Further notes that I don’t mind if anyone reads or don’t reads.
It s nice when people notice the ideas and work you put into something you expect no one to notice. So, due to the reading of some comments on the inter text, and also one or two conversations with record lovers I thought I would try to explain why there is or should have been a label on our “Man of Aran” dvd/lp (album/soundtrack) that would read some thing like the following.
“This recording was made with a higher than usual dynamic range please turn up your stereo appropriately.”
Indeed on our new lp/dvd “Man of Aran” we have embraced some new recording principles. We decided to have quiet bits and loud bits (dynamic range) where the quiet bits are really quiet and the loud bits are really loud. Profound? Well no, not really, but fairly uncommon at the end of the first decade of the 20C. I would never imagine it to be the kind of the kind of recording destined for massive radio airtime anyway, and if the engine of your car momentarily drowns out the sound of the sea, just off of the Aran shoreline as you pass the Birmingham services and think about having a pasty, then so be it. Neither are we claiming any moral artistic statement of any kind on the current argument against squashed up super loud compressed mastering techniques. Musical purists. I am not.
Some music sounds good squashed to fuck and low quality. It can be exciting and may be revered in 50 years time as artists try to replicate the sound of the legendary mac book pro speakers with the latest quantum microphones. Perhaps not. In some ways you could say it reflects the modern age/day very well. “Man of Aran” is not really about the modern age. It is possibly more about something forgotten between the daily tasks amongst dishwashing robots etc.
Basically turn up your volume
Because it sounds quieter but is in fact louder.
Side note 34.1
Glad the improvement of audio quality has been noticed due to the fact that it is the first record we recorded entirely our selves. Recorded largely on tiny slithers of metallic silver all the way from Russia.
Side note 34.2
Spent today overdubbing Abi playing amazing viola work on an intricate song currently clocking in at around 12 to 15 Martian minutes long. Said track s were then overdubbed to form what will henceforth be known as the “Abi-chestra”. In between the sound of Hamilton mixing one of the best and strangest sounding songs would drift up the corridor.
Side note 34.3 to side note 34.1
I predict 87 % of the next album will sound nothing like Man of Aran. Of the remaining 13 %, 69 % will sound everything like “Man of Aran”.
(Text piece. File under audio)
I’ve noticed that the sound quality on Man of Aran is massively better than Do You Like Rock Music? I can now turn the volume up to eleven and it sounds beautiful.
Yay! Great stuff, not a fan of “squashed to fuck and low quality”. Will be picking this album up pronto now, keep recording like that, pleeeeeeeeeeeease!
Actually, further to that, and at the risk of being very boring, were the previous albums squished at the recording stage or the mastering stage? Just trying to find out whether the possibility of remastering (no matter how many years from now) is a real or forlorn hope…