elegant simplicity

This is just a very short note to let you know that Aquatorium is now at the pressing plant and should be here within days! Stay tuned . . . . . !

It is with great pleasure that I announce that the artwork for the new CD was finished last night. It looks beautiful. Certainly, the best artwork since Palindrome. As is customary, the entire packge will be in glorious full colour, with double sided inlay, 8 page booklet and a gorgeous litho-offset printed label - not silk-screened! Sumptuous is the word that springs to mind. Anyway, I will upload a shot of the front cover later today.

In other related news, I have to report that I have dropped the track Mood # 9 from the CD due to a technical issue. Basically, for reasons I have yet to fathom, there is some unruly background noise in the guitar part. Nothing major, just terribly annoying. I kept playing it and playing it, hoping the noise would not bother me . . . . no luck! It's way too late in the day to re-record the piece.

In a bizarre stroke of good fortune, though, the running order works better ...

Despite heroically battling some kind of cold/flu/tb/whatever . . I have managed to re-record the drums and mix 7 of the eight tracks of the new CD. The last track is the hardest one, but I am hoping to complete it this week. I cannot stress enough how great the stuff sounds; I am so relieved that the decision to re-record the drums has proven to be the correct course of action. On top of all that, the basic artwork is sketched out now and looking very nice indeed. I will shortly be costing the manufacture up and, all being well, we're still looking for a release within the next eight weeks or so.

In between all of that, I am also re-locating - leaving the wet and windy streets of Manchester far behind and 'getting it together, man' in the country. Well, semi-rural country, truth be told - cannot stray too far away from my beloved coffee shops! There will be no disruption to the on-line shop, so please co ...

Following the previous post regarding the new album, I have decided to trim the number of tracks to eight by removing the song Feels Like a Lifetime. This brings the album to just under an hour, which makes the whole thing flow a lot better. The excised track is a great 10 minute piece and I really like it, particularly as it features a great performance from Ken. Once I sort out the music section of the webiste, I may make this track exclusively available to the mailing list audience.

In the June newsletter just sent out, I mentioned that there will be a slight delay with the new album: it's looking to be an August release. I am not happy with the drum sound, (even though subjectively it sounds great), so I am going to remix the tracks with my new found focus to see if I can make the album even better. More than any other of our albums, I relly feel that this is 'the one', so I am determined to get is sounding as good as possible.

Yesterday, I spent a few hours with the 100 minutes of music and songs I had recorded for the new CD. The object of the exercise was to whittle down the 12 tracks into an album of around 50 or 60 minutes. Of course, I could go for a double album! It would work thematically, but the cost would be prohibitive.

Anyway, I think I have settled on 9 songs, running to 67 minutes. Possibly, this is a tad over-long but the running order really works. My favourite track at the moment is Fragments. This is a kick ass slow burner with a beautiful middle section followed by a hard rock finale!

I burned the songs to a CD and will spend a few days listening to them to see if they need any more editing, remixing or whatever. Initial gut feeling is that the answer is no, but, you never know! You can spend days getting a track to sound right only to find some little thing niggling away at the back of your mind. Then you have to go back in the studio and re-m ...