Summer Tour Wrap Up (See You In Febuary!)

Bless your heart.


Thank you so very much to everyone that got stoked on our tour with us.
We had so so so so so much fun nearly everywhere that we went. We did shots until we couldn't move, and then we did shots until we were sober, and then we did more shots just because it gives you a reason to shout things incoherently. We managed to talk our way out of 3 arrestings, 6 parking tickets, 1 slow speed chase, and multiple other po-po run-ins. We fell down stair cases, and fell off of stages, and fell for girls that we knew we'd never see again, and we still managed to make it home in (mostly) one piece.

Thank you so much if you partook in any of our shennanigans. They were way too much fun, and we can't wait to come back in 4 months and do it all over again.


If you didn't get a chance to listen to our music live or fling your bra/panties at us (I'm looking at you, gentlemen), make sure to head out to your local record store TODAY and pick up our latest LP "Understanding More About Nothing Than Anybody Ever Thought Impossible" on vinyl. The vinyl edition is only a couple bucks more than the CD edition, and comes with an amazing 12"x12" Taka Sudo wall piece, a 12 page Animal Nation comic-book-style album insert by Sponge-Bob -Square-Pants write Kent Osborne, and a free mp3 download of the album, so that you can LEARN ALL THE WORDS, and come join us on our next tour in Febuary/March!

We made sure to get records in the following shops.. If your favourite record shop isn't on the list, let them know that they NEED TO STOCK ANIMAL NATION, and then let us know, and we'll send them a couple albums! Rock!


Toronto: Sonic Boom on Bathhurst & Bloor

Montreal: Encore Records on Sherbrook & Oxford

Saskatoon: Vinyl Exchange on 2nd Ave & 22nd
Vinyl Diner on Broadway & 12th
Momentum Skate Shop on 8th & McCool

Edmonton: Sound Connection on 124th St. & 109 Ave.
FreeCloud on 101 St. & 108th Ave.

Calgary: The Heritage Record & Comic Shop on 11th Ave. SW & 14th St. SW

Nelson: Urban Legends on Baker & Ward St.

Vancouver: Red Cat Records on Main St. & 27th Ave.
Zulu Records on 4th Ave. & Maple
Beat Street on Hastings & Richards

Whistler: Foto Source in Whistler Village Square

And, of course, there's always iTunes - http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/animal-nation/id192463240


We're planning a small scale tour in Febuary / March for Western Canada. If you live in or around BC / Alberta / Washington, get yourself stoked, get your friends stoked, get your dog stoked, and get to partying right now!
You're gonna need to build up that tolerance if you're wanting to party in Animal Nation.


-Tall Man
Animal Nation.




Links:

Myspace: myspace.com/animalnation
YouTube: youtube.com/animalnation9000
Twitter: twitter.com/animalnation
Bandcamp: animalnation.bandcamp.com
Basti iTunes: itunes.apple.com/us/album/basti-made-me-do-it-ep/id367497037
Animal Nation Doesn’t Know Anything Blog: http://animalnationdoesntknowanything.blogspot.com/

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.

New EP on CamoBear Records! OUT TODAY!

Basti Made Me Do It! is the follow-up [EP] to the recently-released, full length LP, "Understanding More About Nothing Than Anybody Ever Thought Impossible". While half the songs for "Basti..." were written during the making of "Understanding...", the other half were conceived during Sebastian "Basti" Hochstein's three week trip to Canada.

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Head over to CamoBear records NOW to check it out!

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Thinking Basti would want to check out the offerings of Beautiful British Columbia, the two members of Animal Nation prepared for a week of hikes, bikes, and sights, and wound up spending the majority of the trip writing tracks to satisfy Basti's never-ending lust for new and exciting music, as suggested by the opening track, "Hey Mr. Basti!" - "...and we thought that when he got here he'd want to see the sights, but the only thing he wanted to see was us write.” Although the intro track is more of a set-up track to detail the rest of the album, it's far from filler, and contains some of the best back-and-forth rhyme-schemes that Animal Nation has produced to date.

The third track, "Reason", was the first track recorded for the "Understanding..." album, but never managed to get the attention it deserved. With Basti helming the wheel Animal Nation not only managed to complete this track, but also managed to make this ethereal sounding song one of the best on the album.

On “I Think I've Been Here Before (In Another Pair of Shoes)”, Animal Nation asks “What's in a path, but a past way to live?” This theme presents itself throughout the album as Animal Nation tries out more new production techniques in these 6 songs than they have in their last 3 albums combined.

Basti acts as the motivation behind this EP as stated in the intro track, “Basti made me do it, and we’re really glad he did.”

The amazing art work was also done by the wonderful, and talented, and wonderfully talented Paige Harley.

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Head over to CamoBear Records now to check it out!