Albums of Influence - Animal Nation's "Basti Made Me Do It"

Our latest recording "Basti Made Me Do It!" is probably my favourite Animal Nation album to listen to. It doesn't necessarily contain our best material, (although the songs did turn out very nice,) but it was more so the process of creating the songs that makes them seem so special to me.

Last summer our good German friend, Sebastian Hochstein, traveled out to Canada and spent nearly three weeks with us in our home, just a couple hours North of Vancouver.

Sebastian brought with him a CD that had over 30 completed beats that he wanted us to turn in to an EP by the time he left. We ended up making 3 brand new songs, and re-working 3 songs that Mike and I had previously tried to record during our 'Understanding...' sessions.

It was so much fun working with Basti. We clicked. We'd hung out before (Mike and I traveled to Germany a few years ago to do a couple shows out there, and to meet up with people we'd worked on our TimeZone album with), but this was the first time Basti and I got to work together behind the boards.

Back in Canada Sebastian was more than willing to spend countless hours behind mixing boards, tweaking tracks, playing with fx, recording and re-recording vocals in really unorthodox ways, and trying out all sorts of new things that occasionally worked in our favour.
We must have spent a solid 9 hours over 2 days just working on the bridge for 'Reason'. It didn't work out the first 8 times we tried recording it, but what I loved about working with Sebastian was that we would try it over and over until it did work. Not until it was 'good enough', because for the most part 'good enough' is the same thing as giving up. We'd try it again and again until our house had mics in the bathroom and the kitchen, wires covering all our windows and exits, and I was screaming through a cardboard tube. All in an effort to get something that we loved, rather than something we deemed 'good enough'.

I learned more about production in those 3 weeks than I had in the previous 3 years.

Thank you Sebastian.
I can't wait to head over to Germany to start work on our next project with you.

Check out one of the tracks "Pillow Talk" below.
It's a song about what it's like to be a pillow.
Or, steam the whole album at CBC Radio 3 here.

Then head over to iTunes, or CamoBear Records to purchase this little ditty. It's the only album we haven't given away for free. It's just that good.

Oh! ps - The incredibly talented and beautiful Paige Harley did the art work for the album. Read her interview with us here, then email her at floating.down [at] hotmail.com to hire her for your next project.
She's amazing.

Sebastian Hochstein and The Pillow.

Sebastian Hochstein is our friend from Germany. Sebastian Hochstein is part of the production group Nic & Jaq. Sebastian Hochstein is also very good for Animal Nation's motivation as will soon be revealed in the 5 track EP we've been working on during the last two weeks he's been hanging around in Canada!
We also went to the Aquarium yesterday!!!
Rock.

Here's a song called "The Pillow", which, surprisingly, is a song about a pillow, and will be featured on our new, as of yet untitled, EP.
(If you have any name suggestions send 'em in!)
So far we've got:
"Basti Made Me Do It"
"The Thirsty Boys"
"General Electric Brand Dishwasher Detergent Doesn't Really Do It For Me Like It Used To"




Steige: Between the cigarette burns and the red wine stains, our couch cushions have definitely seen better days. Do you prefer sleeping on the side covered in burn holes, or the side that’s permanently red-wined?

Basti: You guys should know you made me sleep on the ground right next to your washing mashine...so don’t bother me with those couch questions. I need to see my chiropracter.

S: If you died tomorrow, and believed in re-incarnation today, and were brought back to life as a cushion, which type of cushion or pillow would you be, and why? (ie-throw pillow, couch cushion, fancy decorative pillow, sleeping pillow, etc.)

B: Doesn’t really matter as long as Tyler West wouldn’t have his girl done on me!

S: Tell me about your worst couch surfing adventure? Was it because of the shoddy quality of the pillows?

B: It was that night that Reid had (way) too many wildcats and died on the sofa next to me...

Triple dolphin jump. No big deal...

S: Would you rather your sleeping pillows be gangster pillows or emo pillows? Do you prefer them hard or soft?

B: I prefer them soft, so i think it needs to be an emo pillow, eh?

S: Since you’re a vegitarian, would you prefer if I didn’t call it a cow-ch? Should I instead maybe call it a ‘squash’, or a ‘zuchini...ch’?

B: Call it falafel...ch, dude.

S: You’ve spent the last 2 weeks sleeping on the floor next to our couch. This, right now, is the first time that I’ve told you that our couch folds out into a bed. How does this make you feel?

B: See question 1), bastard!


If you enjoyed this, make sure to stay tuned for our collaboration EP between Animal Nation and Sebastian Hochstein (Nic & Jaq) coming out in a week or two! Also, make sure to check out our Interview with Nic & Jaq!!