Long time no see!

It’s been a long time (since January, in fact!) but there’s been so much happening nowadays that I figured I’d pour some fresh newswater all over your thirsty little brainplants. The weekend started off with…

Steamtopian Cavalcade this last Thursday in Washington DC. Professor Fulbright Moone of the Soceity for the Advancement of the Steamtopian Ideal (SASI) hosted the evening and we got to do some great networking with members of the DC-area steampunk community. That night we performed alongside Eli August and Sally the Cinch of DC’s own Cheeky Monkey Sideshow.

Steampunk World’s Fair 2011 ran Friday through Sunday and was an unmitigated success by every conceivable metric. Our band was scaled down to 4 out of its 6 members but we still rocked off a decent amount of face for a con full of people who had no idea who we were, and is specific to a subculture that we haven’t really appealed to before.  Big thanks to everyone in the steamy community who welcomed us with open arms. This was all masterminded by mister Eli August, by the way, who we provided backing instrumentals/vocals for at most of his shows this past weekend as well as for the Cavalcade. For those keeping tally at home, that’s 11 or so shows this band(‘s members) played over 4 days. A particularly favorite moment of mine was grabbing Brennan and hitting the hotel lobby as there was a large crowd counting down to Rapture O’Clock. In just a minute’s time, we had the whole crowd singing along to “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”.

Merch!

At long last! Let me tell you how awesome it is to have a band with a professional graphic designer in it, by the way. Very. Very is how much.  We recently acquired a screen-printing device and are slowly learning how to use it. It’s all very much like that scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey with the apes learning how to use tools for the first time.

Right now we’re rolling out fabric patches and printing up stickers but you can expect to see some T-shirts and other merchly craziness in the future as well.

I’d like to relate a little story here. Pull up a stool, kids. You see… Brennan had just received the screen-printer and he and Mell were reading up about it, watching the instructional DVD on it, etc. By the time Paige and myself showed up, the night had already been too long and arduous and there was one screen set up but nowhere near what we had expected to accomplish yet.

The idea came up of “screw it, let’s just do linoleum block printing” like in elementary school. This part is key for, you see, with any other group of individuals, it would hang in the air as a joke for amoment and then be released into the aether. But let’s face facts, that’s not the kind of band you’re dealing with here. You’re dealing with the kind of band who says “oh yeah, I’ve got some movable type and setting racks in the basement, let’s try that”. I can’t reveal too much information as of yet but you’re about to see some sheer madness out of us when it comes to T-shirts.

New Album! You heard right, and it’s on its way. Our 6 song EP Ars Nova has lasted us a good while but, you see, even when we recorded it, we had at least 3x as many songs as that written and ready to go. In fact, some of the songs we still play today and have yet to record date back to the early 2000′s. What’s taken so long? A brand of obsessive perfectionism I think a lot of artists can relate to. I often talk about Ars Nova as a proof-of-concept album, but this one will be more about finally putting the past on record, transitioning to focus on what we want out of the future, and mercilessly pursuing it. My hope is that you will actually be able to hear us come into our own and “wake up” musically and that is why the album will be called Waking Up. We have been experimenting with a few different recording locations and engineers and arrangements and hope to bring you something truly mindblowing. More updates to come as events transpire.

That’s all the news for now, Petalheads.

Stay weird,

Elliot

Java Mammas’

Despite the insane snowfall we had last night, or perhaps because of it, there was an excellent turnout tonight for our feature set at Java Mammas Open Mic Night in Reisterstown. The online viewership was great, too, making it the second biggest online audience the event has had. Another shoutout to Rob from ilyAIMY for hosting the night.

Oh yeah, right before the show today, I remembered that we’re actually on Last.fm so you should go check that out. Working on Pandora and Grooveshark as well. For now though, you can check us out primarily on iTunes and Bandcamp.

So what’s on the horizon? Next couple of weeks will involve a lot of time spent recording old songs and writing new ones. Talk was thrown around today inside the group about everything from music videos to new merch so you’ll just have to stay tuned for more.

You got your math in my music! You got your music in my math!

Do not fear, we are not becoming one of those nerdy math rock groups. Pfft. Nerds. What a bunch of … nerds.

However, we did just make major headway on two or three brand spanking new songs last practice that are a bit on the side of “1970s prog rock double gatefold LP with album art that looks like a scene from Heavy Metal” in time signatures that would make Pythagoras proud.

Unfortunately, we are not insane enough to attempt to polish these songs up enough in time for our show next Thursday–HEY GUYS WE HAVE A SHOW NEXT THURSDAY.  We will be playing the feature set at the Java Mamma’s Open Mic Night, hosted by our friend Rob of local legend ilyAIMY. Coffee plus music plus supporting local artists? Sounds like a good time to me. Have to work? Can’t leave your house due to crippling agoraphobia? Good news! You can just point your intertube viewer machine to this web zone to view a live stream of the whole night. Show starts at 7.

But enough with the shameless plug. So we’ve written these new songs, and are continuing to make progress towards a full-length album. No word yet on a release date, but it will be songs stretching the last 6 years.  We’re all pretty anxious to see how it will end up, but the emphasis here is to spend as much time as necessary to get these to perfection.  We did a photo shoot a little while ago with the most excellent Seb Stewart and you can view these pics here if you have the book of faces.

Well, kids, the night is wearing thin and I have to wake up for work in a scant 7 hours so we will have to continue this another time.

Stay weird,

Elliot

living in the hottest summers

We played Metro Gallery a bit more than a week ago, with our good friends in Dead Letter Fiction and our new friends in Elise Major – it was a pretty damn rocking show. we gave out glowsticks, but it didn’t cause a rave – it did, however, make the view from stage a bit cooler. And turning down the house lights let us feel, temperature wise, less blazing.

Coming up, we would like to recommend you check out some of the fine performers and exhibits at Artscape in a couple weeks – our friends Sahffi and Acacia Sears are playing, and it’s always a time when anything could happen.

Further in the future – We’re putting together an excitingly different show for August 1st. It’s taking place at the Vagabond Theater – Us, Eli August returns in an abbreviated form, The Clockwork Dolls do their thing with which some of you are familiar, and This Way To The Egress will close an evening interspersed with sideshow acts and interesting quirks. We’re calling it a Carnival for the Curious, and drop us a line if you’d like $10 presale tickets (they’ll be 15 at the door.)

Anyhoo, off to plug some mics in for upcoming recordings. talk to you soon!

heeeey blog!

Hi folks –

Brennan here. I play the guitar in Petal Blight, in case you didn’t know.

We had a pretty awrsome weekend. We played the Caton Tavern in a surprise rescheduling, or rather relocating, with Eli August who were wondrous and welcomed with open arms by our catonsville hometown community. We went to Six Flags and played a couple sets throughout the day, and rode a bunch of rides. All this is on our Facebook page somewhere, so I’m sure you can go “like” us and see the pictures and stuff.

plus, we have a CD now. We completely self-recorded and produced it, with the only service provided us being the duplication. We’re working on getting it to the places it needs to be in order to be mail-order, but in the meantime, if you want one, Email us. It’s six of our favorite songs of the past year, and it’s pretty much just a proof-of-concept for the six of us working together. Its proceeds are being routed right back towards recording a full-length album, twice as long, and likely with more guest stars and interesting bits.

anyhoo. I think there’s links around here to our youtubes, our myspaces, our facebooks, et cetera et cetera. There’s different stuff everywhere, to a certain extent. see if you can spot continuity errors.

til next time,

~brennan

First!

If you’re reading this, you probably came here by going to petalblight.com which means our internet wizardry worked! Here, you can get to all of our social networking sites over on the left hand nav bar, or read about band updates as they get posted. We’ll have a “for real” site up soon enough, but in the meantime here are some things to check out:

• We have a drop.io that’s going to be updated with direct from-us-to-you fan content like music, art, and other goodies. Stay tuned!
• facebook, myspace, and reverbnation all have updated tracks from our demo, and will appear on our soon-to-be-released EP, “Ars Nova. They also featured updated instrumentals such as Elliot on the upright bass and our violinist, Adesh.
• our youtube channel, which has our live performances!