Something old, something new

Happy Monday, everyone! We had a blast playing at the San Jose Museum of Art last week. Matt even played a couple of songs from his solo album Gargantuan Acoustic Locator during our intermission (yes, we had an intermission – it was fancy).

We have a few more local shows lined up until we head up north once again to play Portland and Seattle (more details on that to come). Our next show is Saturday, July 28 at California Extreme 2012. California Extreme is an awesome annual event in Santa Clara with free play pinball machines, arcades and more! For more information, visit our shows page or http://www.caextreme.org/

We’ll also be playing Convergence again this year at San Francisco’s Japantown Peace Plaza on Saturday, August 25.

At both of these shows, we’ll be selling our new T-shirts, designed by Awkward Terrible‘s Sam Decimus. We miss those guys, but we’ll be touring up the northwest with them and crashfaster in late August. Take a first peek at the new shirt design below!

Watch this space for new updates. Leading up to our northwest tour, we’ll be working on a new release and lots of other fun stuff!

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Announcing Horchata!

When our bestest chip buddies Awkward Terrible were in town last year for our fantastic show with Bit Shifter at the DNA lounge, we spent a couple days in the studio tracking four songs for what was originally planned as a split EP. What has evolved instead is a monster of a four-track collaborative EP, with all the members of each band playing on every song. The new EP is called Horchata, and will be available on January 20th to the whole world.

We can’t think of a better way to start the year than to share these new tunes with you, and we’re doing it in a big way. Awkward Terrible is coming to the SF bay yet again to share the stage. And when we say “share the stage”, we mean it. The show will feature not only sets from both bands, but a combined set with all four of us onstage, playing all the material from Horchata live together. Chaos will ensue. Hearts will be broken. Worlds will crumble.

See us play the show at The Blank Club in San Jose with our local chip favorite crashfaster on Wednesday, January 18th, where we’ll be selling advance copies of Horchata as download codes. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more information and updates about Horchata.

The Glowing Stars, Awkward Terrible, and crashfaster
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
@ The Blank Club, San Jose
FREE Show! 21+ only
RSVP on Facebook

Where are we now?

Above: Science and Honor! With Angel Nova of The Phenomenauts at The Crepe Place, Santa Cruz
Photo by AJAPOPFILMS

Our last few shows were a blast! East Bay Mini Maker Faire was a success and Matt spent most of the day teaching attendees how to mod their old Game Boys. We had an awesome lineup of chip artists from all over the Bay Area, including Doctor Popular, starpause, E.N. Cowell and A_Rival. We were also lucky to have Max Capacity and Adam Scradam return for visuals. Doc and Matt even found a bit of a break in the day-long event to hold an impromptu jam session with Nanoloop and banjo in the middle of the fairgrounds!

Doctor Popular and Matt Payne pumpin’ the jam.

Our East Bay Mini Maker Faire PulsewaveSF table!

Starpause with his shirt off before noon.

A_Rival x Max Capacity

PoW !

The following week, we played a really fun rock show with The Phenomenauts and The Bloodtypes at The Crepe Place in Santa Cruz. Now, we’ve played some rockin’ shows, but this one was definitely rockin’ in its own special way. I think all of the bands had amazing energy, fun outfits, and just overall knew how to put on a show. Major thanks to Grand Fanali Presents for booking this for us. Also thanks to AJAPOPFILMS for documenting the event. Matt and I dressed up as Chell and Rat Man from Portal 2. He even made a Companion Cube at the last minute out of cardboard, foam, and felt!

With The Bloodtypes!

We capped off that weekend with our last show of the year at Cafe Du Nord in San Francisco with the super sexy, freakin’ funky Planet Booty, Easystreet, and Hottub DJs. It hasn’t been a month yet since our last show, and I thought we’d be able to have a nice, restful break, but things are picking up speed again.

With January coming up in less than two months, we’re finishing up our split release with Milwaukee friends Awkward Terrible. We absolutely adore those guys and can’t wait ’til they arrive in January to release this ish with us! Also on the plate is our second album, but that’s further down the line. Some of you guys were able to catch our new song at one of our last shows. We’ll be able to release some samples online soon. We’ll also have some new merch available soon, so stay tuned! Our 1-year anniversary is also coming up, and we’ll have a few special things revolving around that as well.

xoxo,

-lc

Quest Complete!

Photo by AJAPOPFILMS

That’s it. Tour’s over. We’re both happy and sad that our Quest Coast Tour with crashfaster has come to an end. Though, we did close it pretty epically with our homecoming show at PulsewaveSF at DNA Lounge. Our good friends Awkward Terrible joined us for this show, as well as starpause and Bit Shifter. Thanks to all who came out to this truly special event! We had an awesome opening video by AJAPOPFILMS, played some new material that we’ve been working on, had a m-f-ing HORNS section (thanks to Dustin Smurthwaite of Ladies & Gentlemen and Uiliami Fihaki!), and then we joined crashfaster during his set for his song “Time” and a cover of Weezer’s “Say It Ain’t So.”

We updated our Photos page on this site, but here are a few of our favorites from that night, courtesy of AJAPOPFILMS:

Since Awkward Terrible was in town, we started working on our split recording with them. We spent two days recording our songs and it’s turning out really well. We plan to release this split with them as a limited edition 7″ vinyl, but we have no set date for this yet.

Now that tour is over and our debut EP is released (YOU DID LISTEN TO IT, DIDN’T YOU???), Matt is in full baby mode with his first baby due any day now. We’re taking a short break for a few months. In that time, we’ll be working individually on some new material. I’ll also be doing some The Glowing Stars stuff solo at PAX Prime next month in Seattle, as well as some collaborations with crashfaster.

By the way, if you pre-ordered the limited edition EP (on USB Game Boy cartridges), those are shipping/have already been shipped! If you have any questions, send us an e-mail at theglowingstarsband[@]gmail[.]com. We don’t bite! We also have some extras reserved for sale. We may release some on our online store in the future.

Well, until next time! Please follow us on Twitter and Facebook! We also have a YouTube channel so you can relive the Quest Coast Tour memories with us!

-lc

Quest Coast Tour Diary #4

We’re back in the Bay Area after too amazing a time in Portland, OR and Seattle, WA, and the new AJAPOPFILMS video above proves it. Our second show in Portland, OR fell through, but we ended up going to a rad house show and partied with Apes Tapes, Radiation City, and 2 Player Productions.

Photo by AJAPOPFILMS

Above: With Cameron Spies (Apes Tapes/Radiation City) and Matt Rafferty (Radiation City).

Above: crashfaster with Paul Owens (2 Player Productions)

BUT, the quest isn’t quite over yet. Our homecoming show is in less than a week, on Thursday, July 7 at DNA Lounge in San Francisco. This show is going to be super-special for a number of reasons:

• It’s the first PulsewaveSF show – this will be a monthly chip show in San Francisco!
• Bit Shifter is coming from NYC and headlining
• Awkward Terrible will be flying from Milwaukee and opening this show and they are THE BEST. Check out their new album they just released on Bandcamp, “I Feel Asleep“
• Our debut EP “Anything Past That” will be released and on sale at the show!
• Plus, TONS and TONS of other surprises and new stuff we can’t mention on here!

So pretty, much, yeah. You’ll have to attend the show if you’re in the Bay Area. You can get advance tickets here. For those not in the area, DNA Lounge offers a webcast on their website. Bookmark this link!

Speaking of Awkward Terrible, we’ll be working on an awesome vinyl split release with them while they’re with us in San Francisco. You can bet your pretty face you’ll want it.

Oh yes, and speaking of our debut EP, we have finally unleashed its final cover art to the [internet] masses. Thanks, as always, to the talented Mike Bombon for the design!

See you all next week! Please check out our updated videos page on the menu above for more AJAPOPFILMS goodness.