Rizzi put together a video set to "It's Gettin' Late" kind of last minute for a NACA Conference Jeremy went to in Hartford last weekend. Check it out here.

My uncle in a  Sand Machine T-shirt halfway up Mount Kilimanjaro.

Last night Noah and I layed down tracks as percussion players for the first time in our recording careers. We were working on the intro to our rumored holiday song. Noah was working the sticks and I was playing a floor tom with a sweatshirt over it being hit by my fist. Dave was playing something too, but he's old news in this realm. I think we did ok - channelling the spirit of the song through our percussive weaponry.

From talking to some folks recently, apparently less people know about Sand Machine radio than I thought. It's that set of light green headphones in the upper right corner of this website. Clicking it opens a browser window that plays (if you click it to) through a long songlist on shuffle. The list is all the tracks from our last 3 albums and 2 EPs, selected songs from our first album, some live tracks, bootleg recordings, and recordings from our rehearsal space.

After some delay due to CDBaby reworking their website, Conference is now available on iTunes. It's all already available for free here, but if anyone still feels like paying via iTunes, go for it. The link is at the bottom of this website.
If you already put Conference in your iPod and it's saying ambiguous "Unknown Artist, Track One" etc (where does iPod get off?), you can re-enter it if you care and it will identify us. We're Sand Machine.

The show Friday Saturday night at Tommy Doyle's in Harvard Square went well. Apologies to anyone who didn't make it in or had to wait a long time in line because the place  reached capacity. We had a little trouble hearing our vocals through the monitors this time, but we were told by reliable sources that what was going out to the house sounded fine. Here was the set:

There was a review of Conference posted, recently removed by the author, that said, after many complimentary things about the album, "I hope I did not offend Sand Machine's perspective of music." Well, belatedly, you certainly did not. Seemed like a very honest appraisal of Conference and how you've absorbed it.

Thanks for the good words while they were up here.

We had a drawing to give away a 3.5' x 4' banner of the cover of Conference. That's it behind Dave, Jeremy, and I here:

The winner of the giveaway is....Elise of Rochester, NY. She says she's stoked, and already has wall space designated for it. Congrats Elise, and thanks for playing. Apologies to entrants that didn't win, but please stay tuned for other such opportunities.

Skope magazine has posted a review of Conference on their website.

A summarizing highlight:

"Conference will always be remembered as a turning point for Sand Machine. They have found their own voice. They have an edgier sound. They also gained the confidence to slow it down more often. This confidence arrives when a  band throws off the shackles of its influences and comes into its own."

We played a surprise birthday party for my father-in-law's 50th Saturday night at an Elk's Lodge in Weymouth, MA. He was very surprised. The family did a nice job of fooling him. The pretext was that we were having yet another Conference CD release show. After dinner and etc. we had good time playing all oldies for the fam and friends ("One After 909", "Sweet Lille Sixteen", etc).