into. These songs have serious depth and become more rewarding with each listen.
Side A, "Remote Idea 01" (get it, "remote") is wondrously progressive yet never overbearing. The vocals do this great call and response thing, reminiscent of some early emo but executed in its own unique and satisfying way. The song has a good groove to it and possesses some of the hookiest guitar parts I think the band has ever pulled off. The track's highlight is it's jarring pre-chorus that incorporates a hauntingly sweet modulated descending guitar riff over cascading cymbals. The track slowly dissipates via a mammoth sounding synth.
Side B, "Slam No Hold" essentially opens in media res, screaming guitars and crashing drums greet us right out of the gate. The vocals are going through distortion and sound aggressive yet vulnerable, and the lead guitar weaves an ear worm in and out of all the chaos. It's really impressive that they managed to write and record these tracks fully remote, especially considering how great the drum takes are.
Mark Quitevis was kind enough to tell me about their process and gear for this unique recording:
For Quarantine EP, we really used what we learned from recording our LP for this release. We still tracked everything ourselves with my Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 interface. Guitars were re-amped with a Saturnworks Reamp box + SM57s, bass was DI'ed, and drums were recorded with an Audix D6 (kick) and an Audio Technica AT2020 and Audio Technica AT2035 for overheads. Vocals were recorded with Wes’s Shure SM7. We also didn’t hire anyone to mix or master and instead, Wes mixed and mastered the two tracks.
Remote jamming
I think what really changed for us was writing during COVID. It was really hard for us to write asynchronously and we still struggle with that today. "Slam No Hold" was a song that didn’t make it onto our LP and was relatively easy to get over the finish line to be able to release. "Remote Idea 01" was a rework of one of my old ideas pre-Bad Shapes the band (Bad Shapes was the name of an EP I wrote and the genesis for some of our songs as Bad Shapes the band). It seemed like a good starting off point for trying to write and jam online via various jamming software (mainly Ninjam and JamKazam).
Ninjam was hard for us to use to write because of the way it handles latency. Latency is aligned to bars so at any given time, while we might be playing in time, we were not playing live together. Drums might be a bar behind bass and bass might be 2 bars ahead of guitars. Transitioning to the next part of a song was not really possible because we were not really playing live. It is a good tool for jamming long sections but maybe not so great for trying to play or write songs with many different parts.
More remote jamming
JamKazam was a little more successful because it did not make adjustments for latency. However, it was really unstable. We would each need to independently recalibrate many times every couple minutes to get the audio to un-glitch and it would often crash. Even so, we were able to get through transitioning to other parts, albeit painfully. We started recording it by hosting stems on Google Drive and in the end, it probably took 7-10 iterations to get to the end state.
In general, it was a tough process for us. We really do best when we’re able to jam on sections of songs and slowly incorporate more and more until we are happy with the idea enough to demo it. We weren’t able to do that. This was all happening during the early days of COVID in the US and there was a lot of fear, sadness, and uncertainty about what was going on. Speaking for myself, it was really hard to feel motivated.
What did you expect? The whole album was made remotely!
We had put so much work into our LP release at the start of lockdown and we were really tired from that process and bummed that all of the plans we had made had to be delayed, postponed, or just scrapped. Pair that with everything going on in the world and being in a band just felt weird. It was a luxury and felt less important. I think I’m still trying to spring back from those feelings. I think Ben’s lyrics really highlight the spirit behind the EP: anxiety, fear, and frustration overwhelming us.
And here we are in September, still dealing with all of that anxiety, fear, and frustration. It's been a tough year, but music can help us through it. Music's not a distraction, it's a means of processing the myriad emotions we feel each and every day—It's a matter of working through something, not ignoring it.
Bad Shape's new EP is another welcome beacon of hope from the music community, one that you can purchase here and stream here. Listen to "Remote Idea 01" below:
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