Super Audio Mastering Monks Withecombe
11.17
Super Audio Mastering Monks Withecombe, Chagford.
A beautiful morning to be alive.
Our work today: mastering the new Wilson-Fripp remix of Starless & Bible Black.
The Great Deceiver is werning away its squerning terror. Daniel Dust, Bradley Britvic, The Wilton Carpet and Rodney Frapp are all powering along. Originally recorded at Air Studios, Oxford Circus while the IRA were on active service, we looked down as Oxford Street was cleared by the police following a bomb alert.
The Wilson–Fripp mixing approach is to honour the original, sprinkling fairy dust in the form of clarity, detail and definition made possible in the digital domain.
11.33 Engineer Andy is giving The GD a young ears’ examination.
12.03 Andy Young Ears is now verifying Lament.
We have been listening to both 44.1 k and 96k versions, each with valve and transistor approaches, and some hybrids.
13.09 DiscWarrior has fought a good battle to deal with some arising glitches in this computer.
We’ll Let You Know live from Green’s Playhouse in 1973. Muscular, in a way that heralded the Red material. You can tell immediately that these young men were not playing to earn a living. Which is probably a good thing given that they were managed by EG and were never paid for live work 1969-74. You’re promoting the album and will get paid from the royalties! we were told. EG did, however, get paid: 25% of the gross fees paid for live work, in addition to the royalties of the album we were promoting. And the publishing too.
Live work was not promotion for me: playing music was sufficient unto itself. The notion of promotion, fair enough on a professional level, reduced musical necessity to commerce. But, in talking to record companies, agents, managers et al, it was sensible not to say: I play this because it has to be brought into the world! I’ll play for nothing! since we did, after all. £30 per diems per week and if any of those young men spent more than this, it was deducted from their royalties. So, it was quite possible to come back from a three-month tour having lost money for playing.
15.31 Blast from the ongoing present moment…
Tuesday, 25th July 2000; Chop `Em Out, Trinity Mews.
So, now on to "Braless And Slightly Slack".
17.18 Side One is now vibrant and running. Recorded at Air Studios, Oxford Street, in early 1974 with engineer George Chkiantz.
George was about to become a father and, one critical night, was on paternal standby and very "electric" - to the extent that while editing tape with a razor blade he began to wipe sound from fractions of the tape on either side of the edit as he held it. This meant George had to cut further into the tape to reach recorded sound each time. And then wiped a bit more. At this point George knew it was time to go home.
JW is powering "The Great Deceiver" along, which includes a rare example of RF lyric writing, drawing on a visit to the Vatican when Crim were Romanising in 1973.
17.27 Now "We'll Let You Know" live from Glasgow in a venue now demolished. It was once Green's Playhouse and featured customised carpets with "It's Great - It's Green's!" embroidered on them. Al Jolson had a sell out week here in the 1920s, I was told, so successful that he bought the promoter a Rolls.
17.30 "The Night Watch". The intro is from the live show at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the main song part from Air. This is another Crim song from this period which manages to hold open a piece of time. The guitar solo is an early recorded example of "aspirational octaves" and complete in one take. John didn't like the solo on its first pass: I persuaded him to listen some more. A personal classic solo.
17.35 "Trio": also live from the Concertgebouw. This is one example of how music downloads while 3 (or 4) young men are standing to attention. "The Sheltering Sky" was like this, although without an audience (we learnt TSS from playing back the cassette). Andrew Keeling would do a good job of arranging "Trio" for trio / quartet. Time is standing still once more today.
17.41 "The Mincer": live from Zurich. JW overdubbed vocals in the studio. Only a European front line - electric piano, mellotron & guitar - could play like this. And, probably, only a European rhythm section could play like this. Then, the tape runs out (on the original multi-track).
We don’t have the original multi-tracks for Trio and The Mincer, so have re-vibrated the original mixes, and now sound pretty ace.
15.48 Today’s inbox, from yesterday’s excitements…
iCloud gets its launch today - will it be a digital locker - will it be a 'share' service or a Stealify type app?
More importantly, where will the $30-50 million dollar advance the 4 majors are reportedly getting be going to?
Will the publishers be getting a lump sum also? Will UMG/Sony/EMI/Warner be coughing up to their artists?
What does it say of a culture when its artists are not considered sufficiently important to include in the financial accounting?
16.16 On the Guestbook…
16.16 On the Guestbook…
Your Mom's Carpet is a Boodledang
:: Posted by cantspelldiKc on June 07, 2011
An idea of the highest sacrilege. If RF deems it a necessity to vacate his position with Crimco, be it temporarily or permanently, (God help us), perhaps Dweezil could take up the slack.
Crimson’s raison d’etre is European. Clearly, the English / American special relationship is special, but needed some re-balancing; and which Gavin provided in 2008, IMO.
16.20 Starless And Bible Black now underway.
17.20 In from a Science Teacher pal…
From today's [Tues; 07 June] New York Times:
"The World Science Festival panel in the Great Hall at Cooper Union focused mostly on improvised music, especially the intuitive art of jazz, trying to address the question of what is actually happening when a musician spontaneously creates melodies, harmonies and rhythms that have never been played before."
18.16 Fracture done. Enough for today.
18.56 An evening computing ahead.
