Further notes that I don’t mind if anyone reads or don’t reads.

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)

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Be careful when mixing stimulants…………

 

and wrestling. I happened upon this old photograph today. Until then I’d forgotten about the time we were challenged by mexican wrestlers behind the main stage at the Reading festival last year. Generally not a band to miss out on a once in a life time chance like this i became “bad sock” for the afternoon.

Nobby Martin looks rather excited in the background there doesn’t he. Maybe he is relishing the thought of my imminent slam down onto the hard grass. Maybe he s had a couple of drinks or something. Perhaps he is slightly innebreiated and has already broken the rules of wrestling stagecraft  by going off the plan  in his earlier blood soaked doubles bout and encouraged these fellas to show us who the bosses are. Either way I am about to die unless this masked man passes out from inhaling the potent power of my  sock hands soon. They really were potent weapons those gig socks, and had to be burned at the end of the festival season.

To be fair they were great lads the wrestlers, and they didn’t hurt us much. It was probably only a similar level of danger to being almost glassed by a geordie in a bear costume. Maybe safer.

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