Racing

This is what it is like in the land of independent record labels.

I took the test pressings down to James's house and we listened on his portable record player: tinny but true. It just wouldn't connect to his bluetooth speaker, but we were able to hear that sides two, three and four were fine, but side one had a distinctive crackle that ran through the whole side. 

I contacted Damaged Goods, and Ian had a listen and could hear it too. So that's a dodgy side of a test pressing to be sorted out. I kind of panicked about the actual sound of the whole thing and quickly texted Gina to ask if I could listen to just part of a track on Mike's Rega record player. I had to get there before five and raced all the way from Honor Oak Park to Tufnell Park, with all the train destinations going against me. Calm, calm, calm... I got there in the nick of time and managed to have a quick listen. It sounded fabulous. Lee at Yuba Studios has done a fine job of disentangling the sounds from the wash of reverb that we mistakenly polished everything with, and you can hear the individual instruments really clearly. How hard we worked to get our songs sounding good! I'd had misgivings about resurrecting this album, but I think it's going to be something to be really proud of.

Simultaneously, Ian was finishing off the cover, which looks great, and we have approved that too.

I may need to spend the day in bed tomorrow. 

Although I may not... Robert has agreed to play guitar on one of my solo album tracks, Lester Square turned in an amazing guitar part the other day, Terry Edwards will play trumpet, and Winston Blissett is going to play bass on one of them. I spent a lot of time editing last week; I was indisposed and sitting still and fiddling about with note lengths and positions was just right. I re-played one song entirely, and decided to float off from the click track and just let it fly.

The Logic program has started behaving oddly, so I'll be making safety copies tomorrow. I have my trusty acoustic guitar to try out a sound with, and then I may do some bass parts.

It's so odd: the songs start to crystallise out suddenly after giving the appearance that they are not going to work. It's often just one tiny little recalibration, and the whole thing falls into place.

Yesterday, I had a day off. It was the vintage car parade through town, which I missed because I forgot about it. However, the cars were on display on the rooftop car park of the shopping centre. I fell in love with an Austin Healey. I think I need to start doing the lottery again.