The Foundry Field Recordings’ Billy Schuh Explains Away This Night In Austin:

“Who isn’t up for a late night recording session? Luckily for us the Daytrotter folks still had energy enough to record us in the final slot on day one of SXSW. Accompanying us on violin was our friend Maura Dunst who appears on our upcoming release Fallout Stations EP.

“The session was a little different then our practice and recording spaces in our beloved Columbia, MO, but everybody made the proper adjustments and our first two songs went off without a hitch. THEN the power went out in half the studio. Pat and Sean worked on the situation for an hour and half. We honestly could have been fine with making up the session, but Pat and Sean were determined to get the rest of this session finished, as well as make sure Sound Team had power for their early morning practice. Power was rerouted and redirected and after a lengthy wait, we were back to work. Unfortunately since it was so late, and we were dealing with a sound curfew of sorts, we had to put a couple of new songs on hold for a couple that would be a bit quieter. The last two were done on the strength ten very tired people and the exact amount of tape left on the machine (I think the tape stopped right at the end of our last song). All in all a great time and a great start to SXSW.”

This night was excruciating and caused us many meltdowns, none of which were directly the cause of this terrific band. They’d just had a long haul from Missouri and we’d just had a monster of a day recording – they were the fifth band on this Wednesday – and everyone’s nerves were frayed. So when half of Big Orange’s power took a shit on us, it didn’t help matters. We worked for about an hour to solve the problem. We called every member of SOUND Team we could. They sent text messages back and forth, trying to help us troubleshoot. The best advice was to keep flipping the circuit breaker…this happens every once in a while and then all is well after a few healthy flips. We did this til it hurt. Nothing. We were going to call it off and go with a two song session, but right before we waved the white flag, Pat decided we were going to used extension cords and just route all of the power to the good side, risking us blowing out the rest of the power. We proceeded apprehensively, but it worked and the last two songs of this set are the results of a grueling night and I believe they’re far more beautiful for the strain. In the morning, we discovered, through some exterior investigation, that the main breaker is located behind the building, in the alley, out in the open for any yahoo to turn the master power off. Some dick, probably drunken and walking home from The Gossip or Lily Allen show downtown, thought he’d be funny. And it was…funny. – Sean Moeller

First song
Assembled Hazardly (Foundry Field Recordings) [3.35MB] [1368 downloads]


– original version appears on Prompts/Miscues
A song about the process and routine you go through in any kind of relationship (life, job, significant other, etc.) and how it cycles and repeats until inevitably it is terminated, much like the machines we depend on to get through our lives.

Second song
Battle Brigades Part II (Foundry Field Recordings) [3.27MB] [1337 downloads]


– original version appears on Prompts/Miscues
I went on this tear of songwriting about the military industrial complex. And the idea for “Battle Brigades Part One,” which is this building wall of sound, to just cut into a much quieter song, was to demonstrate the build up of everything military and technology, because one day it will end in one fell swoop.

Third song
Buy/Sell/Trade (Foundry Field Recordings) [2.84MB] [1325 downloads]


– unreleased
Originally written about a woman I fell for, who went on to marry a real estate developer, but after several lyrical edits, it echoed this overall sense of society needing to continually graduate to the next stage of life. High school, college, career, marriage, children, retirement, death. But with this desire to continually “move up” we often forget about the things that happen along the way. I wrote this way early on in the Foundry’s history, it just seems to keep following us up along the way. A re-recorded version appears on our new EP Fallout Stations.

Fourth song
Circuits on Board (Foundry Field Recordings) [4.08MB] [1331 downloads]


– original version appears on Prompts/Miscues
Unfortunately, I watch way too much television news. This song came from the images at U.S. military bases and Iraq. I would see images of soldiers loading missiles in these wooden crates to be shipped overseas to be delivered during bombing runs. The next set of images were that of various Iraqi citizens burying their family members in similar wooden crates. Thus the lines about “crates and graves.” An anti-war observation of sorts.