Toehider - The Official Site

New album "To Hide Her", Salty and Mike's "1in1", gigs, endorsements, Bird's Robe Records, awesome!

Posted by Michael at 15:02 on August 2nd, 2011.

Everything's happening and I don't really know where to start...

I'm figuring the best place would be to tell you that the new Toehider release will be called "To Hide Her". The best way to describe it would be to call it a triple EP. The first EP will be heavy rock, the third will be more of an acoustic-type affair.
The second will be what's best described as the "1in1" project. The idea here is that Salty and I will lock ourselves away for a week and create music and artwork around the clock until we fall on the ground. We'll try our best to film it all, and at the end of every day, we'll upload footage from the day's work.

So the entire 15 track offering will be available through Sydney's "Bird's Robe Records", a company doing some AMAZING work for the progressive music scene here in Australia.
The whole thing will be available ON OR BEFORE SEPTEMBER 22.

The single from the album, "The Most Popular Girl in School" will be launched at the mighty PROGFEST at the Espy on September 3. From there we'll be launching the album in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney (Brisbane TBA!!) as we support Unitopia on their first Australian tour. See the gig guide at the bottom of this blog for the full list of dates!!
On top of those, our sinnessjuk drummer Ricky Evensand will be doing some clinic masterclasses around the country, playing his indestructible Mapex kit. We'll also be playing at the massive "Australian Ultimate Drummer's Weekend" in August here in Melbourne showcasing Ricky's incredible talent.

Additionally, I'm super-proud to tell you that I'm now using PRS guitars and Marshall amplifiers! My tone has changed so dramatically since getting on this Custom 22 by PRS, I've had to go back and re-do all of what I already had recorded for the new album. It's also one of only 250 guitars built, so suffice to say I feel incredibly excited and honoured to have this guitar in my hands (yes, I'm holding it as I'm typing, and I may or may not sleep with it tonight, WHAT OF IT, HUH?!?)

Anyway, hope to see you at some of the shows!!

1 comment

Individual track downloads finally.

Posted by Michael at 22:04 on May 17th, 2011.

Just a quick note to let you guys know that the 12in12 stuff is all now available in single track form (as well as EP bundles) via bandcamp. It's all pretty cheap now, 50c a song, $3 an EP. That's pretty good, isn't it? Yeah you know it is.
While you're there, be sure to check out Lachlan's solo album which is a collection of works he did for the Angry Video Game Nerd, his latest efforts are here! (spot the theme at 1:53!)

The next release is underway, I'm meeting with Salty in a few days to talk about how it's all going to come together. Exciting times!

2 comments

5 great things that are awesome about music right now.

Posted by Michael at 20:55 on February 6th, 2011.

It seems like I read at least one thing every day about how the music industry is dying, about how it's not like it was in the good ol' days or whatever, nobody's making any money... seriously, the internet has got to cheer the hell up.

I was sitting on the toilet just now thinking about how fortunate I actually am to be living and making music in these times. Think about it!

1. The sky really, really is the limit

I first started out recording on a cassette player with a 'record' button. Then my awesome brother Rob figured he could take out the little mechanism that wiped the tape when you re-recorded over something, and BAM! We could record overdubs. Then I bought a 4 track, which meant I could record drums, bass, and a rhythm guitar part, then bounce all that down to the 4th track (in mono), then record vocals and extra guitars. I can't remember how, but I once managed to get a 3 part vocal harmony happening on one song.
Now, I can do whatever I want. Some of the Toehider stuff easily has 100 tracks. Now more than ever, the only limit is your imagination. And that's awesome. Plus we've got home studios that cost pretty much nothing!! Amazing.

2. There's no defining 'sound' of the 00's.

When I was in highschool I remember asking this one kid what kind of bands he was into, and he said "Nirvana", but there was something about the way he said it, like it was a stock answer and he was afraid he'd get bashed if he didn't say Nirvana or something.
It seems like now, no one style of music rules the roost. There is no defining sound that sums up the era in which we're living. And that's AWESOME! Variety is the spice of life and all that, and it's great to hear kids getting into such a wide variety of music, irrespective of a 'scene' or whatever.

3. There is so much to be 'inspired' by (read: rip off).

Aussie radio station Triple J put out a "Hottest 100", and every year everybody has a cry about how terrible some of the stuff on there is. To be honest, I don't listen to very much radio that isn't a classical music station or community radio, so I sat down and listened to this year's top 20. I could have easily just been all like "pfft, sucks, lousy hipster shit", but instead I asked myself the question "what do I like about this?". The harder I listened, the more I liked, the more amazing ideas I heard that I could incoporate into my own music.
Plus, my friends and people I follow on facebook and twitter are constantly linking to songs and artists, and there's always at least 4 or 5 ideas in everything I hear that're worth stealing haha. Some people say that we're over-exposed, there's too much choice. I personally think its a good thing, and I'm excited to hear how that ongoingly affects the artform.

4. There's like a million sub-genres.

My observation is that there loads of rabid music lovers out there. Some might be snobby elitists who only listen to 'postprog-neo80s-cartoonthemecore' (actually I pioneered that sub-genre). But see, that's awesome. It proves that music means something to them (take note of the italics in the previous sentence). It means that music is important to them. Surface-level music 'fans' will go along just enjoying whatever's on the radio and TV (nothing wrong with that of course), and then the deeper set music enthusiasts will talk (or write) for hours about how shit commercial music is. And that's awesome! Arguing is cool, it's born from having a passion, and seeing worth in something...
Also, the fact alone that there's a genre named 'djent' (which I assume is named after the sound of a detuned, palm-muted power chord 'djent djent djent djent djent djent djent DJENT djent djent djent...') proves how RAD 21st century music is.

5. The 80's are a little bit back.

I never really dug the 90's music hey. I mean, it was alright, but for the most part it seemed so depressing and took itself way too seriously. Plus I'm coloured blind so I need music videos to be full of prominant crazy colours splashing around everywhere and shit. Now in 2011 it seems that girls just want to have fun again, there's people with expressions on their faces that DON'T say "I want to kill myself", and everyone has big hair and bangles and it's totally acceptable to have a rocking keytar solo in a song if you want. Music is fun, and funny again. And that's AWESOME. Imagine if Mika landed in 1995!

Anyway, just look around you. Listen around you. Even TV commercials have amazing, moving, innovative music. Video game music is simply astounding (I was playing Red Dead Redemption yesterday and its Morricone-esque soundtrack MAKES the game for me). I can find 5 great things in everything I listen to. Can you?

3 comments

What's going on in toehider?

Posted by Michael at 14:26 on October 16th, 2010.

Ok so I'm going to continue to use this blog to document what's happening with Toehider, I've felt like I've had enough of a break from writing songs, and over the last week or two, I've started thinking about things again.

So basically, there'll be a new Toehider release in 2011. Salty has started drawing again (in fact, he never stopped!), and, like before, there'll be more of the music/sketching/music/sketching kind of process, where we bounce ideas and draw inspiration from one another. You can expect it to be released in the winter.

Actually, I'll stop right there. You can expect nothing. I hate expectations. I went to see Inception a while ago, after everyone I spoke to said "Go see Inception! It's like the greatest thing ever! Oh my god! Inception!" etc. I had such high expectations that I found it to be quite average and even kinda predictable. Similarily, I went to see Micmacs, a film that I had heard literally nothing about, and it turned out to be the best movie I've seen this year. They're probably both amazing films, I just was dumb enough to listen to other people.

So, screw expectations. Don't expect anything from Toehider.

Forget you even read this blog!

1 comment

Salty's 12in12 Wrap Up!

Posted by Salty at 12:43 on April 17th, 2010.

OK so it's time for my 12in12 wrap up blog. It took me a little while to get to it, but i'm gettin' to it!

So let me start of by saying that this project wouldn't have been at all possible without a few things. One, obviously, was me. The second, less obviously, was the fact that there are 12 months in a year, which luckilly went hand in hand with the fact we were going to do 12 EPs. It also wouldn't have been possible without everyone who got on board and bought the releases each month and supported it so well. Oh yeah, and some dude wrote a bunch of music. I think his name is Mark Miles or something.

Of course, I'm just screwing around. Without Mike Mills this thing would never have gotten off the ground and I'm not ashamed to say that I've never ever in my creative life worked with anyone who is not only creative in his own right, but also constantly inspires creativity in me. There were so many times throughout the process that we'd basically just jam ideas off each other which would lead to an idea for either artwork or a song and we'd go from there. The very first Toehider track, the self-titled "Toe Hider" was actually writtin in short bursts. Mike would record a few bars or a section, send it to me, I'd do some sketches based on where the idea was going, send them to him, and he'd then write as the sketches took his ideas other places. It was an awesome way of working and sort of what sparked this whole thing off. I also found in Mike someone who like me was tired of how things are in the music industry right now, but is just as slack as me about doing anything to change it. So we come up with this idea of releasing all of this music completely digitally, on a "pay if you like it" basis and allowing everyone to listen to it in full online as much as they like. It was never REALLY about making huge wads of money (it so was) but about doing something different and trying to show that it can work!

So a super massive thanks has to go to Mike for being such an easy and inspiring dude to work with. Lets do more of it.

Anyway, so this is where I get to wrap up the project in 12 points.

1. I absolutely SUCK at time management. I think at least 9 of the 12 EPs I did the cover art for in the last 48 hours leading up to the release. Some with even less time. The extra artwork that they all include was done usually on the same sort of basis.

2. The funnest cover to create for me I think was 9. We set up a table covered in white paper and just went nuts with Froot Loops and milk. I set up all of my camera gear including two flashes, a softbox, remote flash triggers and remote shutter release and took photo after photo of a lightbulb dropping in the bowl of cereal. Or lightbulbs floating in cereal. Or lightbulbs laying on cereal and pouring milk over them. It was AWESOME.

3. The cover I don't really feel completely happy with would probably be In All Honesty. I wanted to do something that looked really generic and mass manufactured, and while it does look pretty bland and generic, I don't think it really come off as well as I hoped. If I could re-do that cover, I'd probably make it a photo cover and do a shoot with Mike and possibly the band and give it that real cheesy airbrushed pop supergroup angle.

4. Of all of the extra artwork, my favourites are probably the poster from one of the last ones…where Toehead is sitting on a floating chair looking at a fish and the TONAN comic. That Tonan one was a lot of fun. I'm also partial to the last comic too.

5. My least favourite extra artwork is probably the grow-a-toe thing from Old, Old, Old. I was really hard pushed to come up with something for that, so went with the old 70s comic ad type dealo. I probably should FEEL the worst about the comic from In All Honesty seeing as it was a complete cop out and just a stick figure thing I drew in literally 45 seconds, but that was the vibe we were on with that EP so I quite like it haha! I didn't do extra artwork for Do You Believe in Monsters…because…err…a monster ate it?

6. I think my favourite of the EPs is probably a four way tie between Children of the Sun, Toehider Too, In All Honesty and Not Much of a Man.

7. My least favourite, though not because I don't like it, but purely because it's a different listening experience, so I usually skip it if I'm just listening to music is How Counterquistle Lost His Pyjamas. It's a great EP, just always throws me out of my musical odyssey space when I'm listening on random.

8. I did a lot of the artwork for this project sitting at my desk at work. Woops, there goes my productivity!

9. Two EPs had their covers changed right at the last minute. These were Metaltarsus and Done and Dusted. I blogged about Metaltaarsus and how I did it and hated it and was then going to just use a black album cover as a joke, but then managed to fix what I didn't like about the digital painting. It ended up being a smash with the fans! The Done and Dusted cover existed as a sketch, and then when I started actually working on it I discovered that it SUCKED and I couldn't get it working the way I wanted it to. So the cover that I ended up going with, with the broom and mouse etc was a last minute thing done at 3am the night before release jamming ideas back and forth with Mike on Skype. Ah deadlines, how you rule.

10. I was lucky enough to play on one of the tracks from Under The Mistletoe! If you haven't heard it or didn't know, in the track Dear Santa there is a keyboard solo right before the song breaks down at the end. I recorded it on my Moog Little Phatty Stage II. It was great to be part of the other side of the project shortly.

Check it out here - http://www.reverbnation.com/play_now/song_3019372

11. I used the following techniques and tools for the artwork throughout the project - Pencil and pen on paper drawing (biro, felt tip, clutch pencil), full digital illustration (Intuos 4 and Photoshop), digital painting (same as previous), digital photography, digital collage and in some cases a mixture of all of those!

12. This is point 12. Give me a break alright! 12 is a lot of shit to come up with.

So there we have it. We did a project that took us a whole year. At some points we thought it'd kill us, at others we rode a wave of total exhilleration and enjoyment in what we were doing.

Would I do it again? Hell yeah! But probably not right away.

I hope you enjoyed it, it was a hell of a ride. Again massive thanks to Mike for being such a champion. Special thanks also need to go to Amy, Lachlan and Richie who are the Toehider live band. Those guys have done a great job at taking the craziness of Mike's music and making it happen on the stage.

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12 things about the 12 EPs in 12 months.

Posted by Michael at 12:32 on April 13th, 2010.

It would be stupid and lame for me to claim that everything this past year is golden and awesome, but what I will say at least, is that everything felt right at the time. Have you ever said something you regretted? haha, nah me neither.

12 facts about 12 EPs in 12 months -

The "12 EPs in 12 months" occupies 67.4 GB of my hard drive. Which I guess is roughly 1 GB per song.
The website stats tell me that 'popularity' peaked around November/December, when Australian Idol host Andrew Gunsberg started tweeting about it. That dude is seriously the most badass guy on Australian television.
My favourite song is probably still "I Must Say Yes" or "Under the Mistletoe". My least favourite is "Give Myself to Science". That song is a load of rubbish, that's the only time when I didn't feel right about releasing a song.
I still have loads of song ideas laying around, but most of them probably aren't worth persuing.
Shortest song is 'Jem and the Holograms' at 0:42, the longest, obviously "Done and Dusted" at 18:59.
The honest truth is that I was going to give the Christmas album away for free anyway, but as it turned out I was sick as a dog, at one point losing my voice completely, and I didn't have it done by the 12th. This fact bums me out like you wouldn't believe, and acted like an arsehole on the night of the Espy gig (which was on the 12th of December). I'd like to apologise to Lachlan, Amy and Ricky, and all those that were in attendance for being such a diva that night.
Excluding the drums for "Old, Old, Old" and 'Done and Dusted", the guitars for "Not Much of a Man" and Lachlan's solos for "...But Mostly Metal" and "Done and Dusted", the whole thing was recorded in this mess -

the "studio".
I electronically tuned my voice to save time on a few occasions. Yeah, I know, I know. Specifically, those songs were - one note of "Now Fly Away", "So Goddamn Alive" (which I wanted that T-Pain effect anyway), the first verse of "I Kill Me", "I Don't Really Know You That Well Yet", and a small portion of "Malcolm, Dust 'em".
My favourite of Salty's artwork are "Metaltarsus" and "9". My least favourite is probably "In All Honesty". My favourite of the comic pieces are the "Toemaster 5000" and "Tonan the Barbarian", my least favourite is the comic from "Do You Believe in Monsters?"
The track "..." was used in a short film called "OMG!". The track "Cadenza" was used in a film called "Kerberos".
I haven't yet reached my "hundred vocal overdubs!" goal. I will. Someday.
I usually have to get Lachlan to re-teach me my songs for when we play them live, I have a terrible memory for this stuff.

Ok gold star if you could actually be bothered to read all that haha.

3 comments

DONE AND DUSTED!

Posted by Michael at 14:14 on April 12th, 2010.

So that's it then.

The last EP is actually just one long song, and because I'm an annoying bastard, I decided not to break it up into little sections. So, at this time, it's not available for streaming on the site. Actually that was another reason, if I were to break it up, you'd have the tiny pauses when the next track would start buffering, and I HATE that.

So if you want to hear it, I guess you'll either have to buy it, or email me (toehider at toehider dot com) and sweet talk me into sending it to you.

Originally I wanted the last album to have as many musicians on it as possible, but the idea was simply undoable. I write the stuff as I'm recording it, it's extremely tough to write parts, record demos, send it to another musician, have them learn it, schedule a time for them to record their part, etc. I usually write and record in the night time, and everybody has different schedules.... and plus I have TERRIBLE organisational skills. To get it all done in a month was simply impossible.

But, I did manage to get a few amazingly talented people on here, in no particular order;

Amy Campbell (bass)
Lachlan Barclay (impossible guitar)
Talia Browne (percussion)
Pete Marin (drums)

So thanks to everyone for listening! I'd also like to give MAJOR thanks to Andrew Saltmarsh for his amazing art, motivation, and putting up with me changing my mind every 5 minutes!

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Slack-a-rooni

Posted by Salty at 00:18 on March 10th, 2010.

So it's pretty obvious that I haven't blogged here in AGES! This isn't because I've had nothing to blog about, it's purely that I'm so horribly disorganised that I usually do most of the art for these EPs at the last minute.

I'd LOOOVE to be able to post works in progress of covers and all that, but generally that all happens within the final 48 hours of the release and there simply isn't time.

So perhaps I need something different to blog about here...or maybe I can use this space to post random other bits of Toehider art that I do.

That sounds like it could be a plan. From now on any odds and ends that I draw or create that is at all related to Toehider, be it for future things, random shit I do just for my own enjoyment or things with an immediate purpose, I'll post it here.

As long as Mike says it's ok.

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#9

Posted by Michael at 09:19 on January 12th, 2010.

Thanks for listening.

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Dear Santa....

Posted by Michael at 20:47 on December 23rd, 2009.

(Concerning a child that starts to doubt that Santa Claus is real.)

Dear Santa,

All I want this year is to be sure once and for all, I really need for you to tell me what's your deal?
I've heard some of the older ones, they laugh about you, saying you're not real...
Now I'm much too old for fairy tales and magic lands and other nonsense that I used to read of in my youth
Dear Santa, All I want for Christmas is the truth!

They say you're imaginary
Have I no reason to believe.
The old ones at school?

How can I believe what I've been told?
I'm no longer 4 years old
And I'm not a fool
How can I believe in you?

Dear Santa,

You mean to tell me that these past 8 years are nothing but an elaborate fabricated lie?
How come when I was 6 I swear I saw you wave and blaze across the sky?
And then last Christmas Eve, I'm sure I saw your wooly sleeve and heard the ringing of your bells all down the hall
I'm scared that if I don't believe, then you won't come at all...

Some is for, and some against.
These books aren't making any sense
They just fill this shelf.

And this, my mother said to me
"Is He real or fantasy?
Decide for yourself.
He's true if you think that he's true"
Then I'll still believe in you.