Casey's Residency Night 3: January, 21st 2011

Night 3 of our residency saw us joined by the ladies in Kissing Cousins.

Prior to this night the last time we played together had been about a year

or so back. If you aren't familiar with Kissing Cousins, they are a female

piece of some of the heaviest music being played in the LA music scene.

Imagine if the Melvins and Black Sabbath had a musical lovechild, it's

sort of like that but better. It was a definite pleasure to have with them

again after such a long time.

CMYK whom you may remember from the second week of our residency

returned to DJ this night as well. They laid down some great beats and

tunes that night that had butts shaking. What more can you ask from

a DJ duo? Not much. A big thanks to them for joining us for two

consecutive weeks.

By the time we hit the stage the floor seemed pretty filled as we launched into our

first song that night. Unlike the first two fridays where we ended with a cover, we

decided to start this week with one. Our cover song of choice this night was

'I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts' by legendary LA band X. We reshaped the song

into out own image. That is to say we sludged out certain sections while keeping

others closeish to the original arrangement. If you were there to witness this

cover then we suppose this description makes more sense. We played what we

consider to be a new and thorough reworking of a song called 'More'. That song

has been a staple of our live sets the last year and a half or so and is typically

played as an extension of another song called 'Know'. We slowed the tempo down

quite a bit and added an extended first half that is spacier and prettier. In this

version the song takes on a life of its own that we think is very separate from the

way we have been performing it.

What was the set list you may be wondering?

1) I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts (X cover)

2)Franjelica

3)Kill

4)T.Rex/Goat Adventure

5)The Party

6)Birthcake

7)Bawdy Politic

8)Driving Drone

9)More (New Arragement/Song)

We don't have any pictures of this night but you imagine

it was loud and darkish with trippy projections.

Or catch these videos if you haven't already:

On to Night 4!

The Terrapin

XOXO

Casey's Residency Night 2: January, 14th 2011

Night 2 of our Casey's residency saw us joined by our friends in the band

Hexham Heads. If you remember, we played with them at Spaceland in

October 2010 along with C-Horse and Nightmare Air. They have a a post-

punk sound that calls to bands like Bauhaus and Joy Division but isn't

scared to embrace a harder driving live performance. If you were there

on this particular night at Casey's then you also had a chance to see Rufo

from The Terrapin subbing on drums for them for the night. By all accounts

he didn't fully cheese it.

We also invited our friends in CMYK to DJ this night. CMYK laid down

some serious grooves from the get go. We're pretty pumped because

the dance floor action they laid down is coming back when they join us

once more on Night 3. Should you come back and dance your ass off?

What kind of question is that? Of course you should. If you're not shaking

it you're not living.

Speaking of shaking it, Thanks to everyone who helped fill up the floor

while we played. It's not often we play LA proper and have people actually

dance. The makes all of us very happy indeed. If you were there during

this dancefest, the song that may have done the trick is called 'The Party'.

It's a brand new song we wrote fairly recently. It's not on our upcoming

'Inner Machine' EP but will most likely be on the follow up to it. In the

mean time you should come to the gigs to catch it in all it's sweaty glory.

We also had our friend Lukas from Hexham Heads join us onstage in the

aftermath of 'The Party' to play our cover of The Smashing Pumpkins

song 'Bodies'. It was loud, fast, and noisy as hell, so in other words a great

deal of fun. We wrapped up night two in a hot sweaty mess but Rock & Roll

shouldn't be anything less.

Right below are a few pics snapped by John Ramirez.

Set list for Night 2

1) T-Rex/Goat Adventure

2) Driving Drone

3) Drag

4) Franjelica

5) Inner Machine

6) Birthcake

7) The Party (Brand New)

8) Bodies (Smashing Pumpkins cover with Lukas from Hexham Heads)

And if you've forgotten, we made a video to promote our four night stand

at Casey's:

and here's Birthcake just in case you haven't seen it already.

On a much sadder and personal note, Trish Keenan the singer

from british group Broadcast passed away that same day.

The Terrapin had the very good fortune of seeing them on

what ended up being their final LA performance at The Troubadour

in November 2009. We left that show in a collective haze of

wonder and awe. The projection work they did proved to be

a large inspiration for us to begin incorporating visual

elements to our performance. The musical influence Broadcast

has had in particular to both Vanessa and Rufo has been large

in both their lives. Trish and Broadcast are influences that we

have no problem readily admitting. If you aren't familiar with

their music here are the two songs that turned both Vanessa

and Rufo on to them.

And lastly, Broadcast performing their song 'Black Cat' at

The Troubadour November 2009.

We'll Miss You Trish Keenan.

The Terrapin

Casey's Residency Night 1 : January, 7th 2011

The Terrapin began our Friday night residency at Casey's in downtown LA this

past week on January 7th. As you can tell by the fancy poster above made by

graphic artist Andrew Wilson (http://wilsonicillustration.blogspot.com/)

we played with the lovely ladies in the band Bombon. We've known Jerico

their drummer from way back when she was in a band called Sleepover. They

played the record release show for our first EP. She now kicks ass full time

in Bombon. They've also just put our their first LP and happen to play some

of the funnest garage/surf music you can imagine. They put on a great show

and we were very happy to have them on board for this first night.

We also had DJ Oldboy (a.k.a. Chris 'Sex Bob-omb' Lynch) spinning records

between bands. If you've never heard him DJ you are surely missing out on

some amazing tunes. He plays a great selection of blues, R&B, Soul and

Rock & Roll to whet just about any musical taste. The guy has great taste.

How many DJ's have you ever seen rock out with a tambourine during their

set? He sure does. Go see him when you have a chance.

The first night of the residency was even more of a special occasion for us

because it marked us debuting our first ever music video! Director Donovan

Vim Crony made an amazing video for our song 'Birthcake' from our first

EP. He also came down with us to see it premiered. Reaction was good.

We shot the video with him at the end of November. Watch it below!

How cool is that? We know, we know. Donovan is an all around great

classy man and we couldn't be happier with how it turned out. If you want

to see more of his work go check out his Youtube channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/vimcrony

We also made a made a video for our residency dates in the same vein

as the one we made for January 2010. Don't want to ruin the surprise

so here it is:

Hopefully that didn't induce some really weird acid flashback.

If it did, we apologize.

We are also working closely with visual artist Zach McGinnes for

the live visuals you are going to see this month. Below you'll see two

pictures taken the first night of the residency by Katy Diaz that might

give you a hint of what we're doing. To get the full impact of it you

should come down to one of our three remaining residency shows.

Are you wondering what we played that first night?

Well, here's the setlist from night 1:

1)Numb

2)Drag

3)Birthcake

4)It All Goes Away

5)Kill (1-5 is the 'Kill' EP in its original running order)

6) T-Rex/Goat Adventure (NEW SONG!)

7)Bawdy Politic

8)Know

9)More (7-9 are from our upcoming 'Inner Machine' EP)

10)Moonage Daydream (DAVID BOWIE COVER!)

That covers most of Night 1.

What else will happen?

Come down and find out for yourself.

This Friday will see us playing once more with Hexham Heads

and the ladies of CMYK DJ'ing.

See you then.

The Terrapin

Bear, Cat, Koala, Ferret

XOXO