The view from the cabin.

We’re wrapping up our weekend composing retreat up at Mt. Index, WA right now. We got 5 songs in the bag ready to rehearse, and 4 more in the pipeline. To quote Vincent LaBelle, “BOOM!”

Today, Jared and I were working on one of the 4 songs in the pipeline, and we took the approach of writing a pop song with the intent to twist it later:

Guitar solo excerpt, “What Have I Done?”

A long time ago Operation ID ordered a free car magnet that said:

Operation ID

Sex is better when it’s an avant-garde improvisation

24hr hour advice hotline: [jared's phone number here]

Rob put the car magnet on his car every time we played a show. Over the last two years two people have called and left messages. One of those messages is now the intro to this new song with the working title of “What the hell this is?” Below is a sample of the intro followed by the first forty seconds of the piece. As usual, comments/feedback is most welcomed and appreciated. Also take note that David has requested to have “as many ridiculous bass fills as possible” in our upcoming set of music. We want David to be happy.

Sample #2:

What the hell this is?

We haven’t performed since the Earshot Jazz Festival show at the SAM, and we are now deep into composing a full set of new material. In order to stay connected to the outside world we are going to start posting short samples of the music we are working on. Comments, feedback, criticism, or any type of communication regarding what you hear is most welcome and appreciated. Check back for more samples over the next couple of months. We are planning on debuting these songs and performing regularly again starting in April.

Sample #1:

Living In The Wilderness sample

Times are changing! Rob Hanlon has recently decided to move to LA. This Saturday’s show will be our last performance with him, which happens to be the two year anniversary of Rob’s very first show with us at Kais Bistro for the University Jazz Walk. Not to mention that it’s also going to be Ivan’s birthday. This will officially be our last show for many months and the last time that we perform any of our current repertoire, maybe forever. Whoa… it’s going to be fun.

Details

• Table & Chairs: Operation ID
• Date: Saturday, November 5th 2011
• Time: 8:00pm
• City: Operation ID in Seattle, WA
• Venue: Seattle Art Museum
• Country: United States
• Notes: With Burn List, for the Earshot Jazz Festival
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

Our show at the fantastic Totally Intense Mindgaze Hut in Oakland, CA is at the moment….canceled. We’re super sad that we no longer get the opportunity to play with Dominique Leone. (You all need to listen to his albums…. holy $&!#)

But!  We’ve got a few things in the works for that same day, so it might be back on. Stay tuned for updates. Hopefully we’ll still play the Hut with a different totally killer band!

See you soon!  :)

Photo by Hamilton Boyce

What a show! Prawnyxx and Religious Girls were brutally awesome, and definitely elevated the energy of the entire show up several notches. Rob remarked afterwards that he came out of our set feeling like he “may have temporarily died or gone crazy or something.” That’s a good thing, right?

Thank you so much to everyone new and familiar who came out, especially since it was a Sunday night. We were totally digging the crowd energy!

We’re pretty damn excited to be headlining this show.

We’ve got Prawnyxx.
We’ve got Religious Girls.
We’ve got a Facebook event.
We’ve got a Reddit post.

And most importantly, we’ve got you. See you on Sunday!

Details

• Table & Chairs: Operation ID
• Date: Sunday, August 21st 2011
• Time: 9:00pm
• City: Operation ID in Seattle, WA
• Venue: Tractor Tavern
• Address: 5213 Ballard Ave NW
• Venue phone: 206-789-3599
• Country: United States
• Admission: $8
• Age restrictions: No Minors
• Notes: With Religious Girls and Prawnyxx.
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

Here at Operation ID, we like to stay focused and keep pushing ourselves further and further. However, the Internet is hella distracting; sites like Reddit, Facebook, and Hacker News, while fun and (sometimes ) informative, can cause you to squander away preciously productive/productively precious hours. It’s way too easy to check Facebook every 5 minutes, distracting you from real work you need to get done. Here’s a pragmatic, 5-minute guide to blocking yourself from distracting websites.

Enter SelfControl

SelfControl is a lightweight app for Mac OS X that will allow you to block yourself from any website for a certain length of time.

From the author’s site:

“Is email a distraction? SelfControl is an OS X application which blocks access to incoming and/or outgoing mail servers and websites for a predetermined period of time. For example, you could block access to your email, facebook, and twitter for 90 minutes, but still have access to the rest of the web. Once started, it can not be undone by the application, by deleting the application, or by restarting the computer – you must wait for the timer to run out.”

Without any doubt, this app has saved David and Rob’s productivity from spiraling into a black hole of no return.

Get set up in 3 minutes

Step 1: Download it: http://github.com/downloads/slambert/selfcontrol/SelfControl-1.3.zip
Step 2: Double click the “SelfControl-1.3.zip” file in your Downloads folder, and drag the SelfControl icon to your Applications folder.
Step 3: Open SelfControl.
Step 4: Click “Edit Blacklist,” add any sites to the blacklist that distract you from work.

Step 5: Set the timer for 30 minutes, click Start.
Step 6: Try to navigate to any of the sites you blocked.

While the timer is in effect, nothing, not even rebooting your computer, will get rid of the block. Kick-ass!

Super-awesome bonus step!

After blocking yourself, you’ll become acutely aware of just how much you try to distract yourself. Want to punish yourself even further? Rob wrote a quick script to make fun of yourself every time you try to visit a blocked site.

It’s real easy to install:

Step 1: Enable Web Sharing. Open System Preferences, click Sharing, and enable Web Sharing:

Step 2: Go to Applications and open Terminal.

Paste these commands in and press Enter:

cd /Library/WebServer/Documents
sudo rm -f index.html
sudo curl -O https://raw.github.com/ohwillie/lack_of_self_control/master/index.html

You’re done!

Let me start by giving Religious Girls some screen real estate. They’re touring, and this is their tour poster. They’re from Oakland, California, which is like 800 miles away from Seattle.

We’re playing with Religious Girls at the Tractor Tavern on August 21st.

These dudes make music that’s crazy and loud and pretty and melodic and complex and they’re a lot like us except not at all because we’re a bunch of jazz nerds and they may or may not be I don’t know I haven’t really had a long, drawn-out conversation with the fine gentlemen but I hope to one day very soon perhaps after the show that I mentioned in the previous one-sentence paragraph and by the way did I mention that they have one of the most ridiculous Facebook news feeds ever? https://www.facebook.com/pages/Religious-Girls/299610227575

Also, Religious Girls has an album. You should listen to and buy it: http://religiousgirls.bandcamp.com/

Here is a press quote about Religious Girls from a website that writes about bands and stuff:

“Their dreamy synths, impossible rhythms, and deceptive name inspired us to flood the room with fog and bathe them in pink and purple. We caught up with them later at their practice space to talk money, moms, and well, girls.”

The quote is from this website: http://richmondconfidential.org/2011/03/08/bandwidth-oakland%E2%80%99s-religious-girls-shred-their-gospel/

One time a long time ago when Operation ID was still “the outest jazz band” and we were still “avant-garde dance-rock” (remember we’re “bionic synth-pop” now or something), we played a superbly radtacular show with Religious Girls at the Black Lodge and Ravenna Woods was there too and so was Heatwarmer. Everyone slayed that night and everyone was happy and I hope you were happy then and I hope you’re happy now too, everyone deserves to be happy I think.

This shit is so metal look they’re playing in a tunnel

Oh and here’s a picture of them

Come hear Religious Girls play with us (and Prawnyxx!!!) at the Tractor on August 21st like I said it’s going to be really fun It’s going to be amazing because Religious Girls is amazing!