The 6-song CD, The World Is a Glorious Biomechanical Nightmare, is finished and will be packaged and printed before the summer is out. Pre-ordering helps a band finance the physical production of the disc, and speeds up the process of getting them produced.

The CD sells for $5.00, but we need to cover shipping and packaging (we need to buy a bunch of CD mailers), as well as covering PayPal's back end, so the flat price for the Pre-Order is $6.50. That gets the disc on your doorstep as fast as the postmaster general gets the CDs to us.

$6.50

ubik.s playing the Benefit Show for Metal in Iraq this saturday, which is a benefit show for Acrassicaudi (the band that is the subject of the documentary Heavy Metal in Baghdad, which played at SIFF this year).

July 5th
ubik. @ the Rendezvous
w/ The Keeper
& Shogun
$5 / 10:00PM

The Rendezvous is one of our favorite places to play, and we'll have our video backdrop rolling for the set (the Rendezvous is fantastic for video).

so... ubik. had a great time at the autonomous mutant festival, but we don't have any pics of the shows. I know, I know, if we wanted photos, we should have made arrangements, but if anyone has any ubik. at mutantfest pictures, please send them to us.

We're at ubikband@gmail.com

ubik. partook in the Autonomous Mutant Festival (or AMF) last weekend, and man, what a weekend. We pulled in on Friday just in time to catch (A)symetric Warfar(e) start their show at Wondercamp at sundown. Then it was Red Rapture, then ubik., then In The Age Of Terminal Static, Wondercamp's hosts. That first night was fraught with difficulties as we tried to work out generator power and basic Show At Camp fundamentals (which we'd never had to deal with before). Michelle's processor hates generators, and we powered her with the electricity from (A)symetric Warfar(e)'s completely kick-ass tour van (a former bread truck).

ubik.s sound is fairly dependent on Michelle's ability to echo and distort... that Digitech vocal processor (the purple people eater) has been tweaked and customized over time to the point where Michelle really plays it like an instrument over several songs-- recording the EP (almost done!) was a crash course on how inimitable that thing is. You can't take a dry vocal and make it sound like Michelle sang it through the Purple People Eater with post-effects-- you have to use the original effected vocals. We can't live without it.

We played pretty much every song we knew that night... we didn't have a setlist, and everything ended with "what should we play next?" We didn't exactly put on a "show," but we played for a long time, to a big crowd, and everyone had a good time. We closed with The Planet's Kerploding!, and since Tyler's toes had frozen, we had to stop.

Saturday night at AMF went more smoothly, after we'd learned about generators, camp setups, and how to get all of this done. Red Rapture, ubik., and then In The Age Of Terminal Static again at Wondercamp-- (A)symetric Warfar(e) played over at Unicorn Camp that night, to one of the best mosh pits I've seen in years. ubik.s set leaned towards the mellow and the trippy, simply because Michelle's scream seems to scare off some of the more chemically enhanced campers. Of course, we still played Seven Feet Under, and we closed with No Such Thing As an Open-Ended Equation, but it was the kind of night where we brought out Silence, which isn't on our setlist too often.

The voyage was... eventful. After testing the ubik.van (now possibly named Rita, Edith, or Bruno) past Portland, plus another hundred-plus miles on Route 26, we learned that we do, thankfully, have a spare tire in there somewhere, but no jack. ubik.van was also carrying Andre, of Red Rapture, and Andre and Joel worked out a frightening-looking contraption out of a rock, a piece of lumber, and two borrowed jacks... and the wobbly, oversized spare tire happened. After limping to Madras for nearly an hour on a temporary spare (emblazoned with "do not exceed 55mph"-- I don't think we exceeded 45, due to wobble), we did learn that Les Schwab is the most awesome franchise in the country-- those guys had us rolling again in less time than it took to buy camp groceries.

We also had an odd issue where the van lost power and needed a jump. A nice woman attempted to pray over the engine (lord, please let this car start), but, for some reason, that didn't help. Jumper cables did, though. I think our van is more into Science than jesus, but, hey, whatever floats your boat. They were going to look us up on MySpace, and we don't want to seem ungrateful (we really needed that jump), but I can't imagine them digging a song like External Retraction... which is fairly overt in its anti-religious message. (unlike Glitch. I had to have that one explained to me.)

Regardless, we made it, there and back again. Andre maintains that the four of us actually manage to be more odorous than Jeremy (the other half of Red Rapture. If you're not listening to Red Rapture, it's your loss. Seriously)... but that was after a few days of camping. We're all really happy to be back in the land of toilets and showers again. Playing out of state let us meet some Oregoneons, and hopefully have a line on playing Portland sometime soon, which we've always wanted to do.

ubik.s playing in Seattle again in about two weeks, 4th of July weekend, and we're all geared up for the Autonomous Mutant Festival next year, too. We might stay longer and play later. We'll work it out.

ubik. is packed and ready to go-- we're southbound, playing the Autonomous Music Festival down in Oregon this weekend. The festival's already underway, buy we're there and playing on Friday and Saturday... so if you're coming down, we'll see you on the grounds (and we hope you have one of those huge, house-like tents, with a full bar).

If you're not camping, wish us (and our van) luck, and a speedy return.

proof that we are actually doing some mixing and will eventually deliver that EP we've been promising, a new recording of !!!!!! is up and online now.

ubik. never seems to name songs conventionally, but !!!!!! is practically Aphex Twin in its unpronounceability.

Thanks to everyone that came out on a Wednesday: it's not a big show night for most people, and it was good to see so many people come out. It was a really wild line-up, too, with Blicky and Black Noise Cannon. The sonic progression of the night was very cool.

ubik.s set was fraught with technical difficulties... but that sort of thing happens. As far as we can tell, the setlist is cursed. We tried to play it at Jimmy Z's, but it got chopped because of a couple line-up mix-ups and truncated stage times. Last night we attempted to play it again... but, like I said, this setlist is cursed. If Black Noise Cannon didn't loan us a bass amp, we wouldn't have gotten to play at all (we really owe them for that one). Setup difficulties meant we had to chop songs out of the accursed setlist again...

we didn't even know a setlist could be cursed.

This show was flying below radar and just popped up on us: ubik.s playing at The Central this coming Wednesday, Jun 11. Even though it was fairly short notice, we brought in some really good bands and have a solid line-up for the show. So here's the show post:

ubik. @ The Central
w/ Black Noise Cannon
& Blicky
$5 / 9:00 PM

The EP is chugging along and a ton of shows are up and listed for the near future, so we've got a busy couple of weeks ahead of us.

Yay! ubik.van made it to Everett and back without exploding or leaving us stranded, curbside, with an uncarryable amount of gear (this was a watershed event for us). All in all, we had a successful night, though something got fouled up, and our line-up was married with another to create a 6-band bill. Craziness abounded and setlists were cut short, but it turned out to be an excellent show for pretty much everyone. We have to send out super-love to The Keeper for playing the opening set (going on fairly early)... it was a rough spot to fill, but they offered to do it, and helped a lot of people out in the process. And they covered a Tad song.

It was also very, very cool for so many people to make the Seattle-Everett trip to come see us-- that rules, and we love you. We needed some support on our first ever road gig, and it was really encouraging that you came out. Also-- man, we met a lot of new people in Everett. That was a great, positive environment, with lots of new folks hearing us for the first time and really digging the ubik.thing. We love that: it was great to play for all the people who just stopped by Jimmy Z's for their Saturday out not knowing what was going to happen. People were really in rare form for this one.

Some time fairly soon, we will have another gig in Seattle, hopefully before we head south to play Mutant Fest.

Tomorrow is looking like your special day for northbound fun-- face it, you just don't make it up to Everett as much as you should. And if that's not convincing enough for you (why wouldn't it be?), ubik.ll be playing a show up in the Green Room at Jimmy Z's with The Keeper and The Ever Changing sky... which makes the show post look something like this:

ubik. @ Jimmy Z's
w/ The Ever Changing Sky
& The Keeper
1712 Hewitt Ave,
Everett, WA 98201
8:30 / Cost: $7

Remember: ubik.s in the Green Room, so enter the venue at the Green Room door, or you'll end up paying for the bands on the other stage.

thanks to everyone out at the Blue Moon last night-- fun show all around, and we're always pleased when we can include the visuals (thanks to Heidi for loaning us her projector... the shows are always better with the projector running).

We're driving up to Everett next saturday (the 31st) to play The Green Room at Jimmy Z's, and we're driving down to the Autonomous Mutant Festival (in the Cascadia region... better directions are forthcoming) next month, as well as another Monkey Pub gig on the books for July (though ubik. strongly recommends you head down there daily, as the Monkey's just added a kickass white ale to their drafts, more Melvins and Ween to the jukebox, and still has the some of the cheapest PBR and Oly in town.

It's fair to say the mixing is half done for the ubik. EP-- three songs down and moving forward. Music will soon be musicing with the music on CD.

It's another ubik-tastic friday, with everything that goes along with ubiktastic fridayness. We're playing at the Blue Moon, so it's a free show (the Blue Moon never charges at the door), and we're up with Red Rapture and Forefathers, and you're all going out this weekend since spring finally sprang, so you may as well come see a show.

The show post looks like this:

ubik. @ the Blue Moon
712 NE 45th St
Seattle WA 98105
w/ Red Rapture
& Forefathers
Free! / Doors at 8:30