Next show, Thursday May 9 in Union Square Somerville! With good friends and fellow Bostonian Zappa aficianados Strange Changes and Ryan Jackson Troika, from the former's May residency at Precinct Bar. Facebook event

Thank you all who came out and stayed for our set at Radio last night. The double-drummer debut was great fun, and the positive vibes from everyone was much needed. Plus we raised a few hundred from the door for One Fund Boston.

Next show: May 9 at Precinct with StrAnge Changes & Ryan Jackson Troika.

Don't miss it, it may be one of the last times to catch Abe Taber with us before he jumps ship to Philly. As evidenced below, he is irreplaceable!

Tonight, the show goes on. Radio Bar in Somerville. Another in the hastily drawn flyer series by Dan Harris.

Love to Boston, the city we call home. This has been a surreal and gut-wrenching week for us all. Our hearts go out to everyone affected by these tragedies.

Let's counter this senseless violence and hate with the music and love that makes us human and connects us all regardless of real or perceived boundaries.

As of now, tomorrow's show at Radio in Somerville is still on. Will confirm in the morning. Either way, I hope to join together with you, our friends and neighbors, in whatever relief we have found, with the hope that it can extend to those who are still suffering.

Love to all,

Curtis

It's inspiring to see so many in the local Boston music and art community come together from this tragedy. I'm honored to be a part of this network, and to have grown close to you all, in person and in spirit, over the past 7 years in the town that's become my home.

Listen and share Allston Pudding's Marathon Relief Benefit Mixtape. For a donation of 1 dollar or more, this 130 song compilation is all yours. 10 dollars or more and be entered to win an Allston Pudding sweatshirt. All proceeds will go to benefit The One Fund Boston, so please donate, listen, and share this link.

Moulton Laboratories :: So What's So Good About Digital, Anyway?

Interesting assessment of the age-old analog vs. digital dichotomy.

I really like them both! But the process of recording analog I enjoyed much better than my typical home-studio digital process. Limiting your available options and thinking about the economy of tracks helps commit takes and ideas to tape without being overburdened with infinite tracks, plugins and possibilities. I think it’s also psychologically beneficial in the moment to have a physical artifact capturing your output, something more tangible than soundwaves.

School for Robots recently finished up some recording sessions at the Soul Shop, an all-analog studio in Medford, MA, and I have to say, there is something magical about the sound of tape— perceived or real, it makes you feel good. Gratuitous tape fetish artifact below.

Oil painting of the No Prancing Required cover by Hallsi Rose Killian.

Woah

Thanks to the ever-excellent Allston Pudding for their shotout on our new video. Blistering!

NEW MUSIC VIDEO

New #musicvideo from #schoolforrobots! http://youtu.be/UcM4k_ENDTY #rock on #boston here's a lovely #still from #bassist #Abe

Time lapse from the Soul Shop! Courtesy Cullen Corley.

In this high tech digital age we living in, you really need some graphics that POP to get your message across to your intended demographic for optimal bandwidth growth within your marketing sector and innernnette domain server fortress.

Translation: Animated gif website backgrounds!

Hard at work rehearsing for next weekend's recording session!

One of these songs is not like the others. You can hear us on Spotify, or you can support us by purchasing last year's smash flop No Prancing Required here.

Curtis produced (and played a bit) on this garage rock album from Tilt-A-Whirl this past fall... download it free for a limited time!

Quick strange ditty by fake side project Nite School created for the End of the World. From Polk Records' End of the World Compilation. Culled from a Blanket Fort Studios jam between myself and Luke Sullivan and Andrew Tamulynas of Left Hand Does fame circa Sep. 2012.

One night band School for Robots at Pete’s Candy Store in Brooklyn, featuring world-renowned drummer Attis Jerrel Clopton and the floating torso of Clinton Degan.

The Murdock Manor Presents a fun little video of the Floppy Boot Stomp Romp at a fun little party. Didn't even know this was being filmed at the time!

I’m in disgrace!

A song on the spot.

Going’ to be making my bass debut with School for Robots at Precinct tomorrow, 9/1, in a super last minute show. Here’s a video from our last super last-minute show!

Waterloo Sunset!

A one-take live version of the song we played at Center for Digital Imaging Arts for an audio engineering class taught by Dev Ray... school is fun! (it was a few hours of setting up mics, and then enough time for this single subpar-to-adequate take!)

With Clinton Degan on vocals/keys/guitar, Cullen Corley on drums, Greg Toro on bass, and Curtis Killian on vocals/guitar.

Rough tracks of a new song (no vocals recorded yet), recorded live in my bedroom with Seth Adams on bass and Daniel Harris on electric guitar (and overdubbed lap steel).

New School for Robots album, No Prancing Required. Recorded in a Somerville, MA garage by Curtis Killian. Get it at http://schoolforrobots.bandcamp.com/album/no-prancing-required

Here is a tribute to the late Ween, who apparently died yesterday (R.I.P. , 1984-2012). School for Robots teamed up with A Bit Much for Halloween last year to perform as Ween with a rousing set of mutual favorites. This was the opening number, at Ralph's in Worcester, 10/27/2012.

Witness the birth of a fake free-form psychedelic ambient funk rock band comprised of Cullen Corley on drums and mice elf on guitar. For obvious reasons, we'll either call it Cullis, Curtain, or some variation thereof (Curtains for Cullis?), and will improvise material on the spot.

This particular track was created while waiting in the garage for an unrelated recording session (Justin Shorey, you can hear him enter at the end), and is completely unedited.

I really enjoy jamming with Cullen -- check out his various drumming projects here: wullz.tumblr.com/

It was a pleasure producing this track for Justin Shorey (with Cullen Corley on drums, Jean Sullivan on bass, Bryan Murphy on trumpet and yours truly on guitar). -Curtis

Background Stereo '95 features Jean Sullivan on bass and vocals and Ryan Gildea on synth, both of the rocking Boston-based band Left Hand Does. Frank Hegyi is on drums and SPD-11.

The chorus contains a "live sample" of Jean's original song "I Got The Radio," which I inadvertently ripped off. Instead of throwing the tune away, Jean graciously allowed me to use her melody and, to my delight, agreed to appear on the track.

The song is about the pre-Clear Channel days when major radio stations still played new and unheard artists-- a bit of nostalgia for a bygone era that was obliterated after the Telecommunications Act of 1996. I was 12 at the time, and suddenly my favorite radio station changed format, consumed and homogenized under these new regulations.

Special thanks to Jean for letting me utilize her melody. Her fantastic songs have clearly seeped deep into my mind. Hear her inspiring 2006 album here: lefthanddoes.bandcamp.com/album/songs-…our-own-home

Here's a live recording of School for Robots performing the Zappa classic in an Allston basement party on Saturday, April 28, 2012.

This was a one-rehearsal gig with Greg Toro sitting in on bass. Frank Hegyi on drums. Recorded on a Sony PCM-M10 straight to mp3. Opened for the wonderful and strange Strange Changes, also from Allston. Fun was had by all!

This is my first Ableton Live 8 project, using original samples from guitar and bass recorded on my RC-50 loop station (which I've since sold) and a drum sample courtesy of the great James Gadson (& Bill Withers), which miraculously lined up plunking it in after all the other tracks were laid.

I am looking forward to getting better at using Live as an instrument unto itself now that I'm starting to figure out the concepts. One idea is to meld original live sounds with the more traditional sampled beats, like a DJ with a guitar.

In love with my new guitar: 1987 fender squier e-series strat. Can’t stop playing it. Here it is through the pignose.

Skeleton Cage was culled from a spontaneous improvised jam with drummer Cullen Corley from the "Rapture Paradise" session. Cullen started with the beat, and I supplied the impromptu metal guitar. All parts heard here were written on the spot, and include original guitar licks. The abrupt end.

Through a lyrical stream-of-consciousness and heavy editing, I was able to painstakingly piece together the tune before you.

Check out more of Cullen's beats on soundcloud at @wullz

This is an old country-rock tune written in 2010. Basic tracks circa that August '10 session with Attis Jerrell Clopton on drums, Seth Adams on bass and engineered by Luke Sullivan.* Josh Kiggans, who is currently touring Europe with the excellent Boston Americana band Girls, Guns & Glory (the lucky bastard!), is featured on tambourine and shaker. If you like Hank Williams, check them out.

Finished all the overdubs Monday, March 26, including chicken' pickin' and horse clappin'. This one just leaked out of the fingers. The clomping sound during the solo was accidentally achieved by spontaneously banging upon my semihollowbody gretsch guitar. Might add lap steel one day if I ever get good enough.

footnote: *"What's that Luke?" was left at the end for a laugh.. The story behind this: my old rehearsal space at 424r was basically an 8x8 room within a room, max capacity of three. Our solution was to create a makeshift control room on top of the ceiling. We hoisted Luke up from the hallway, and he dropped all the cables down through a vent. He also draped a rainbow flag (courtesy Kirsten Ford) through the vent and would wave it when he wanted us to start/stop/tell us something. Quite amusing session that was.

In the vein of early '80s metal gods Dio, Judas Priest and Don Felder, Devil Woman crawled out of the brainwomb on Friday, March 2, the instant result of the newly acquired MXR blue box (pure octave fuzz!)

Clinton Degan of A Bit Much fame helped summon the demon spawn through pedal-depressed panchromatic resonance (the demon radio audio verite). Real and electronic drums provided by Frank Hegyi.

\m/

Here's another unreleased one from the vaults, circa August 2010, with vocals completed this week. Featuring unstoppable brother/sister duo Luke Sullivan (drums, backing vox, production) and Jean Sullivan (bass, backing vox) of Left Hand Does (www.lefthanddoes.bandcamp.com) and Ryan Jackon (of www.theshills.net and www.ryanjacksonmusic.com/) on supplemental guitar.

MS Paint portrait I did of Conan back in 2003. -Curtis

Saddlebag started out as a 3-year-old riff and half-finished chorus inspired by riding my bike with a tambourine in my saddlebag.

Featuring Abram Taber of A Bit Much and www.reallybadreverb.com on bass and Frank Hegyi on drums and percussion. Recorded on Monday, February 13, 2012, as seen in this video still (video forthcoming).

Another unreleased one from the vaults, just in time for Valentine's Day. This overly-sentimental nugget contains basic tracks from August 2010 featuring Attis Jerrell Clopton on drums and Seth Adams on bass. Luke Sullivan (coincidentally born on 2/14) engineered, and Curtis once again did all overdubs and mixing.

Boston Emissions playlist 2/12//12: Camden, School for Robots, The Suicide Dolls

Hey man, look at me rockin’ out, I’m on the radiooooO!

I wrote "Insomniac" on Friday, February 3 at 12:22a.m., fittingly. This photo is a video still of me writing the song by the light of the computer (I tend to record demos in Photobooth).

In what is quite possibly my fastest turnaround of a song yet, Frank Hegyi and I recorded it that same Friday night in my freezing garage (this is take three ... the mouth noises and rubbing hands are really us trying to stay warm in a 38 degree room).

Did overdubs Friday night after warming up a bit, then mixed over the weekend, just finishing by 3a.m. Monday morning (what superbowl?!). This song is clearly autobiographical.

Frank Hegyi is on drums, percussion and mouth noises. Curtis is on mouth noises and everything else.

This is what I do with two days off from the boring day job — recorded basic tracks on Thursday, overdubs and mixing on Friday (today).

Featuring the tubular Cullen Corley on drums: http://wullz.tumblr.com/

-Curtis

Impromptu cover of a '90s classic during first rehearsal with upright.

I was spending hours hating everything real that I was working on, so I decided to take a breather and just drain the brainswamp with a quick little Residents-style electronic dittie. Everything was written while recording utilizing the Alesis micron in Logic.

While I’m on a Nilsson kick… here’s a cover (of a cover) I did a year+ ago… of Everybody's Talkin' -Curtis

God, you look terrible.

I was a sasquatch.

See No Evil, Television cover w/ A Bit Much

iamdanielheartsthis:

A Bit Much (Taken with instagram)

Here I am with Jean and Luke Sullivan from Left Hand Does, and former School for Robots drummer Andy performing the song “Atonement” at a Lucinda Williams tribute. -Curtis

School for Robots + A Bit Much cover Ween’s So Many People in the Neighborhood.