Poi Dog Pondering 7th Album And US Tour In Spring

Poi Dog Pondering are ready for action in 2008 with a new album due April 1st and a US tour April-May. The new album, self-described as a "rock and soul record," is titled 7 as it's the band's seventh studio recording. 7 features 14 tracks of horns, strings, guitars that are "sometimes shimmery and liquid, & sometimes crunch and gristle," synths, bass, drums and beautiful harmonies and will be available on "L.P., 8 track, cassette, c.d. and digital down load" according to PDP. I swear, they claim to be releasing 7 on 8-track, see below for proof! According to the press release:

Poi dog pondering have ripened into staunchly independent musical voyagers. They have let every sound that excited them flow through their music and flood it with ever changing colors; Rock and soul. Orchestral, acoustic and electronic textures. Americana, rock band disco and international musics. All threaded along the way with lyrics that embrace the beauty and pain that life can bring.

Poi Dog Pondering US Tour Dates:March 29th at the Vic Theater in Chicago - record release showApril 12: Detroit, MI - Alvin'sApril 16th Milwaukee, WI., Shank HallApril 17th Phoenix, AZ - The Rhythm RoomApril 18th April 19th Tucson, AZ - Club CrawlApril 20th TBAApril 25: New York, NY...at the Bowery Ballroom www.boweryballroom.com/April 26: Philadelphia, PA...at the Theatre of Living ArtsApril 27: Baltimore, MD - Fletcher's www.fletchersbar.comApril 28: Boston, MA...at The Paradise www.thedise.com/May 7: Seattle, WA...at Neumo's www.neumos.com/May 8: Portland, OR...at the Doug Fir www.dougfirlounge.comMay 9: Mendecino, the casper inn www.casparinn.com/May 10: San Francisco, CA...at the Great American Music Hall www.musichallsf.com/May 12: Los Angeles, CA...at the Troubadour www.troubadour.com/You can get a lot more info and listen to a lot more songs by PDP at their artist page on Reverb NationFormed in Hawaii in 1986, the band have come a long way and followed a path of experimentation that gushes from each album. The press release sums up their career nicely with this statement:

20 plus years down the line there is a bolstered sense of history within the band now. A swagger that comes from having steadfastly carved their own path. It is quite apparent that PDP has always been, and ever will be in it for the love of it; creating and performing. Line up changes are par for the course. PDP is an organic entity, it changes like life does. But there is a core with strong roots, open to new ears and ready to experiment. That's what keeps it vibrant.

In contrast to summaries from press releases, the band itself loves to describe their creative processes. Poi Dog Pondering give these extensive details on all the blood, sweat, tears and handmade love that went into producing 7:

Every record is a new adventure for us, and on this outing, we were in the mood to make a 'rock and soul' record. Because we control the purse strings, we spared no expense. We wanted a warm dynamic sound, so we recorded to analogue tape (when ever we could) & used old school effects like spring reverb and space echo in place of digital effects. We locked out the studio and lived in it. We employed every every instrument we had to give each song it's own unique texture. After having a lot of fun with sequencers and samplers on the last 2 records, we put them aside for this one - we wanted a rougher, more immediate sound to better serve these new songs. We shied away from click tracks and let the songs speed up if they wanted to. We wanted a record that would feel good to play live.INSTRUMENTS USED TO MAKE THIS RECORD:6 and 12 string acoustic and electric guitar, bass, drums, vibes, charango, guzheng, ukulele, tambourine, bandoneon, jaw harp, super tarana, xylophone, violin, cello, casio, vocals, trumpet, melotron, stylophone, electric mando cello, space echo, fender rhodes, wurlitzer, synth, piano, saxophone, trombone, baritone sax, omni chord, shakers, cow bells and hand claps.NOTES ON THE ART WORK:In an age where digital downloads rule, we still care about the art work. We wanted something the listener could hold and read while listening. The art work for 7 is loaded. The cover art is by the Chicago artist DZINE, The booklet art is comprised of sculptures by the Italian artist Virginio Ferrari from his 1960's works. To give that large format album artwork feel we added an additional poster you can unfold which contains Video stills of various works by Chicago artist (and son of Virginio) Marco Ferrari, cooking recipes from his mother Marisa Ferrari and a prose piece by Frank Orrall. The complete package was designed by Alberto Ferrari and Frank Orrall.NOTES ON FORMAT:"7" will be available on L.P., 8 track, cassette, c.d. and digital down load - Cause we're stubborn like that.NOTES ON THE MASTERING:You will notice that "7" is a little quieter than most pop recordings these days. That was intentional. There is a volume war going on in modern music, because everyone wants to appear louder. This has lead to seriously compressed... even distorted recordings, that frankly sound bad. We put too much into the quality of recording to let this happen at the final stage, so we found a mastering house (Chicago Mastering Services) who feel the same way and they did a fantastic job preserving the integrity of the recording and let it blossom.Produced by: Frank Orrall, Martin Stebbing and Ted ChoRecorded by: Ted Cho and Martin StebbingMixed by: Martin Stebbing, Ted Cho and Frank Orrall(assistant at Wall2Wall: Frank Caruso)String arrangements by: Susan VoelzHorn arrangements by: Dave Max CrawfordRecorded in Chicago at: Wall2Wall Recording & 4deuces Recording / Clava StudiosMastering by: Jason Ward at Chicago Mastering Services