We’ve been working on getting the garage juuust right.
RC using his woodworking magic on the new work table.
Stencil made out of old paper bags.
Villains logo on the new work table!
Finally hanging the banner… that means it’s official!
Archive for Site News
Sullen Ray news and updates for 2014.
Sullen Ray has been in Europe with Tarah Who?. We miss him terribly, but we’re excited that he has the opportunity to tour across the sea! Any of you European fans out there should check him out. Dates will be at the bottom of the post. And you can check out more details on Sullen Ray’s Facebook.
And for any of you guys who do make it out to a European show date, I have some free stuff for you! How? Take a picture with Sullen Ray — as in, you and Sullen Ray have to be in the same picture — and send it to me via email: june@villainsrecords.com.
The catch is that I can’t tell you what that free stuff will be. Maybe some smooches by mail! Some pins! A CD! Who knows!? The first 5 people to send me a pic gets the free swag.
And even more big news… By the end of spring, we should have a 4-song EP from Sullen Ray called BLUE minor to lead up to the fall release of the full length BLUE. The EP will feature “Dive” — originally released on Villaintine’s 2014, “All Over Again,” “We See Ourselves,” and “This is the End.”
And a music video to go with it!
Listen to “Dive” here:
And finally… extra special tour dates in exciting capslock
APRIL 18 LONDON
APRIL 19 GLASGOW
APRIL 20 EDINBURGH
APRIL 21 LIVERPOOL
APRIL 27 LISBON
APRIL 28 MADRID
APRIL 20 BARCELONA
MAY 1 ROME
MAY 2 VENICE
MAY 3 MUNICH
MAY 4 PRAGUE
MAY 5 BERLIN
MAY 7 HAMBURG
MAY 8 AMSTERDAM
MAY 9 BRUSSELS
Written In Sand – The First Fortnight
For the uninitiated, I’m Mark Fulinara, press contact for Villains and singer/bassist for Beta Lion. Our band’s debut release was released two weeks ago on March 15, 2014. You can download “Written in Sand” on iTunes now.
Whew…
So the Written In Sand EP has officially been out for two weeks now! The Ides of March came and went, and fortunately nobody got stabbed. The response to the EP has been surprisingly amazing (at least from all 3 people who have listened to it).
I say that it’s surprising not only because people seem to dig it, but because the songs themselves seem to have new life breathed into them. It’s like cleaning out our old room and finding a musical diary of our 20’s. We’re excited to incorporate the songs from the EP back into our live set.
Even the people who worked on it found new things to enjoy about Written In Sand once it came out. Although each person’s role were absolutely vital, nobody who worked on it ever had the final product in their hands until the release. The guys who recorded it hadn’t heard the mixes, the guy who did the mix never heard the sound effects, the guy who did the sound effects never heard it mastered, the guy who did the album artwork hates our band (just kidding, Shane)… and so on and so forth.
It’s been a liberating experience to finally release something that we can say is our best work. So much so, we’re contemplating going straight into recording our full-length album and not booking any shows this year. Maybe after 10+ years of playing live shows together and not recording, back to back releases offsets that a bit?
But I doubt we can resist playing a show by the time summer rolls around. We get really antsy when we don’t play, so we’ll see what itch we need to scratch first. We’ve been given an open invitation to play a beach house in Rosarito whenever we want, so let us know if guys would be interested in that sort of thing, and we’ll make it happen!
If I had to take away the two most important lessons I’ve learned from this experience so far, they’d be:
- People want to help you, so don’t get in their way! A big personal hurdle I had to overcome was getting over the fear of asking for help. What I sometimes mistake in myself as being a control freak is actually insecurity (if you can believe that) about whether people believe in us.
- It feels really good to accomplish things. I know that people release music all the time, and if you’re Robert Pollard, you somehow release ten lifetime’s worth of music every year. But I have to tell you, the moment I hit the button to finalize the distribution of the EP, I felt like I was struck by lightning like in Highlander:
You can download Written in Sand on iTunes.
