...and it's done.

Funny thing, making an album, really. When it gets to the point where it's done, it always surprises you. It hasn't been mastered yet, but everything else has been done.

And of course, the biggest shock is that there's all this different stuff on there. Michael came up and did some more guitar tracks, and it's suddenly a much more rockin' album. He was initially a bit hesitant to rock out on the tracks, because he felt that the music wasn't really rock, but Christian told him to "make it rock", which I think Christian always wanted anyway (without it becoming, you know, a rock album). So DESYL has a lot of guitar work on it -- Jono didn't use my guitar track on that for the final mix, which disappoints me, because I think it sounds the tiniest bit empty and not punchy enough, but Christian really pushed for it so ... who knows, we might do another mix, we might not. "Yesterday's Growing" is just frickin awesome now, with an amazing guitar solo in the middle section. It saved some arses, too, because the bass bit that I laid down for that section was deleted, causing me to complain constantly that it requires the bass in that bit. Well, in the final mix, I can't tell whether the bass is there or not (my guess is that it still isn't), but it suddenly doesn't sound so empty -- the guitar really fleshed it out.

The other songs all sound really great, too. It's not totally surprising, but Jono has managed to be subtle with a lot of stuff and it's a really well-rounded mix. He does a good job, and considering the ridiculous time-frame he was given to work with, he's done absolutely amazing. The previous rough mixes we heard were, to be honest, kind of terrible. They were certainly listenable, but there was just some sort of ... I don't know, like nothing was sitting nicely on its rock, I guess you could say. Now it's all very smooth, which is fantastic since we allowed plenty of blemishes through. It's ironic -- I wanted this to be a bit rough round the edges, to show that we're not obsessed with perfection, and the result is something that sounds really tidy, quite brilliantly done.

Of course, I'm biased, and I suppose in a few months I'll call it crap, as all artists inevitably do, but for now I'm lovin it. Now all we have to do is wait for it to be mastered, and I'm sure that will give me occasion for another rant about brilliance and so on. But for now, I'm happy to say that this is an album which will make me

keeponrockin
Tom Hauville