april 28th @ the arcade.

we've been so caught up with shows, recording plans & the NFF announcement that we haven't even announced next month's gig yet: we'll be playing with please don't crash & growing fins (again ^_^) @ the arcade next month to support swimming!

flyer by ryan ulc.

after having to cancel the bulk of their tour last year mid-run due to a freak injury, they'll finally be visiting all the way from st. john's (!!!), so come out and give them some love.

flyer by kai.

until then, our next gig is still with massa nera in hamilton in a couple of weeks! here's an alternate flyer that kai made as per usual.

although we're still riding high on (mostly) wrapping up our recording session, ryan's come down with COVID, so we're all stuck at home for at least a few days while we run tests—thankfully, all of us appear to be negative so far (edit: looks like we spoke too soon). this isn't the first time that we've run into COVID while recording, so here's hoping we can buck that trend the next time around. be safe & take care of yourselves out there: this pandemic is still raging on, despite what our governments want us to believe.

love,

boxxy

toast's poasts pt. 2

it's not really a secret but we've been writing and recording new stuff for unannounced projects this summer. we just finished recording the bulk of the instrumentals today so i'm feelin a lil amped up on energy, but damn, practicing twice (and kai and i having other band practices in between/around), playing a show (which was sold out btw! insane!!!) and then jumping immediately into recording has been, uh, a lil rough on the vocals and hands and body in general. it's also great to talk shop and just chill in general in the studio—i think it was funny talking to please don't crash and treehouse of horror and having them be surprised at how dumb my guitar setup is. kinda taking the "you play in standard? with action that high?" as a badge of honour to be honest. we also showed up late to recording and made soup and kai caused a small kitchen fire. it's becoming a running theme for some reason that we're showing up late because of something absolutely stupid happening.

since i started playing in boxxy i've been more and more deliberate about my playing and the way that i approach guitar. after watching bocchi the rock i really resonated with the whole "i don't know other people so i am going to go insane in my bedroom and record a lot of music and practice a lot" theme a little too much, which has informed the ways that i approach guitar work and music in general. it's nice to play in a band and be able to depend on people (both musically and like, in general). a lot of the harmonic and melodic sensibilities i have come from trying to play as much as possible in a solo setting, which means octave, delay and loop pedals, big jazz-adjacent chords with huge extensions, counterpoint bits, etc. playing in this band it's just nice to be able to rip a fun lead part or go wide or play tight. lots of different philosophies has been a really nice change of pace in general? 

i've also become a gearhead in very new ways. i started playing high action flatwound strings because i was taking jazz guitar lessons from my buddy sean (who plays in velvet beach). he really instilled in me lots of little lessons about being very intentional about playing with good tone, ergonomics, discipline in picking and lots of little stuff like that. i've really been exploring different tones between my jazzmaster and my telecaster, finding little nuances or dialing in exactly what i like or don't like about them. when playing live i swear by the jazzmaster bridge pickup to get a nice fat treble boost which sounds amazing overdriven til it's fuzzy, but my telecaster (which is a squier with two humbuckers) has been great to record with to thicken the sound a lot. it's nice to train my ears to be more discerning.

i think if you have a distortion pedal, any shitty amp and a laptop speaker, you could probably record punk music, but i'm gonna do a mic/amp rundown for guitars on our recording.

the demo was sloppy, but we recorded the whole thing in houndstooth's basement on my j. mascis jazzmaster through an orange or15 through an orange 2x12 cab. we mic'ed the whole thing with an sm57 and an e609 on the cab and an sm57 as a room mic. that room was warm as hell, and also the amps started leaking mystery fluid. all of that was recorded to tape, bounced to digital, mixed, bounced to tape then ripped to digital as the final streaming version. we stand by the tape as the best quality recording of the demo, actually. analog has a lot of charm, and recording to tape means that you can't walk back your mistakes—you just do your takes again. it feels warm and grimy in a beautiful way.

for the new stuff we're recording, the off-the-floor takes were all done on my jazzmaster through a fender twin reverb mic'ed with an e906 and akg414 (thanks long & mcquade) in a separate room and then layered on top with either guitar. i used the telecaster to record the more pretty parts using the neck pickup mostly. if a take needed a little grit and a little of that natural guitar resonance, i'd record the parts inside the amp room and hope the feedback sounded good. it's been fun recording and having something properly engineered through good amps. 

anyway. i'm exhausted, i'll catch you all next time.

new friends fest.

IT'S HAPPENING!

flyer by cris crude.

boxxy will be opening up new friends fest this august @ lithuanian house!!! see y'all there!!!

april 9th @ the killroom.

some sad news: for reasons out of their control (fuck borders), the holy ghost tabernacle choir are unable to make it into canada next month, which means no more toronto date for us to play on april 11th. :~(

however, we have some amazing news to make up for it: we're playing with the almighty MASSA NERA in hamilton on april 9th instead!!!

flyer by nate.

we'll be accompanied by cease (members of stay down), neck, and this place is actually the worst (featuring aeryn from massa nera) @ the killroom (ask a punk, but maybe not us, since we don't know where it is yet either). this show will cap off their 3-day run in ontario following shows in kitchener and toronto (not to mention a montréal date in a little over a week), so you have plenty of opportunities to catch the best band in screamo as they pass through the province. to say we're stoked is an understatement!

flyer by kai.

flyer by kai.

in the meantime, our show at bar orwell later this month is creeping up quick! here's a flyer kai made in a couple of colourways. this will likely be the last time growing fins plays for a while as they (allegedly) gear up for recording, so definitely don't miss this if you can manage it!

lastly: we'll also be recording later this month for a top-secret project involving a bunch of friends... more will be revealed in due time. see y'all soon! <3

love,

boxxy

live videos.

matt from terry green uploaded some sweet footage of us from the last couple of months shot on a vhs camcorder! here's us at handlebar this past november:

and here's our baby g set from january:

thanks matt!

toast's poasts (pt. 1?)

hey it's toast.

thought i would poast stuff with mini-updates on a semi-regular basis between shows and releases and stuff.

we have a couple of things we're working on, so keep your eyes out for new material this summer 👀👀👀 we've taken a little break to work on other projects - kai's been playing a lot of shows with Influx and Spirit Desire, faith's been doin DJ Feral Catgirl shit with Dollhouse (got the blogTO cosign let's fuckin gooo) and i've been focusing on my organizing work with Canada Philippines Solidarity Organization and maybe a new band? we'll see.

i've been also getting back into playing and arranging solo guitar jazz standards. playing in a 3 piece spoiled me a little bit but listening to how bill evans, chet baker, miles davis take a song and make it incredibly singable and beautiful while technically challenging makes me look at my own guitar playing a lot. other than jazz i've been listening to a lot of Kidcrash, Fall of Troy, Title Fight. post-hxc riffs push me pretty hard and i always found screamo to be about pretty chords played through distortion with screaming and aggressive rhythms over it. 

i got sick for two weeks and just sat in bed watching JHS pedals. my setup is pretty regular - EQD Westwood Translucent overdrive, EDQ Afterneath reverb, Behringer VD40 delay, TC Electronic Dark Matter distortion, Mooer Tender octaver (replaced my stolen Micro POG and tbh fits better and plays nicer). thinking about adding on a fuzz to get a little bit more oomph and grit to the leads and then also a Walrus ARP-87. also playing around with some designs for a class D amp pedal that has some weird controls (hey, what happens when your clock rate slows down a lot? what happens if i bleed the sample and hold or fuck with the integrator circuit?) 

finished reading Nevada, which was the Progenitor of the cynical trans woman literary voice. also been reading about the Chinese revolution and the handbook on constructive criticism. 

anyway that's all i got.

much love,

toast