A Picture of Nao

I ran across this unexpectedly on the web today! A Finnish painter named Heikki Peltola did a portrait of Nao from her Seagull days. Check it out!!

Peace Demo Download

Here is a downloadable version of our 2007 Peace Demo CDR. The Last Ray & Rocketship Run were recorded at Peace Music Studio with Engineer Souichiro Nakamura (Guitar Wolf, Boris, Yura Yura Teikoku...) and Producer You Ishihara (White Heaven, The Stars...). Twilight In the Pyramid House was recorded in the summer of 2006 with Steve Revitte in Brooklyn, NY. Running At Night was self recorded in our rehearsal studio. Hard copies (CDRs) of are available from i.d. fixe distro.

download Peace Demo

A New Line

About a year ago, a good friend and I were chating online from opposite sides of Tokyo, and he hit me with an interesting challenge....
Make a collaborative song, by sending tracks back and forth online, within a one hour time span. Here's what we produced. "A New Line".

download

Credits > M. Sorvari- Vo, Lead Gtr, Theramin, Contact Mic
D. Gatchell- Drms, Rhy Gtr

Hard Puncher

A few weeks ago, Nao's Gibson Explorer went kaput in the first 20 min of our 3 hour practice. We opened it up and dug around, and found a wire that had come loose. Didn't have our souldering gear with us, so we borrowed the rehearsal studio's bass. It was a Tokai Hard Puncher (which is their copy version of a Fender Precission Bass). Ran through our set, and when we finished, we were all mystified by how smooth and solid all our songs had suddenly become. Just felt easier to play all around. Thus being said, Nao took a sudden interest into the Tokai bass.
Since they are made here in Japan, and relatively cheap, we thought we could get one in no time.
So, we set out searching- online, and at all the local music shops......but no go....With a show creeping up around the corner, time was running out, so I decided to take a shot in the dark, and called up the rehearsal studio. I knew that the bass in question was the studio manager's bass, and told him how we were searching all over town for one. I asked him if he would be interested in a trade.....a Fender Jazz bass (Nao had lying around for 10+ years) for the Hard Puncher. He agreed to take a look, and we brought it in the next day. His eyes lit up when he saw the Jazz bass....and after checking it out, agreed to the trade.So, here is a pic of the new axe.....Hard Puncher!
Btw....through all of this, I found out that Nao's long running bread and butter bass, the Gibson Explorer, was originally a piezzo bass (a bass without pickups, but rather contact mics on the bridge). Nao had installed regular pickups soon after she bought it, so i never knew about this. I am a BIG fan of contact mics (have been building and experimenting with them for several years now), but had never seen a bass with piezzos built into the bridge!
So, now I am curious to know if the big difference in the sounds between the Tokai and the Explorer was due to the fact that the Explorer was this different type of bass to begin with.Just goes to show.....u learn something new everyday.....