Adventure Thing #2.3 - "Modern Cyberman" & DEMOlition part 1 & SECRET THING (Patreon)

This week brings us an interesting track - one that started as a collaboration for another band, but that they ultimately weren't interested in using.

Unreleased Track - "Modern Cyberman" (Demo)

The funny thing about this track is that I only actually wrote the top line (melody and lyrics). The track itself is the work of another band, but they weren't huge fans of this top line, and so it has mostly sat in our dust bin. That said, it has always been one of Hari's favorites, and he's wanted us to do a version for a long time. Super dedicated fans may also know that totally-not-a-side-project synthpop band Alien Airwaves also did a version of this song, but if we wanted to include this on Side Quest it would likely have to be one of the tracks where we do a new studio version, since we don't own the rights to the underlying track.

Semi-Released Tracks - DEMOlition part 1

You may be aware of DEMOlition, a collection of 12 demos that didn't make KABOOM!, since it's one of two "official-ish" b-sides/demos collections that we have actually put out into the world via YouTube and our own webstore. That said, I still wanted to toss these songs out there since some of them may deserve a place on Side Quest and/or may be candidates for a new studio recording. In the interest of keeping these Adventure Thing posts to a digestible 4 or 5 songs max, I'll be splitting DEMOlition tracks across a couple of posts. Here's the tracks for today!

• "Move" - probably the best known "unreleased" track of ours, Move was a song I wrote in 2010 just before we embarked on the Too Fast For Love Tour opening for 3OH3/Cobra Starship/Travie McCoy (hah!).  We actually also tracked a version of this song in a mobile recording studio tour bus that was following the tour around for a while but never ended up finishing that version. Interestingly, the main A&R guy at Atlantic liked this song, but thought it was really similar in feel to "KABOOM!" and that we should pick one or the other for the record, which is likely part of why this didn't make the cut. That said, it's probably best known because of the promotional animated music video that Strangely Compelling Media made to help promote Phantom Breaker: Battlegrounds. In my opinion, this track is #1 most likely to get a new studio version since it's one we've wanted to tackle for a long long time.
• "San Francisco" - this song is one of a handful of tunes that I wrote and demoed while we were actually on tour. We had a day off in San Francisco in 2010 on the Too Fast For Love tour, and I huddled down with my laptop and guitar and gameboy in my bunk and this is what ended up coming out. It's a weird little song, and starts to reflect a lot of the insecurities of losing my own creative voice that started to emerge during this label period.
• "Circles" - dating from July 2010, just after we finished the Too Fast For Love tour, at this point you can clearly hear that I am starting to feel trapped inside my own head. Pressure was mounting from the label to write a "no brainer smash hit" song, and I started to worry that I wasn't going to be able to write it, and that insecurity starting seeping into every aspect of my songwriting.
• "Silver Bullet" - from September 2010, this song was about wanting to take our shot, plain and simple. I think I've always been someone that learns well from real-world feedback, and I think there are lots of things that are unknowable academically until you actually put yourself out there. Even if you end up breaking / failing, it's still so much better than never taking a shot at all.

SECRET THING

November 30th will mark the 10th anniversary of the release of Welcome To The Breakdown, and to commemorate that fact, we're pressing up a Vinyl record with Cool Is Just A Number on one side and Welcome To The Breakdown on the other. 

The current plan is to announce it publicly on Black Friday weekend, but there are a couple of cool limited edition color variants that we wanted to give Patreon backers first dibs on.

So here's the preorder listing on our webstore if you want to take a look!