three long years

it's been a roller coaster of emotions the last three years. three years ago today, we put out our first EP, played our first show in nate's basement (thank you study room!), did our first south ontario run. we've made memories that i would never, ever take for granted, and fought through three eviction notices and some of the harshest winters and worst times of our lives together.

look at how young we were. crazy (photo by mg ommert)

i've never been in a band that people genuinely gave a shit about. more often than not, i've always been an outsider, never a participant. i've been going to shows since i was a kid, at masonic lodge, the green house, lee's, wherever there was a basement and a couple punks. but i never felt like i could make music that people would care about, and i'm so happy to be proven wrong, again and again.

us on route to kitchener. we were so late

i don't think any of us expected to still be doing this three years later. sure, we would've all still played in bands, saw each other at shows, mossed around afterwards, go to the same parties and lived in the same city. but i think as soon as we put out it's more like embracing, a scrappy demo EP that we recorded in the basement of houndstooth, we all realized there was something special.

the chemistry between faith, kai and i was so instantaneous. serendipitously meeting at a north york house party, kai and i just started talking about the good ol' days of the 905. faith and i knew each other from fortnite and locking ourselves in our rooms when COVID first hit. we had a handful of songs that we knew would make a pretty cool demo that we, i think, expected to be immediately forgotten. 

anniversary silkscreen print by kai.

as an artist, you can never, ever, take for granted that you have any audience whatsoever. in the fucking blender of ai slop and social media algorithms ramming your brain at full force with a new midwest emo pop punk song of the summer, we had to fight back against any urge to take a part of that circus to try to steal people's attention for one iota of a second. but people started paying attention to the scrappy band that tried to play as many shows as possible in a year, travelling off of my severance pay and more often than not showing up egregiously late, kai holding a stack of flyers and all of us apologetic about the way that we are as people.

the scene started swelling at the same time we were picking up steam. people were itching for the next few new friends shows, lots more screamo bands were starting in the city. turnout to bar orwell started to hit capacity on the regular. toronto's not the centre of the universe, but it sure feels like it when you're in the middle of a crowd, your friends all around you pulling the mic and yelling all the same words. i wouldn't give up the 416 for the world.

 

when the punks are in the late twenties / early thirties (photo by matty gagui)

so here we are, three years later, older, down two cars that we broke and several thousand dollars, living the dream. we put out a couple more things, our good buddy jazz joined and we're still hanging on by a thread. and i wouldn't have it any other way.

as always. 

death to capitalism

death to imperialism

death to all who oppose us

love,

toast

misc tabs

hey it's toast

here are the tabs for some of our songs:

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/slevcy30tl4l0/boxxy_tabs

goodbye divorcemobile

rest in peace to a real one.

thanks zuppy for this photo

i bought this car right when i moved to toronto. it's been kind of symbolic of the time i've spent here and all the shows i've played, all the rallies i've brought flags and PAs to, all of the late night drives and trips i've taken. she broke down a couple times and we couldn't get her up in shape again for summer tours.

may her memory be a blessing divorcemobile 2021–2023 (forever and ever in our hearts)

- toast

some updates (mini toast poast)

mini updates:

- we hit 1k streams on two of our songs :)

- we just got 1,000 download credits on bandcamp so u can keep downloading it for free there or here (or just, idk, dm us, we'll send you the files)

- we all got covid but we all got better before the hamilton gig

see you soon :)

toast

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.

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