The Glowing Stars on SF Weekly’s All Shook Down Blog

 

If you’re in San Francisco this weekend, be sure to check out Convergence MMXII and the Fourth Annual J-Pop Summit at Japantown Peace Plaza. We’ll be playing a free show right outside at noon! SF Weekly’s music blog All Shook Down wrote a cool article about it today titled “The Video Game-Inspired Music of S.F.’s J-Pop Summit: A Chiptune Off the Old Block.”

This is our last local show for a while, and the last show before we kick off our mini Northwest tour with crashfaster, minusbaby and more! First, we’ll be hitting up Slabtown in Portland, OR and playing with awesome Portland punk rock band The Bloodtypes on Wednesday, August 29. Then on Thursday, August 30, we’ll be playing a pre-PAX showcase at Funhouse in Seattle with Danimal Cannon, Freaky DNA and more!

For tickets, showtimes and more information, head on over to our Shows page!

See you at the shows. xoxo

J-Pop Summit and Convergence MMXII Festival. Oh, and tour.

Sharing the stage at California Extreme in Santa Clara last weekend with crashfaster, Slime Girls, Doctor Popular and more was an honor. Thanks to everyone who came out! We also announced our upcoming split single on vinyl with crashfaster. More details on that to come.

Our next show will be on Saturday, August 25 at the Japantown Peace Plaza in San Francisco. We will be playing at the J-Pop Summit/Convergence MMXII Festival. It’s a free show, so if you’re in the area, drop on by! For more information, visit our Shows page, or go to http://www.j-pop.com/2012/the-glowing-stars/

Last, but definitely not least, we’re happy to announce our pre-PAX Prime 2012 NW mini-tour with crashfaster and minusbaby. We’ll be playing in Portland, OR and Seattle, WA. Check out the dates below:

Wednesday, August 29, 2012
@ Slabtown, Portland, OR
With crashfaster, The Bloodtypes and minusbaby | More details TBA

Thursday, August 30, 2012
@ Funhouse, Seattle, WA
With crashfaster, minusbaby and more | More details TBA

See you at the shows!

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.

Quest Coast Tour Diary #3

Gosh, I thought this would be a brief post, but so many things happened in the last 24 hours. We’re currently in Kirkland, WA staying with our dear friend Salisbury after having played an EPIC show last night at Pink Gorilla in Seattle. I try to choose when I use the word “epic” wisely, but I’d say this time would be very appropriate… wouldn’t you think?

Above: Blood splatter – a sign of copious amounts of rocking out. Photo by AJAPOPFILMS

Also, two great videos went live yesterday. The one above is a short montage of our journey to Portland, OR, plus some live footage of our set at Backspace. We’ll be posting another one soon of our Seattle portion of the tour, but first, here’s the video from the Song-A-Day thing we did for Jonathan Mann last Thursday:

For those who missed the livestream two days ago on songatron.com, we and crashfaster spent all day tracking instrumental parts on this song. Crashfaster tracked Game Boy and vocoder, I tracked some guitar, and Matt tracked –wait for it– bass, toy piano, accordion, organ, and synthesizer, and we all tracked some handclaps. Matt also choreographed our dance for the song. Check it out at the end of the video.

Today, we’re heading back to Portland, OR to party at a house show and say goodbye to our friends there. I personally am not ready to go back to the Bay Area, but we’ll see you all at our homecoming show at DNA Lounge on July 7! You can already get advance tickets here.

I asked Matt if he had a quote for the end of this post:

“Pfff, no. Too early for that.” -Matt Payne

Photo by AJAPOPFILMS

-lc

Quest Coast Tour Diary #2

Above: The Glowing Stars at Backspace, Portland, OR. Photo by AJAPOPFILMS

Whoa, we’re totally in Portland, OR right now! We just played a super cool show at Backspace last night with crashfaster, A Gentlemen’s Picnic, and BPM Ensemble. Major thanks to Apes Tapes for putting this show together for us, and to Radiation City for showing up. Speaking of the two, check out the chip cover we did of Radiation City’s “The Color of Industry” on Apes Tapes. This, and a number of other chip remixes will be included in a future Apes Tapes release. More info on that soon.

Photo by AJAPOPFILMS

Right now we’re livestreaming on http://www.songatron.com for Jonathan Mann’s Song-A-Day: The Album project! We’re tracking parts for the song “The Only Way I Know How” with crashfaster. There’s still a lot to do left for the stream, so you can still (maybe) tune in, at least if I get this post up in time. Check out the song in its demo form here:

Tomorrow, we’re heading up to Seattle, WA to play a show at Pink Gorilla. Then we’re coming back down to Portland, OR and are hopefully playing a house party we were able to get on at the last minute! Follow us on Twitter and/or Facebook to get details on that as that comes.

Also, special, special thanks to AJAPOPFILMS who is touring with us and making rad videos along the way! We’re heading back home this weekend and will be playing our homecoming show at DNA Lounge in San Francisco on July 7, which will also be the first PulsewaveSF of many. We are totally psyched for this, and it’s going to be a huge show. And for those anxiously waiting, yes — our EP will be ready by then. 🙂

“Looks good to me. Count me in, sign me up.” -Matt Payne

-lc

The Glowing Stars + crashfaster: Quest Coast Tour dates announced!

We’re really excited to announced the official dates for our Quest Coast Tour with crashfaster! We’ll be hitting up different cities in California as well as Portland and Seattle. Here they are:

Thu 6/9 @ Meltdown Comics, Los Angeles, CA – 8-bit E3 After Party!

Fri 6/10 @ The Video Game Music Show, KSPC 88.7 FM, Claremont, CA – Radio show + interview

Wed 6/15 @ The New Parish, Oakland, CA – Japan Benefit

Thu 6/16 @ Arlene Francis Center, Santa Rosa, CA

Sat 6/18 @ Deva Cafe, Modesto, CA

Wed 6/22 @ Backspace, Portland, OR

Fri 6/24 @ Seattle, WA – TBA

Sat 6/25 @ Apes Tapes, Portland, OR – Surprise Double Release

Thu 7/7 @ DNA Lounge, San Francisco, CA – PulsewaveSF Homecoming Show!

Check out our Shows page for updated tour dates. Our next show is next week at Maker Faire in San Mateo, CA. We’ll be playing both dates: Saturday, May 21 and Sunday, May 22.

In the meantime, we’re wrapping up recording our debut EP at monobomb. There’s still time to pre-order a limited edition physical EP on a custom Game Boy cartridge at our online store!

Don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter! ❤