Yesterday hit up the brand new Black & Blue Studios for a meeting of the minds with my Don’t Cry Recs family, Nick Hook and Tiombe Lockhart of Cubic Zirconia, the gawd-ess Jess Jubilee and the OG DPalumbo. Had a listening session of new Gas Galaxy tracks and the upcoming debut Cubic Zirconia LP. Margaritas and thangs ensued. As you can see the view is spectacular.

Nick Hook deep in the space pit. Trading plugins, beats banging, and picking prospects for new material….we went in.

This place is crawling with analog synths and drum machines i.e. heaven. This is home to a chosen few and the undeniable source of a lot of incredible music you will be hearing in the future for sure. very exciting shit. get into it.

my extended fam, Cubic Zirconia, dropped this video a few days back and their new EP, Black and Blue, yesterday

cop it here HERE

This post is so overdue but the timing may be impeccable as we pony up for the release of an epic YB x WM collaboration with Adam R. Garcia aka The Pressure. Sometime next week, myself, Weathermen and Adam are going to bring a new WM T-Shirt design as part of the ongoing T-shirt series we have been doing with renown artists for the last couple of years, available on shopshogun.com. So far we have had the likes of Alex Pardee, Jeremy Fish, Ewok One 5MH and Travis Millard, all of who’s designs were smashing successes online and on tour. Enter Adam R. Garcia, former Art Director at Rhymesayers Entertainment and now a graphic designer for Nike. Adams’s work spans from magazine covers to posters to CD packaging and more. Some of which you may or may not have seen but if there is one thing for sure, the man deserves his props.

I met Adam through Nick Hook of Cubic Zirconia, who suggested I hit him for some design-work around 2 years ago. We started small and continued to work together on several bigger projects including the cover for my upcoming project (yes I’m still working on this night and day) Gas Galaxy, the header for yakballz.net, and the Yak Ballz logo you might be familiar with (hint: it’s everywhere on this site). Extremely versatile in his design style, Adam draws inspiration from so many things that his actual creative process itself is just as mind-blowing as the execution of his finished product. Nick and I were talking him up recently and we agreed on three words that sum up this whole post, “he gets it.”

Now it’s time for you to get what we’re talking about when it comes to THE PRESSURE. why? because it’s good for you. Visit Adam at http://www.thepressure.org immediately, follow his twitter feed, and stay tuned for his exclusive Weathermen T-shirt design coming soon!!!

my good friends Cubic Zirconia dropped this single yesterday and the video today. such a banger.

cop the single on iTunes http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/josephine/id349928933.

more from the night in the FLICKR set HERE

you don’t want to miss it.

I went to Nick Hook‘s a little while back in LES with Janeworld to wrap up some things on Gas Galaxy. Chauncey was staying at Daryl‘s closeby so we got up and kicked it. I’m thinking there are still some things I want to add to this project. I’m super amped on it but I can’t just let it out without me feeling like it’s a complete and well rounded body of work even for an E.P., and I think I want to do one more song, of which I will produce myself. So we will see what happens. Since I’ve been home from tour I’ve been making beats and getting a small studio wrig up and running. A new work in progress that will allow me to make and record music whenever the fuck I want, naked.

Nick Hook plays keys for Cubic Zirconia and is a great friend of mine.

I’m late. I had to finish packing yesterday officially because I slept home the night of the first show so I don’t officially count that as being on tour, yet. It didn’t matter anyway because I didn’t miss anything. The time before shows are kind of boring; hanging around, waiting to soundcheck, forever. It’s ten minutes to eight and I still haven’t checked yet. Apparently someone told someone else that “Yak was good” and didn’t need to soundcheck. I got a little annoyed when I heard this info and told Todd Cameron Westphal that I hadn’t checked and he handled it by pushing back doors. Speaking of Todd, I want to apologize to him about yesterdays post bc some people said it might have been offensive. Finally I’m free to go and I hit up this Tai spot down the road called Song that I ate at the last time I played Southpaw and will always eat at from now on when I play there. So good. Back to the club. New York shows get awkward sometimes because I end up seeing a lot of different people who I might know, but not really, and want to have the deepest of convo’s and don’t really pick up on me actually trying to get mentally prepared. I prefer not to go down that road before I have to play but somehow it happens time and time again. Anyway, it’s showtime. The crowd is chanting so loud I don’t even hear where I’m supposed to come in. I suspect the same thing happened last night. Sure enough I didn’t hear it but I caught it, barely. For round 2, the crowd was also super into it. It seems like a lot of people got Scifentology II and downloaded Gas Galaxy. At the end of my set I noticed some people come on stage from behind. It was some of my Cardboard City brothers, Daryl Palumbo, Jarvis, Julien Gilbert. That was awesome. My dude Nick Hook of Cubic Zirconia was also in the building. EL broke a month of sobriety. Also I met so many fans that mentioned they have been following us for a long time and I can’t explain how much that means to me. Cage, F.Sean, and Chauncey killed of course. I think one of my favorite new Cage songs live is Hell-Oh. It’s Bonkers. The boys are back.

Enjoy the free download of Gas Galaxy live from the first show

UPDATE
For a few more photos from the past two days click HERE