Death & Other Unnatural Phenomenon is a concept album.

The concept, that I’ll explore through daily post for the next two weeks, is that of death, the acceptance of death, the joy of life, and the fear of an afterlife. The story that I’ll illustrate as we move through the tracks follows a protagonist who finds themselves confronting their own morality.

As a band we explored this story through the lyrics, structure, and even the mixing of the songs itself.

While I can’t call this album “serious”, well leave that to better bands like Radiohead, it is more mature in its sonic attack.

We have more ups and downs in the emotion of the songs. We allow some elasticity in what we previously “defined” as our sound. We took some risks that we won’t know if it will pay off until the record is in your hands in September.

Will the album still sound fun?

I really think so.

We have always been “serious” about not taking our music, ourselves, or the business of making music too “serious”. I think that still shows as we move from song to song with the same recklessness and chaotic energy we put into “The Holes In Your Face Are Pleasing.”

I know some people, Eric from fishboy, thinks we sometimes are all over the map when it comes to song writing. I can’t say I disagree.

What I do disagree with is that writing songs in the manner is a bad thing. Writing songs like this allows us to explore a high brow concept like death with the same low brow execution that we’ve put into all of our work thus far.

To us, it’s not really important how these songs connect together sonically, what is important is that they are out there in the ether banging up against one another.

I believe what makes a good album is not a constant style or mixing range, rather what’s important album, is that you create songs that can live together or alone.

That you make each song live and breathe like you would an episode of a television show or an act of a play. Each song on the album has a beginning,middle and end. Each set of songs on the album also have a beginning, middle, and end. The entire album follows this format.

By structuring the songs like this we did something pretty amazing in 41 minutes.

Something I thought a dumb little band that likes to write about zombies, dancing, and vampires could never do.

We created something that feels, at least to me, as important. And we did it the way we do everything, as friends talking and exploring a subject that made us feel lots of emotions.

Death & Other Unnatural Phenomenon is the fruit of this labor.

I’ll see you all Monday as I walk through the song Big Bang.

Until next time,
-J

Holy crap. I’m listening to mixes for all 15 tracks off the new album.

What I’ve done so far?

1. Rearranged the songs every which way to get a good feel. (feelin’ good)
2. Fantasized about car companies buying up these tracks and me finally getting that miata I’ve always wanted.
3. Planned my choreographed jumps for the new and improved live version of Giggle Party. Improved how? Well with more choreography, of course.

Final verdict?
This is going to be a great album. I’ve never been more proud of any music I’ve ever created. These songs sound commercial with out giving up what we think is great about the band.

What’s next?
Tweaks. Tweaks. Tweaks.

Then what?
I’ll begin the search for a label that will put this stuff out and give us the support we are looking for, most MANicures.

Until next time–
Jason R

Leg Sweeper is a band from Dallas that has made me believe in good honest punk rock again.

Its catchy and drills into your brain bone and rattles around in there until you just want to puke from how awesome it is.

On my way to San Francisco, Leg Sweeper’s rock and roll anthem “Rock-N-Roll” played in every state I ventured across. Like all good pop songs their anthem became my anthem and by state four I had sworn I wrote the vocal hooks to the song.

Even today as I lay in a hotel room in Bismark, North Dakota, their low-fi hard as nails song, “My Face Hurts” blares over my Mac Book speakers.

Rambling continue in 3..2..1–

I think that my favorite part of being in Giggle Party, I mean honestly who cares about our own careers in the music business, is getting to meet and become friends with bands like Leg Sweeper. The two dudes, Taylor and Justin, are two of the most awesome guys you can know.

I would be amiss to not mention that Taylor is my favorite live drummer. He pounds on his set while screaming and smiling. Justin is much more cathartic and his down cool “high” attitude creates a perfect balance to Justin’s spazziness. Really, these guys are fucking legit.

End Rambling.

So go and listen to their tracks. Go vote for them for a DOMA. I mean for real.

Until next time-
Jason R

Like the fresh princes and jazzy jeffs before us, and if you follow us on twitter you’ll know, we are hard at work mixing down what will become our first full length album.

The number of songs vary by the day but will be someplace in the ball park of 9-12 songs.

Progress comes slowly for us but we did accomplish releasing some of our new material on an EP called “Vampire Lover” at the last Handsome Kitten show. The four tracks on the EP; Vampire Lover, Big Bang, Bury Me, and Get Yr Finger Wet are all fine examples of how good these tracks are sounding prior to mastering.

The hard part– now is putting the sound of the album to rest and making a stand on what “Death & Other Unnatural Phenomenon” will be.

I keep going back and fourth between a very open/fun sound and a very compressed/warm sound. Aaron E, god bless him, is really working hard on this but I think even for him it is hard to stay focused on the overall sound while trudging through the song to song mix.

I want to release more material to all of you, we even teased last week on twitter that we would do that, but other members of the band are swearing me to secrecy.

I’m going to try and convince the Gestapo’s at Giggle Mountain to at least let me get out “Duh Duh Duh Duhallus, You’re Fucking Rad,” a cover of the Happy Bullets “Fuck Yeah I’m In Love With You” and the Tah-Dah’s “Dallas”.

Until next time–
Jason

P.S.
Make sure to follow up on twitter as we are about to unleash a bunch of new material to which we’ll let our twitter followers know first.

Thanks everyone for the emails of support. We are really sorry that Go Lion broke the story the way they did– but seriously WTF?

http://goliondfw.blogspot.com/2010/03/fishboy-giggle-party-feud-heading-into.html

Hey everybody– we are updating the site and putting new music up. While we do that why don’t you read a nice article about us over at the observer’s dc9 blog.

http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/dc9/2010/03/yesterday_at_nx35_giggle_party.php

Love,
Giggle Party

Friday night we’ll be at The Red Eye Fly in Austin and Saturday at The Texan in Corpus Christi.

Visit http://www.partytodeath.com to download the first of many songs to be previewed from our upcoming album. This week’s song is Big Bang!

The first song slatted for release is a mid tempo number about sex, death, evolution, and the receipt for your grandma’s homemade peanut-butter cookies. The song is called “Big Bang,” and features some new flanged singing and hoo humming.

I’ll post more about the process of releasing these songs to everyone, as they’ll be downloadable for free (for a short time), as we enter into next week. For now maybe you could set your radio dials to The Local Edge for the debut of the song tomorrow night.

Thanks!
Giggle Party