Effortless Records

14 years is a long time to not release an album - but here's this one, better late than never? Soon to be on all your Favorite Streaming Services

Terrible terrible news for Chatham Kent's Music scene, it's hard to report Bob Hiltz has passed in London on April 9th, 2024.
A mentor to me and many of my friends - I've known Bob over half of my life. I'll write a bit more here later. I have material Bob's played on that nobody but myself and my band has ever heard - including Bob on vocals, so I will find that stuff and post it asap. It's a bit too soon for some reason to dive deep - but I'll write a better paragraph or two later.
Respects to Bob's family and inner circle. He was a really great person and so many of us miss him already.

It’s been a while but - we’re back in style.
I’m not sure where we stand on doing any physical releases from here on - though we come close to releasing vinyl and then not doing it quite often - but what we are doing is major digital distribution of the back catalog.

So what’s this release then? The goal of this collection is to package the Observatory singles all in one spot for easy release on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, etc. and to draw an end to the pre 2010 era as Observatory moves forward - with a new album coming soon in 2024.

Track listing:
1. Danger in the Drowse
2. Audit of James
3. Polymorphisms Today!
4. Laugh at a Garden
5. Text
6. All the Rage
7. Astral Grenades
8. Last Shine
9. Her Majesties
10. Silver Veins
11. Mr Grey


You should soon be able to find this - and most of the Effortless Records back catalog on Spotify, YouTube Music, Apple Music and about 30 other streaming and online radio services.

Some random rambles about the last 4 years...in no particular order...

1. We have not released anything since 2010. We've recorded some stuff, but released nothing. Quite alot of stuff. But finished nothing. The lost time can't be salvaged, but we can keep going.

2. I pulled the studio apart, and put it back together again, too many times to count. Clearly I have issues.

3. I wish I could work with tape. I can't afford it. I wish I could press my own vinyl, I can't afford it.

4. Despite the lack of output, we are still alive and are going to keep doing this.

5. The Chinese will have to try better than that to kill me.

Tough to get anything done for anyone all around. We've had band member delays with 2 bands. So We're shifting things around... make lemon aid, or some kind of other treat... with everyone who is around.
Had some really good late summer sessions here with The Maple City, Observatory, and Captain Zap.

Check out the debut album Brief Golden Age by our friends 'The Maple City'.


Brief Golden Age | The Maple City on Band Camp

If you build it they will come and etc. and so forth.

I've got 3 bands going on now -(that I am 'in')
x1 is a secret
x1 is yet to be announced and involves me filling in live
x1 is Observatory - my main garage-pop-rock-demo style band

And when it rains it pours, I might take a swing at a 4th band for a handful of dates doing Classic Rock covers - which is something I always wanted to take a swing at.

Odd to me that so much of this has more to do with playing live - which is something I never wanted to do very much. In any of this - I'm hoping we will get 1 album out this year yet, but the timing is going to be pretty tight.

Check out the debut album Brief Golden Age by our friends 'The Maple City'.


While we didn't have a hand in this album, we sure like it - and hope to contribute in some role in the future. 'The Album' as a media is not dead, and this project is proof - from the song writing and performances to the way the tracks flow to the art work - The Maple City has released something special and long lasting.

Brief Golden Age | The Maple City on Band Camp

It might not seem like it from the site updates- but things are happening.

+Major studio upgrades still in progress
+2 bands in the studio

With any luck - we should have a new release or 2 by the end of this year. It will be the first release in 8 years. We don't like to push ourselves too much.

At long last, things are moving. Seven years after it's release - Observatory's Secrets of Memory Man is up on Band Camp.

Link

Why do this? What's the point? Does anyone care?

As a fake record label, which is to say - this has only ever been a method in which to archive projects myself and my friends are involved with - the history of Effortless Records can be divided into some fairly sad chunks and also - to borrow words from Maple City's latest album - a few occurances of a 'Brief Golden Age'.

Pre-Effortless Records was a timeframe in which I was getting out of highschool and began working - to get money - to live and buy music gear, so I could still play in my band. Days turned to weeks and years, and everybody kind of scattered to live their own lives - which isn't a timeline I had figured on, but that's what happens. So I decided - I'll buy recording gear, people will come and go to play music with. The point for me has always been to make records. Nobody remembers being at a show accurately - they just don't. You can remember being at a show - but you're brain fills in most of the experience. A record is the end all be all. I remember in my first band making the argument that jamming wasn't as productive as just recording. The bits we do have recorded, we have forever. Even while you're jamming - if you come across a hook, or a lyric, or even one of those times in which everything just works - if you didn't record it - it might as well have never happened.

So I jumped in the rabbit hole of home recording. I didn't know what a preamp was, and thought it was weird that you would need one... there's a microphone, there's my computer - how could it be anymore complicated than that? And I learned. I chased fidelity in small, often incorrect steps - and in retrospect, made all the mistakes possible in terms of purchasing 'ok gear' and upgrading it later. These days I am of the mind that you are better off buying one $1000 piece of gear a year, rather than 12 $100 pieces of gear. The irony of any of it - is once I get close to being able to record something that sounds modern radio quality, I'm usually looking for ways back to lo-fi. My theory is you can distort a hifi recording, but can't do much in terms of going the other way - so aim as high and possible, and you'll be left with a clean recording you can process to sound more lo-fi later in the artistic realm of the process.

Decades have gone by. My own songs and albums have always been half-assed. I pick at stuff over years. Then I'll have a week or so where I decide to toss whatever's been done in a collection and call it an album. It's mismatched, not written or performed to it's potential. But yet - I get to keep what I've done, good or bad. If it's my own stuff, or other bands I have been privileged to get to work with - the primary goal has been achieved - after work and weekend 'home' musicians got together, wrote songs, recorded songs, arranged and presented them - on our own terms, by ourselves and for ourselves. I like what we've done. I think most the people involved like what we've done. And that's it - that's all that matters - to me that's the point.

If I we're to slap a lazy label on a 'Chatham' sound - given the number of bands there have been and averaged them into a common theme - you would end up with a Korn / Metallica / Tool / Nickelback cover band. Chatham has had it's brilliant and underappreciated indie bands, it's coffee shop solo artists, blues bands, rappers and some pretty creative outlier's that usually come and go. But if you don't sound like Korn or Tool or Metallica in this city - your band is not good and you have failed, as that IS music, here. That's our scene boiled down. You either sound like Creed, or you're wrong.

And that's not us. All of our bands here, I'm happy to note - take lineage from the classics. We are for the most part - roots level guitar, bass and drum bands, usually trying to sound like the 60's and 70's and 90's. Songs come first and tribal tattoos, muscle cars and hairspray are not even on the radar. I think we do the best we can. So while we will always be the misfits, and will never fit in in this city - it all spells mission accomplished to me. I like the demos, the 4-track tapes, the rough sessions not the 1 million dollar sounding attempt to be a local watered down version of Godsmack, complete with Red Bull sponsorship. People are into that - to each their own, and I know anything less spells failure here in Chatham - but this is not our target market by a long shot. Besides, I think today's (insert hard rock in your face band from now, let's say - Buckcherry) - are going to look like Ratt and The Scorpions etc. tomorrow. It's a genre preference I suppose - but you don't really hear of anyone snickering at Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd or dismissing them as a dated, laughable novelty decades later. At the end of the day - they are all just songs, entertainment - something to enjoy, but I do get trolls stopping by to let me know why I suck - and why my music is wrong because it's not Creed. I thought it was all just 'songs' but apparently it's also a competition where you can have wrong or right music, lol. Nah, it's just songs.

So scene wise - we're not going to 'make it', which is good news. We are our own thing. But why catalog in such detail, crediting some people I have not seen in 20 years? I know it's mental, but I can't go forward without knowing everything behind me is well curated. If I record a new song today - then what? To me it needs to be included in a system, otherwise there is no point. That might not make any sense to you - but this site is as detailed as possible as it presents a history of what we have done - good bad or otherwise, to allow us to move forward. The site has albums I'm not proud of, (my own stuff) - that should have been worked on further - but I'm going to put the history here as it is for better or worse. It may reference people we barely know - but if they we're part of something, they we're part of something.

So in moving forward now - I know I've done nothing here in 7 years - no recording, almost no jamming in our various groups - but I want to make records again. ''The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now''. Pretty much keep on as we have for the most part - knowing it's just for us - there's really no wrong or right. If we like something that's the point. If we can put out a couple of records per year that we like, I'm happy with that.

Here's a preview of Observatory's "Secrets of Memory Man"
Thanks to Chatham Music Archive...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=163&v=YYAcA3bvF9A