Our long-in-the-making 2nd album, “None Of These Are Words” is out now digitally!  You can click here to see it on iTunes, or check out our spiffy CDBaby page here.

We’d love to hear what you guys think.  Email us with questions, comments, or nonsense.  Our gmail is ready for anything.

Hey, we’re playing Beat Kitchen next Sunday with Brazzaville. We’ll be playing a heaping helping of songs from our upcoming release, “None Of These Are Words.”

Doors are at 7:30, show’s at 8:00 (I think we’re the only opener!  And we go on at 8 sharp, I presume).  21+, no baby infant children allowed at this alcohol-friendly adult event.

So, we’ve got all our ducks in a row finally.  LP2 will be titled “None Of These Are Words.” It features the cover art above (painted by me) and will contain the following 12 tracks, in precisely this order:

1. Dig a Hole

2. Deadpan Hands

3. Charley Varrick (Don Siegel, 1973)

4. Model Town

5. They Built a House Around Me

6. Over Yr Head

7. Modern Guy

8. Kentucky Marmalade

9. Incidental Lines

10. Deduction

11. Angelo

12. Marquee at Sundown

We’re on the verge of getting our mastered version of the album juuuuuust right, and will then promptly toss it up on iTunes, Amazon, etc., etc., for your listening pleasure.

We’ll be playing 2 shows soon…1 at Ronny’s, June 9th and one at Beat Kitchen, June 13th.  More info on those shows soon.  We’re trying to plan our CD release party for mid to late July, and should have download cards of the album available for purchase, so hopefully, we’ll see you at a live show soon, and you’ll soon have a copy of “None Of These Are Words” in your hands.

Well, we’re rolling toward completion on Percolator’s LP2, which is named…something.  We’ll figure something out.

It’s taken us a while to get to the finish line, but now suddenly we’re crossing many small finish lines, on a near daily basis.  On Sunday, we finished mixing the album entirely, getting together with friend, engineer & mixer Michael McGovern in our stuffy, tiny rehearsal space for upwards of 9 hours to nudge vocals just a little this way, and then just a little that way back until it was just so, making sure the drums were as epically huge as we’d imagined them, making sure the bass made asses shake.  Mike’s been with us every step of the way as we’ve recorded 25 songs (probably much more than he thought we’d be recording!), helping us figure out how to get the Percolator sound he was attracted to down on a recording more genuinely than we’d been able to before, and he’s really pulled it off.

But now that he’s done recording our album, what will he do next?  Drop us a line if you’d like a bona fide recording engineer to record your album for you.  Mike’s great at what he does.

Meanwhile, Mike’s got some people to thank, himself.  Mike? Read more »

It’s been reeeeal quiet here since our last show, but that’s soon to change.

Firstly, we’re playing a freeeeee show at the Double Door on Tuesday, April 27th w/ our friends Daemon Familiar.  Eskrima Killed Magellan headlines & The Moses Gun is also on the bill somewhere. 

Doors are at 7, show starts at 8 and we are the first band on the bill, so be there by 9 if you want to catch every moment of excitement.

If you plan to come out (which you should certainly do), it doesn’t have to be too late a night for you.  Getting to sleep by 11pm on weeknights is the new rock & roll lifestyle, I hear.  Further event info is here.

Our forever-in-progress album 2 is being mixed currently by friend & collaborator Mike McGovern & we’ll be taking  an initial crack at sequencing the thing tonight.  Hopefully it’ll get mastered mid-May and be available shortly thereafter.  While we’re getting all of that settled, we’ve trucked well ahead of ourselves and are working on the next 25 songs we couldn’t possibly wait another minute to start arranging and rehearsing.  So, look for a staggering abundance of Percolator stuff soon.  I promise!

You’ll be seeing an aesthetic overhaul to the site soon, too.  We’re real fans of Tumblr & will be integrating it into this site, to feature blogged items from our personal Tumblrs (Phil’s and Matt’s, so far), as well.  Hopefully you’ll still get all the news you need, but will have more to look at on a more frequent basis (achem…new Monsieur LaBouche comics, for one).

the end.

Hey everybody,

We’ve got a big, big show coming up. Friday the 26th of February, we’ll be playing the Subterranean (2011 W. North St., right off the Damen Blue Line). It’s $8, doors open at 8:30, show starts 9ish, 21+. The Loto Ball Show will be headlining, which should be a sight to behold (possible fire breathing!), the Vindits will be playing with us again & our friend Brian from Odd Obsession will be kicking off the evening with a short Dj set, as well as dj-ing in the time between acts. The way that breaks down, we’ll probably be 3rd, putting us on around 10:30.

You can buy tickets ahead of time here.

If you’ve thought about coming to a Percolator show before but haven’t, Friday, February the 26th is going to be a real good jumping on point. We want to make this night particularly special, so we’ll be practicing our fingers down to nubs and readying a setlist to rock the pants off of the bepantsed. We’re really looking to pack the house on this one, so please come out if you can. And bring your friends. All your friends (every friend).

It’s also mine & Phil’s official public birthday celebrations, so even if you hate music, we’ll gladly provide you earplugs as long as you come & have a drink with us.

In other news, we have all our releases available on iTunes now. Sweet.

See you at the show!

-matt/Percolator

I just got back to Chicago after taking a road trip with my father.   It wasn’t a vacation–We had to go to central Florida to transform my grandmother’s apartment into a collection of boxes.   Over 36 hours, we traversed most of the southeastern United States and went through the bulk of Otis Redding’s discography.  I broke up the listening with a couple of Silver Jews CDs, as lately the band’s been unable to get away from them for more than a few days. (We were even moved to try our collective hand at “Sometimes a Pony Gets Depressed” at our last show.  Not sure if we’ll be bringing that out again any time soon, though…)

As a result, I decided to respond to this experience with a rather David Berman-inspired poem–the first I’ve written since high school.  Enjoy!

Read more »

Here’s another tasty improvisational musical exploration, by Percolator, using instruments. Jam 2 (10.25.09):

This is the second of two jams we played one after the other during rehearsal, both strangely the exact same length. We seem to be in Talking Heads “Remain in Light” territory, which is a fun place to be. Thanks to Elena Curry for the nice shot of us at the Empty Bottle!

Here’s a bit of Percolator in our natural habitat, in the midst of a sprawling jam. Jam 1 (10.25.09):

This is the first of two jams we played one after the other during rehearsal, both of which are exactly the same length, by some odd coincidence (6:30-something…I forget specifically). Check back for an equal amount of time spent jamming later.

Join us Thursday, January 28th at the Bottom Lounge!  Looks like the Cathy Santonies are headlining, and either Airlines-X or ourselves (Percolator, pictured above) are opening.  Looks like the show starts at 8, so make sure to get there a little early, so as not to miss us.

In the meantime, we’ll be constructing our own bass baffles by hand, acoustically padding our rehearsal space and finally getting down to mixing our second album.  We recorded almost everything last summer, but it’s been a journey since then to get all the overdubs and vocals recorded, to set up a computer for mixing, etc., etc.  With Mike McGovern’s help, this record will surely sound better than anything we’ve released before (except maybe the Narcoleptic Tongues EP, which he also recorded and mixed for us).

If you haven’t already, head on over to iTunes to pick up a copy of the Illegally People EP.  Digital copies are going fast…make sure to get yours before they sell out!  Both the Narcoleptic Tongues EP and our debut LP, Man is Not a Bird will be available on iTunes soon.  Though, if you’re a fan and you’re clever, you’ll notice that we’re giving Man is Not a Bird away digitally for free right now, right here on this webpage (while supplies last).