TOMIHIRA

2011-05-18T13:57:00.000-07:00

August 2nd 2008 Rockit Room shakedown

2008-08-14T11:59:00.000-07:00

First off, thanks to everyone who came out! It was a loads of fun! Really can't wait to see you again. Everything Gone Green was a blast to see and hang out with as always. It was also a pleasure to play with The Catholic Comb & New Agents for the first time.
The sound engineer, Melvin, was amazing (dean was stoked on being able to hear himself onstage so well). Melvin is in a band called Drunken Hu. Looking forward to seeing them play.

The set- It was great to play Memory Metal for the first time & it went well (despite dean butchering it during soundcheck...)

Equipment Failure of the night-

Phaser pedal sidelined due to lazy cable...shoulda listened to grandma & went for the Monster Cable... Pillbox suffering only mild injury..

Drunken Drop of the night-

amp left at venue by guitarist...not saying who but typical? indeed!

The Payoff- brandishing the mighty Milk Milk Lemonade badge. We did mention we love them?

http://milkmilk-lemonade.blogspot.com/2008/07/mml-exclusive-tomihira.html

Memory Metal (pre-release version)

2008-07-31T18:05:00.001-07:00

Left us to waste
Sun but dies
Ends earth in tears
And "new" waits
Long so long her letting go
But I'll waitAnd I waitSad so sad now
Oh! so sad Knees weakened kneesAs falls they go...
Your face my face still need so
Please still need
Please still need
Please still need
me

Quick update June 9

2008-07-10T17:55:00.000-07:00

Mastering delay for work on interactive website for children.
Hi everyone. The website Zookazoo has asked for some musical assistance which will interfere slightly with the new song being posted. This is unexpected & believe me, the three hours of sleep in me from this week trying to get this tune online begs to differ with this delay... "but for the children!"
The tune should only be delayed until the weekend at most. promise. promise.

2008-07-09T12:34:00.000-07:00

June 8, The pre-release version Memory Metal should be up at some point late today or early tomorrow. We wish it could have been up this morning but oh those last minute adjustments. All details on uploading asap.On a brighter side, the Boss RDD-20 reverb did not suffer the fatal blowout as thought during the last gig! The suspision (dammit! I misspelled it suspiCion, all hail google...why do I feel more and more like Eric Cartman each day...) was it took a bad hit of juice powering up and didn't wanna wakey. Hurray!

A little worse for wear, but alive and healthy! whew!

We're a three piece again!

2008-06-17T17:10:00.000-07:00

Hailing from the LA area, Susie S Kim was introduced to us by Seiken from Foxtail Somersault. Her talents are by no means confined to bass as demostrated in her own musical endevour Cuarto Project

http://www.myspace.com/cuartoproject

Rehearsals are freshly energized by her enthusiasm and her sense of humor couldn't be more up our alley.

Our first show with Susie at SF's Retox Lounge.

Of us she says: "You guys were very sweet and not alpha- male band douche bags."Of her we say: "Smart, talented, endearing, and er…. suitably mad …"

first pass list for Blackout (damn you Britney!)

2007-11-05T15:26:00.000-08:00

Thanks so much to everyone who came out to the Vibraphone label launch show & to those who emailed in support! It was very much a night to remember for all! Now it's back to recording.

TOMIHIRA
BLACKOUT
list down for revision. March 6, 2008

The Rockit Room May 23

2007-05-29T17:13:00.000-07:00

Oh bumpy bumpy

2007-05-18T13:56:00.000-07:00

Turbulence...as I'm frequently comforted by airline attendants- 'the thing with turbulence that you have to keep in mind is that no matter how rough it is or which way the plane gets pulled, there's nothing to run into'. Well the saying oddly applies just as smoothly to the recent state of recording for the next record. Nothing has been an outright threat to it, but I could do with finding some smoother air…

By May (as in, now) I had planned on being knee deep in final mixing and song selection if not at least immersed in primary tracking and voice overdubbing.

Gnawing my hair? Indeed. As it stands I'm just starting to gather and develop fresh ideas, as well as pour over what was left from just last year. Why stalled on the tar mack? Well...I've got some leads, but maybe I should explain some back story...

I started recording around '92 when I was lent a Tascam Porta1 four track. Though the means of recording have changed over the years, my lust for recording never waned. From the start, recording meant absolutely everything. It was this amazing extension of my love for music and what my favorite records meant to me.
Music meant consolation, escape, love, acceptance- indelibly.

I never started a live band mainly because the kind of music I was recording didn't seem conducive to a live set up. I also had friends in bands and saw all the things that go wrong (ALL of which have happened to us in our first year playing out baha!).

Also, I was always worried that playing live would start to influence what 'sounded good' and influence what got recorded. The great thing about recording is it's the playback that serves as the guiding hand.
I always felt trying too hard to 'listen' for a good melody while your actually playing an instrument can be dangerous because what feels good to 'play' isn't necessarily what feels good to 'hear'.

Playing live also wasn't as crucial as it has become today. There was a time when a great demo could actually land you a recording deal, or at least get you a shot on a solid indie.

So I met Markkus and started playing out. My worst fears were confirmed as many tunes fell flat in the live environment. Some worked only if we played them just a certain way, while others Markkus made possible because of his imaginative drumming.
Jason Mclelland (now of Oceans of Fire) came on as bass/guitar and was the first person to really push us as a live band. He knew how to book shows well and put up the first website. By the end of '05, good friends Maddy & Josh offered to pay for pressing a disk.
Play Dead was done by early the next year & one of the aspects I was so so pleased about was the successful integration of older tunes. Songs from '97 like Hey There & Summerside that meant so much to me for so long could finally be put out along new ones. Pillbox and All to be Undone had been around since '03 while Play Dead (the song) and Color of Destroyed were initially recorded in the winter of '02.
World Class was the last song to be written and recorded for the album.

Here's where things start to fall apart as well as bring us to now...
With 2006 being a blinding whirl wind dealing with a indie radio campaign for the disk, playing shows, promoting shows, & line up changes, for the first time, my daily recording slowed leading to a growing heap of fragmented ideas, the likes of which I don't think I'm even realizing now.
I've always felt so much security in knowing how close I am to what I do musically but for the first time I felt intensely overwhelmed and panicked by this bizarre detachment from demos I had recorded only weeks before.

We recorded and aborted drums sessions in November of last year. We tried again in January. I was also expecting to have a new Mac with updated recording software up and going as to facilitate more tracks at higher fidelity and enable a heavier arsenal of effects/treatments.

March half cooked, failed sessions, gallons of demos to start making sense of, and a delay in the new recorder...
This all sweetly resulted in days of frantic demo rummaging, worrying my back hair gray whilst trouble shooting the computer ending only in drinking myself into oblivion nightly (only to lie awake half the night worrying...)
With the Mac & recording software finally up by April (Protools couldn't make their authorizing protocols any more ass backwards), we went for another go at recording drums.
Voila! The two days tracking drums was done with hardly any difficulty and the relief it provided was... well, a shot of smooth air...
Thanks for the ear. More soon. Call me already..
Dean

Play Dead lyrics

2007-03-21T14:19:00.000-07:00

1.WORLD CLASS
WORLD CLASS WHEN YOUR SORRY IT'S SOOOO ASS AND I WORRY... BUT AT LAST! I WAS SOMEONE WITH YOU
DON'T THINK, I WOULD SAY THAT IT'S ALL ME DON'T LOOK UP TO THIS SAD SEAT AS JUST SO PERFECT YOU ARE
AND DON'T ANTE ME UP 'COS I'LL BLEED EVERY DROP OUT 'TILL I LEAVE IN THE BLACK ZIPPER BAG
NOW I NEED YOU TO SHUT UP 'COS I MAkE ALL THE FUCK UP'S SO JUST TAKE A DRINK AND WE'LL GO TO THE POOL
AND THIS CAN'T BE THAT HARD BECAUSE I SEE WHERE THE CLOUDS ARE SO WHY ARE WE STILL DOWN THIS TUBE
JUST DON’T DIE WITH SOMEONE NEWER
AND JUST DON’T DIE WITH SOMEONE NEWER
AND JUST DON’T DIE WITH SOMEONE NEWER
THAN ME

2.PILLBOX
IN THIS PLACE, ALL DAY'S ENOUGH TO START ON HOW TO KILL MYSELF JUST BLEED ME THROUGH AND THROUGH JUST LET ME AT THE... BOOZE AND AND TAKING ALL THE PILLS NOT NEAR ENOUGH TO KILL THE CELLS THE DAYS ARE MEANT TO BE FOREVER NOT TO FEEL.. INSANE PAIN WHEN I'M AWAY.. INSANE PAIN WHEN I'M AWAY FROM YOU... A SENSE OF SEEING BUT STILL CAN'T BREATHE 'WELL, TAKE SOME MORE!' UNTIL I FEEL.. A SIGH, AT LAST AM I SO UNTIED AND IN EVERY WAY, I'M GONE SOME MORE EFFACED FROM ALL THE SLITS AND SCARS JUST POUR DOWN ALL THE PILLS AND DON'T THINK OF HOW I'M STILL... LOOSING EVERYTHING I'M MADE OF STILL BROKEN, FUCKED AND NAILED NAILED, NAILED, NAILED

3.ALL TO BE UNDONE
IT’S USELESS NOW I’M OUT OF LIES
WITH SLICED SKIN NOW TO MAKE THINGS RIGHT
& SAFE FOR NOW HER MIND IS BLIND
AND ALL YOU NEED SHE SAYS WITH EYES
‘UNDERSTAND’
AS BEAUTY DEFENDS…
& ALL I CAN TO BREAK MYSELF
EVERY NIGHT I’LL DIE TO SOMEONE ELSE
A WAKING LIFE I’M SO AFRAID OF BUT
THROUGH YOUR PRETTY LIFE
I CAN MAKE UP
IT FADES AND IT STARVES ME OUT NO USE…
PULL ME CLOSE NOW
CENTER SEAT
AND BURN LIKE FLAMES COULD MAKE YOU SEE
THAT FALLEN TEARS ARE UNDERSTOOD
LIKE GOODBYES WITHOUT A WASTED WORD
AND DEFEND, AS BEAUTY PREDENDS
‘UNDERSTAND’ AS BEAUTY PREDENDS
IT FADES AND IT STARVES
IT FADES AND IT STARVES ME OUT NO USE…

4.MADDY & JOSH
LIES TOO FAST A FEW LESS FAVORITE PRIZED, OBSESSED, DISENGAGED FROM LIFE... I'LL DIE AWAKE TO SEE YOU BURN TOO FEW TOO FAST TO BREAK IT & ALL EFFORTS CAN'T SUSTAIN IT AS THE PIECES FROM MY LIFE START TO DISSOLVE
TOO FRAYED TO MAKE THE MOST BEFORE YOU START TO MAKE YOUR NEW FACADE HOW YOU'LL BREAK WITH JUST ONE FUCKING BLOW THE SAME AND ALL THE WAY DISPLAYED 'I'M MADE AGAIN INSIDE ANOTHER LIE AWAY' IS ALL YOU HAD TO SAY.. IT TAKES MY EYES A GUTTED MIND TO SEE IT TAKES MY MIND A BROKEN LIFE TO FEEL

5.NEVER TO RETURN
KICKS IN THE HEAD
BLOWS FROM BAGUETS
I FOAM AT THE MOUTH
AND START TO BLISTER
BACK TO FIVE AGAIN
AND SO ALIVE AGAIN
AND YOU
SO FAR AWAY
I’D FALL TO GAS TO MAKE IT LAST
IF YOU WERE STILL HERE
THE NIGHT BENEATH
THE LOOK, THE FEEL
IN NICE YOU WOULD BE
THE FALL THAT I MISSED
THE FALL THAT I MISSED
OF ALL THAT I MISSED
OF ALL THAT I MISSED…

6.LOVEUBYE
BEFORE THE FALL
AND BLACKEST SOUNDS
BEFORE THE FLOW OF YEARS DRAGGED OUT
THINGS SO DEAR WE’LL NEVER BE THE SAME.
IF ALMOST DONE WERE HALF WAY OUT
JUST TAKE ME DOWN, I’M NOT ALLOWED TO
FEEL SO DEEPLY WE WOULD NEVER DARE
WHEN IT’S DOWN AND IT’S ALL IN VEIN
WHEN YOU THERE ON YOUR OWN AGAIN
IT’S ALWAYS A SIGH
IT’S ALWAYS A BYE
A BREAKING APART
THIS SILENCE IS VIOLENCE
FORGOT THE TASTE AND NOW BACK HOW
THE WORST OF FEARS IS EVERY NOW…
PUSH THE BLADES RIGHT FIRST JUST TO BREATH
AND WHEN YOUR DOWN AND YOU FEEL THE PAIN
WHEN YOUR THERE AND YOU KNOW, IN VEIN
IT’S ALWAYS A SIGH
IT’S ALWAYS A BYE
A FADING APART
IF WE CAN’T AFFORD THE LISENCE
IF YOU’VE HAD ENOUGH
IF THEY’VE HAD TOO MUCH
AFRAID AND ALONE
THIS NIGHT CAN’T AFFORD THE SILENCE

7.I HATE THE FUCKING RULES
THE WORDS YOU SAY DON’T FIT THE PRICE
OF THE WHIPLASH IN YOUR EYES
THERE’S ONLY SO MUCH I CAN TAKE
YOUR SO DEAD SET TO SEE THIS BREAK
CANDY FIGHT STAINS LAST THE NIGHT
LONELINESS
WITH ALL THE LIGHT JUST ON ME
THE BROKEN WEAK
“A FRACTURED LIFE CAN NEVER SLEEP”
YOU CAN PULL THE PINK SYRINGE
ALL YOU WANT BUT IT WON’T MEND
THESE BROKEN PARTS
JUST REMEMBER
I LOVED YOU
AND ALL WE ARE IS WHAT WE LOSE
IS WHAT WE LOSE
IS WHAT WE LOSE
IS WHAT WE LOSE
IS WHAT WE LOSE

8.STUNTS
THINK OF SOMETHING YOU LIKE AND CHOOSE.
IS ALL I WANT FROM YOU…
WE’VE BEEN WASTED FOR TWO WHOLE DAYS
AND YOU WON’T EVEN STAY
WON’T TAKE THIS TO KNOW THAT
BEFORE YOU EVEN PULL THAT-
LOOK AT ME IN THE EYES AND SAY YOU WON’T
NOW THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN DO…
LIKE PUDDING LIES IT’S ALWAYS THE PROOF
AND DON’T FEEL THE LONG ARM OF BLAME
IF YOU WON’T EVEN STAY.

9.SNOWCAN
NEVER SEEM TO MAKE UP
PARTS WITHIN SO FUCKED UP
IF SUMMER’S FALL COULD ONLY FEEL THE SAME
ALWAYS THERE AND UNDERSTOOD
YOUR MISSING FEAR IS SO ASSURED
LIKE YOU KNOW YOU’D NEVER LET IT GO
NO NEED HAVE TO SAY
PUT PERFECT IN PLACE
I’M OFF ALWAYS TO YOU
THEY WON’T HAVE TO PUSH
AND YOU WON’T HAVE TO LOOK
‘MORE PETRON NEAT!’
DEAD INSIDE NIGHT TO NIGHT
BEFORE THE WHITE FLAKES CAN FIND
THE ONE WAY OUT & ALL YOU HAVE TO DO
FOR ALL OF THIS YEAR HAS BEEN
AS HARD AS WE CAN PRETEND
ALL THAT’S LEFT THAT’S REAL IS SHOTS SERVED NEAT
NO NEED HAVE TO SAY PUT PERFECT IN PLACE
I’M OFF ALWAYS TO YOU
SEEMS ALWAYS TO KNOW
AS MELTING THE SNOW
I’M OFF ALWAYS TO YOU

10.COLOR OF DESTROYED
SHOOT DEAD THE FAKEST
IF ALL FOR A MOMENT AND FEARLESS
A WAR LIKE STRIDE IN LINES
A WAR LIKE STRIDE IN TIME
DIE YEARS EMBRACELESS
A FINE LINE IN TAKING
THOSE LIFELESS EYES ARE MINE
THOSE LIFELESS EYES ARE MINE
FORMULATE YEARS BEFORE IT’S
DOWN TO THE TEARS TO KNOW THIS
COLOR OF DESTROYED
COLOR OF DESTROYED
FOR THOSE ABUSED AND FOR THOSE
JUST STARVED
WHEN I’M NOT HERE TO GUT ANY MORE
GUTTED PERFORMLESS
YOU FUCKING PERFORMLESS CUNT

11.HEY THERE
HEY HEY THERE! WON’T YOU STAY?
A FINE BLAST TO THE SOUL
CUNNING CUTS AS THE LOOK I…
KNOW ALL WAY TOO WELL
BUT AGAIN FIGHT AND FIGHT
AFTER ALL…
HOW I STILL STALL AND STRUGGLE
BRING ME BACK IN BAKED
JUST FOR SAKES
NIGHTS AWAKE
MADE IT THROUGH ALL THE YEARS
JUST TO BE SLAUGHTERED
THEN FINE. COULD WE CARED
WHAT WE’D BLOWN THROUGH?
COULD IT MEAN MORE NOW?
AND THE NOW THAT WE’D ALWAYS RUSH THROUGH
COULD IT MEAN MORE NOW?
HEY, JUST DON’T THINK…

12.PLAY DEAD
HIGH STYLE
‘SUCH A BRAVE KNIGHT!’
IT TAKES BASTARDS LIKE ME TO WIN
BEFORE AND BESIDE
THERE’LL BE NO OUTS WITH THIS
I LET GO
NOW IN FREE FALL
WHEN IS TOO FAR, TOO FAR?
HOW SHE SAYS ‘I NEED ALL YOUR NOT’
DEAD ALL BUT ONE LIGHTS ON….
THE SORE INSIDE INSISTS
THIS SORE INSIDE INSISTS…

ALL WORDS BY DEAN TOMIHIRA

Slank show pics

2007-01-25T09:55:00.000-08:00

Cool Waves festival

2006-08-04T10:39:00.000-07:00