Available on streaming sites.

NOTE: This will probably reach vinyl / cassette / CD, along with all the bonus material. Don’t know when, but will be trying to make that happen. Maybe an archival label will eventually help out with that process.

Originally released as a demo album in 2005 on compact disc. Recorded with 3 microphones on a portable 8-track (BR-8) in an attic in Logan Square, Chicago, IL. The album was created in late 2004-2005 as the band was coming together and playing shows around Chicago and Detroit. OFFICE would conduct overdub and vocal sessions after band rehearsal throughout that year. Upon the album’s release, it found positive reviews throughout the mid-west, and eventually made its way to a bunch of people who worked in the music industry. This led to modest national and international exposure, showcases at SXSW and CMJ in 2006, licensing deals for major ad campaigns and TV shows, radio airplay, a performance at Lollapalooza, Pitchfork after-parties, a million press articles, interviews and blog hype, sold-out performances throughout LA, Detroit, Chicago and NYC, inclusion on the homepage of iTunes as “Download of the Week”, and record contract offers from multiple labels. OFFICE eventually signed with Scratchie Records / New Line Cinema, owned and operated by James Iha of the Smashing Pumpkins. Song selections and source material from demos and “Q&A” were selected for the band’s only major label release: “A Night at the Ritz” (2007). Although the recordings from “the ritz” are more polished and reached a wider audience through album sales, touring, promotion, TV, etc…..the versions found on “Q&A” are much more inspired and authentic, despite their lo-fi bedroom-production aesthetic. During the pandemic, these recordings were salvaged from the original 8-track machine they were recorded on, dumped onto ProTools, remixed through analog and digital tools, and then transferred to tape in 2023 as part of a reissue project. Now that we own the masters and publishing to the songs, the process of putting all this old music out has been very rewarding, albeit slow-moving. Since the songs were never really mastered or mixed properly to begin with, Scott made an attempt to balance them and bring out the most from of each layer of sound, taming nasty frequencies in the process, and opening up other areas of the stereo spectrum for other instruments to breathe a little easier. Due to the fact that so much “bouncing” was happening during the production, along with effects and compression printed right to the tracks as they were made, the album was a challenge to mix. There was also really no way to achieve a decent “clearer”, balanced mix of this album until some newer cutting-edge software tools were invented in the last few years. For example: one track layer of a song might contain 4 vocal harmonies, two guitars, glockenspiel, and piano….all bounced and squashed together. Another layer of a different song might contain 3 toy pianos, organ, and vocal harmonies. Since there wasn’t much money to access microphones or decent digital multi-tracking tools in 2005, each song has multiple acoustic drum sets, percussion, handclaps, and drum machines overdubbed on top of each other to create a truly bizarre and unique vibe for each rhythmic foundation. In other words: the record just "is what it is". It was an experiment in pushing low-tech equipment to its absolute limits during the 2000s, before most home-recording enthusiasts had access to affordable computers and DAWs.

The only revision made during this remix was to the song “Busy With Other Things”. Through “digital magic”, the song’s chorus refrain was finally completed using sampled vocal sounds and syllables found within the original vocal performance, and a previous demo of the song. The refrain now says “I missed the phone ring”. If you have the original CD booklet from 2005, you’ll see that a _____ (blank) was left in the lyrics because the song was never finished before it was released. It just had a silly throwaway lyric on the original mix. Quite often when this song was performed live, the lyrics would sporadically change during that part. It was either a matter of leaving that song off this reissue, or taking a little poetic and production license to fix the problem. This reissue project is an opportunity to sonically-balance old recordings, catalog things into one place, and put a bow on a vast catalog of quickly-made, haphazard musical documents from a bygone era….all without adding anything new to the recordings, and staying true to the original artistic intent. Most of the recordings were made during periods of extreme poverty and stress.

Thank you for listening. xoxo