The Koalas: Year in Review

Happy holidays everyone!!

Daniel, here, bringing you all up to speed on what’s what. Needless to say, we’ve all been a little busy with the winter festivities and the oncoming New Year. I thought that this would be a good time to look back on this past year in the life and times of The Koalas.

Starting in January, we’d been together as a band for about 3 months and were kind of tired of doing mostly covers; we wanted to write our own material. We figured that we gelled pretty well and wanted to let the collective, creative juices flow. Based on the fact that Losing Control and One More Time came out of our initial jam sessions, we expected good things from ourselves. So between then and our second basement show, we wrote Traffic (thankfully with the help of Pete’s brother, Mike), We Only Have Tonight, Senseless Infinity and Distant Home. We got a good reaction to our material as well as constructive criticism from friends who really dug our sound.

Now, the idea of playing our first show was within our sight. However, we realized that we were unknown and playing with a well established Montreal band would definitely work in our favor. Thankfully, Chris was good friends with the girls from Line Spectra and they were more than welcome to play our first show with us. During this time, we wrote our latest song, Reality Check as well as the instrumental Desert Sky; which we debuted at our first official show! The reception was amazing as our family and friends seemed to have a real awesome time and we also had a blast performing for them.

Now, with the year dwindling down, we’ve been working on a new song with two shows happening in January and most likely recording some of our songs for a demo CD. Based on the progress we’ve made over the year, you can all expect good things from the Koalas; we certainly do.

-Daniel

«Almost Christmas...» says the very stressed person.

Hey Guys!!!

 Pat writing in, taking a break from studying. Indeed, this exam period has been crazy on my part and for band members in general. They're all done of course lol but me, being at UQAM, we finish «retardedely» late. Just to give you an idea, my schedule as from last tuesday:
-tuesday: study all day + readings for a 10ish pages essay on the concept of virtu in stoicism and paulinism.
-wednesday: exam in the morning (question: what gives a linguistic proposition its signification?) + more reading for essay + study for friday's exam.
-thursday: class (in class quizz) + study for friday's exam
-friday: exam + the writing of 13 pages on virtu
-saturday: gathering the bibliography for the 13 pages-essay (18 books and articles) + studying for exam n°1 on monday.
-sunday: study for monday's exams n°1 and n°2.
Sunday we, the band, are also meeting some important person. we will tell you more about it this week!!!! Pretty excited!
-MONDAY: two exams. the hand-in of the essay.
DONE? no....got a methodology paper due for the 28th...F.M.S(tudent).L.
after monday, it's work 'til Christmas...

Anyways, my break from studying is over.
Going back to Plato, St. Augustin, Descartes and Berkeley and (as a musical background) Sting. Pretty sweet though, when you think of it :P

I'm out

Pat.

Food, exams and lack of sleep.

Greetings Interwebs.

Band wise, even though we only ended up meeting up once this week cause of the end of semester exam madness, it was actually pretty damn productive. That song that we were all just looking at each other while jamming (if you don't know what I'm talking about, go read Pat's blog) is coming along really well. Got some lyrics written down and the melody sounds ridiculously bad ass.
We celebrated with Harveys. Onion rings...

Bacon and Swiss cheese stuffed french toast dumplings covered in maple syrup. Yeah, you better read that again. It's the most delicious thing i have ever made in the history of ever. I've had some pretty much every day since I made them last week, and you bet I'll be having some tomorrow. Pictures of their deliciousness will be posted so you can all be jealous.


Soon we'll be done our exams, some sooner than others (me) and after sleeping for about 30ish hours, we plan on finishing up 2 new songs we're working on and actually get some recording done! EXCITING things in the horizon!

K I'M DONE

-Pete O'Clock

Nearing the End of Another Semester

Hello, internet!! This is Daniel, the guy who plays the guitar, updating y'all.

Well, I'm sure all of you out there are excited for the end of the semester or, if you're done with school, the oncoming doom of the Christmas holidays. Actually, I only found out today that it's the last week of classes, I guess I really pay attention in school.

Anyway, last week Pete started a job contract with a marketing group. This is super awesome and we're very happy for Pete. However, due to some family matters (remember that show? yeah, me neither) on Chris and my side, we couldn't get together to practice but know that new song is coming around and might be done by the end of the year.

As for me, I had a pretty boring week at school. On Tuesday, I went to CMC Electronics as part of a class field trip (yes, we have those in university, apparently) and it was pretty cool to see engineers work in industry...I guess I should mention I'm in Mech Eng...anyway, yeah, that was early in the morning, so I hated everyone. I also received an exam mark back from Dynamics of Systems (remember that course? Basically find mathematical models of mechanical, electrical and/or hydraulic systems and finding the output equation using Laplace Transforms and then adjusting inputs and variables accordingly? Transfer Functions and Block Diagrams? Well...it's easier than it sounds) and I got a 96%!! Which (considering I'm a solid B student) I was very pleased with. Also, my geography class is stupid.

PLUS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws6zba8sTVw

Anyway, I think that's it for me. I have to get back to either watching Dexter or playing some Donkey Kong Country 2.

Keep it real!!

-Daniel

Show videos posted!

A lot of people have been asking me about this, and I had no idea it was up so I thought I would take the innitiative to let you all know that the videos to our first show (at Clyde's) are all posted on our youtube page so go check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/user/koalasband

Enjoy!

Another week starts..

Yo People, this is Pat-the-piano writing (first blog experience ever).
So yeah sunday, it was instrumental band practice (Ben was...somewhere...)
We started jamming on a new song idea Daniel-the-guitar brought along and it is sounding pretty epic! You should've seen our faces will doing the intro (which kicks ass): we were all smiling and looking at each other (and it kinda became awkward after like five minutes) but yeah, just to say, we're pretty excited about where this song is going!!

Tonight, i was suppose to go to a café-philo in Valleyfield. The theme was «Do we need religion?». But i had no car, so the plan fucked....instead i went with my sis' and 'rents to watch the latest Harry Potter. ''Pretty geek'', some will say... well... Fuck off! i found it awesome and can't (but will) wait for the second part coming in July!

Ok i'm off going back to do some reading for one of my essays for uni: «Do we need words to think?»...got any ideas i could use.

Peace

Pat

Long Weeks Pass Slowly

EYOOOO!! It's Chris and I have no idea how to blog anything.

A week has gone by since our first kick-ass-rock-your-sock show. We haven't really had a chance to jam since most of us are restarting with midterms. I got my last midterm tonight in Advaced Auditing (yeee can't wait). I can easily tell you that from my point of view, last week just kept dragging and dragging.

I just started watching the new show "The Walking Dead", which is amazing! Very well produced, you should ALL start watching it. The third episode played last night and each episode is about an hour in length.

The Koalas also have a dinner date with Line Spectra on Thursday. There's this place up in Little Italy called MB Sushi. They have awesome sushi, and on Tuesdays/Thursdays they have a $20.00 special all-you-can-eat. Beats the crap out of Kanda (in price and food quality).

I should get back to doing whatever it is that I was doing (not studying...),

LATA CHRIS!

The First Show

It might have been the band’s first show but they certainly made it count. Even though they seemed a little bit nervous through the first third of their set, the boys got pretty comfortable, pretty quick. The crowd may have consisted of some family, a lot of friends (including myself) and the odd random (eventually totaling to 120+ people), you couldn’t help but feel like everyone was actually having a good time and not just there for the sake of supporting the band.

Take me for example: I watch local acts every now and then, friends or not, and usually I find myself saying, “I could probably be up there playing a show too.” Not to say that the particular band is bad, it’s just that I feel somewhat underwhelmed. This was not the case on Saturday at Clyde’s. As musicians, the Koalas were so technically solid that I could never see myself being on that stage with them as an equal. They had a very natural stage presence and look very professional while having a pretty damn good time rocking out together.

The highlight of the night for me (well actually two of them) was when the band preformed "Senseless Infinity". I know it’s one of their “slower” numbers but it’s a much layered song. Coming into the show, I was worried that the venue wasn’t going to allow that song to really take off. To my delight, it sounded fantastic live and I still can’t help but be impressed by Daniels guitar work, it makes me want to put down my own guitar for good (alright maybe that’s a bit too drastic).

As for Ben, he was just absolutely ridiculous playing the role as the front man. You can tell that he was just having way too much fun up there, singing and wailing his sweaty heart out. And oh lord, was he sweaty. As for my second highlight of the night (and probably the highlight for everyone else at the show), it would most certainly be the interactive cover of "Fuck You" by Cee-Lo Green. Now, I’m not taking away from the band’s original content, which was fantastic and only got better as the set went on, but that cover was just all kinds of fun.

All in all, the Koalas’ coming out party on Saturday was a success, and then some.

- Stevie

Show virginity, taken.

So last night, The Koalas played their first show ever, along with Line Spectra, and it was *completely* awesome.

I was a little nervous the afternoon before the show, we all were, so we were gonna get together to just run through some stuff before hand. We ended up jamming for about 2-3 minutes and playing Super Mario on wii for 2-3 hours. Probably started a pre-show ritual...

We had a great turnout with about 120 people in the back room of Clydes so it was pretty ballzerko.

Anyway, thanks again to the girls from Line Spectra for helping us pop our show cherry.

-Pete

Practice before the first show

Some posts will not be written by the band but will be written by ghost writer, Stefano Manno, and will be denoted as such.


Don’t let the name fool you, The Koalas take their work very seriously and it certainly reflects in their music. For a band that has never had the luxury of playing a live show prior to their November 6th show at Clyde’s, one can’t help but be surprised The Koalas’ sound. This West Island-based group is comprised of some very capable musicians, yet very modest. I have the pleasure of knowing these guys personally and I’ll be the first to tell you how incredibly surprised I was when I first hear their demo. Influenced by bands such as Muse, Dream Theatre and Queens of the Stone Age, The Koalas’ sound is deeply rooted in modern rock with some incredibly melodic sequences. Even though they’re playing their first show in November, this band has been playing together for only a single year, yet, their confidence and cohesiveness gives the idea that they have been playing for several years now. The individual talents of the band members make this band far from your mediocre “alternative” rock band, and it shows in how intricate their work is. The Koalas produce a layered sound that doesn’t sound too busy, highlighted by Daniel’s guitar work and Patrick’s elegant piano riffs. Peter and Chris round up a fantastic rhythm section while Ben’s vocals bring the music all together. While there is still room for a lot of growth in the band, November 6th will defiantly be a grand coming out party for the Koalas and hopefully will showcase what these five men could be capable of for years to come.


-Stevie