Effortless Records

Check out the debut album Brief Golden Age by our friends 'The Maple City'.


While we didn't have a hand in this album, we sure like it - and hope to contribute in some role in the future. 'The Album' as a media is not dead, and this project is proof - from the song writing and performances to the way the tracks flow to the art work - The Maple City has released something special and long lasting.

Brief Golden Age | The Maple City on Band Camp

It might not seem like it from the site updates- but things are happening.

+Major studio upgrades still in progress
+2 bands in the studio

With any luck - we should have a new release or 2 by the end of this year. It will be the first release in 8 years. We don't like to push ourselves too much.

At long last, things are moving. Seven years after it's release - Observatory's Secrets of Memory Man is up on Band Camp.

Link

Why do this? What's the point? Does anyone care?

As a fake record label, which is to say - this has only ever been a method in which to archive projects myself and my friends are involved with - the history of Effortless Records can be divided into some fairly sad chunks and also - to borrow words from Maple City's latest album - a few occurances of a 'Brief Golden Age'.

Pre-Effortless Records was a timeframe in which I was getting out of highschool and began working - to get money - to live and buy music gear, so I could still play in my band. Days turned to weeks and years, and everybody kind of scattered to live their own lives - which isn't a timeline I had figured on, but that's what happens. So I decided - I'll buy recording gear, people will come and go to play music with. The point for me has always been to make records. Nobody remembers being at a show accurately - they just don't. You can remember being at a show - but you're brain fills in most of the experience. A record is the end all be all. I remember in my first band making the argument that jamming wasn't as productive as just recording. The bits we do have recorded, we have forever. Even while you're jamming - if you come across a hook, or a lyric, or even one of those times in which everything just works - if you didn't record it - it might as well have never happened.

So I jumped in the rabbit hole of home recording. I didn't know what a preamp was, and thought it was weird that you would need one... there's a microphone, there's my computer - how could it be anymore complicated than that? And I learned. I chased fidelity in small, often incorrect steps - and in retrospect, made all the mistakes possible in terms of purchasing 'ok gear' and upgrading it later. These days I am of the mind that you are better off buying one $1000 piece of gear a year, rather than 12 $100 pieces of gear. The irony of any of it - is once I get close to being able to record something that sounds modern radio quality, I'm usually looking for ways back to lo-fi. My theory is you can distort a hifi recording, but can't do much in terms of going the other way - so aim as high and possible, and you'll be left with a clean recording you can process to sound more lo-fi later in the artistic realm of the process.

Decades have gone by. My own songs and albums have always been half-assed. I pick at stuff over years. Then I'll have a week or so where I decide to toss whatever's been done in a collection and call it an album. It's mismatched, not written or performed to it's potential. But yet - I get to keep what I've done, good or bad. If it's my own stuff, or other bands I have been privileged to get to work with - the primary goal has been achieved - after work and weekend 'home' musicians got together, wrote songs, recorded songs, arranged and presented them - on our own terms, by ourselves and for ourselves. I like what we've done. I think most the people involved like what we've done. And that's it - that's all that matters - to me that's the point.

If I we're to slap a lazy label on a 'Chatham' sound - given the number of bands there have been and averaged them into a common theme - you would end up with a Korn / Metallica / Tool / Nickelback cover band. Chatham has had it's brilliant and underappreciated indie bands, it's coffee shop solo artists, blues bands, rappers and some pretty creative outlier's that usually come and go. But if you don't sound like Korn or Tool or Metallica in this city - your band is not good and you have failed, as that IS music, here. That's our scene boiled down. You either sound like Creed, or you're wrong.

And that's not us. All of our bands here, I'm happy to note - take lineage from the classics. We are for the most part - roots level guitar, bass and drum bands, usually trying to sound like the 60's and 70's and 90's. Songs come first and tribal tattoos, muscle cars and hairspray are not even on the radar. I think we do the best we can. So while we will always be the misfits, and will never fit in in this city - it all spells mission accomplished to me. I like the demos, the 4-track tapes, the rough sessions not the 1 million dollar sounding attempt to be a local watered down version of Godsmack, complete with Red Bull sponsorship. People are into that - to each their own, and I know anything less spells failure here in Chatham - but this is not our target market by a long shot. Besides, I think today's (insert hard rock in your face band from now, let's say - Buckcherry) - are going to look like Ratt and The Scorpions etc. tomorrow. It's a genre preference I suppose - but you don't really hear of anyone snickering at Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd or dismissing them as a dated, laughable novelty decades later. At the end of the day - they are all just songs, entertainment - something to enjoy, but I do get trolls stopping by to let me know why I suck - and why my music is wrong because it's not Creed. I thought it was all just 'songs' but apparently it's also a competition where you can have wrong or right music, lol. Nah, it's just songs.

So scene wise - we're not going to 'make it', which is good news. We are our own thing. But why catalog in such detail, crediting some people I have not seen in 20 years? I know it's mental, but I can't go forward without knowing everything behind me is well curated. If I record a new song today - then what? To me it needs to be included in a system, otherwise there is no point. That might not make any sense to you - but this site is as detailed as possible as it presents a history of what we have done - good bad or otherwise, to allow us to move forward. The site has albums I'm not proud of, (my own stuff) - that should have been worked on further - but I'm going to put the history here as it is for better or worse. It may reference people we barely know - but if they we're part of something, they we're part of something.

So in moving forward now - I know I've done nothing here in 7 years - no recording, almost no jamming in our various groups - but I want to make records again. ''The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now''. Pretty much keep on as we have for the most part - knowing it's just for us - there's really no wrong or right. If we like something that's the point. If we can put out a couple of records per year that we like, I'm happy with that.

Here's a preview of Observatory's "Secrets of Memory Man"
Thanks to Chatham Music Archive...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=163&v=YYAcA3bvF9A

GAY/ WHITE SUEDE 7'' - Now available
from Pleasence Records.
www.pleasencerecords.com

Not much to report. The Studio is busy, despite many technical glitches. 2 weeks ago the main data drive blew. (The one with ALL the recordings on it). Through luck and minor technical wizardry, I was able to save everything. Fast forward a week after that, during a mastering session with Hey! Death?, Cam and myself watched helplessly as the other drive followed suit. That one - could not be saved.
Luckily, no recordings were lost. Just time. Lots of time was lost. We were able to borrow Kyle's rig from ITA Studio 2, which saved the Gay's 3 day recording session. Yay!
Recent studio visitors include Gay, Hey! Death?, Observatory, The Exotic Pets, and The BluIgloos. So much recording - still with nothing being close to a release. I know it's only rock and roll - but I like it.
I think this summer has been pretty shitty.

Goodbye Safe Trip Grant! Grant will be packing up and heading to New York City this coming Friday.
We will still be working with him remotely, and wish him the best!