First I'll do a quick overview on how it was all done, and then maybe a few notes specific to each song.
It was recorded onto 3 ADATs supplied by 24/7 Studios in Oxford. Robin, in charge of the recording, had to change tapes twice (40 minutes being the longest ADAT tape you can get), but still managed to get all of the music. From thence I transferred it onto my home Pro Tools system (just the cheap Digi 001 version, rather than the full blown thing) and mixed it, using the program Logic Audio for doing all the major work. When all the mixes were done, even after taking out the songs that weren't totally up to scratch it was a tantalising minute and a half too long to fit on a CD, so during the final mastering tweaks we had to shorten all the gaps, hence the audience sounding either a bit unappreciative, or extremely hurried between songs.
Almost Here: Nothing to it. Three faders (keys, Andy, audience), and a bit of reverb.
Pedestrian: My favourite mix on the record I think. First one I did, it just came out sounding pounding.
Landslide: Used a cunning little effect to remove the reverb from Jim's keyboards. Also started the album length trend of putting pretty much everything through various levels of distortion, to get rid of that horrible digital cleanliness.
Who's To Know: I think we played this one very well. Andy said "Good evening and welcome to the last Unbelievable Truth gig" after this song, but we had to cut it out due to time restrictions.
Stone: Jason inexplicably stops for a moment in this song. Maybe he was distracted.
Home Again: In my memories of the gig I'd pretty much counted this song out as a contender, but on listening back it sounded pretty magical. If you listen closely at the start you can hear me putting the tambourine on to the top of my hi-hat. All those gigs, and I never once remembered to do it before the song started.
Daylight: I really liked playing this one live, I think it showed off our strengths as players. The audience disappears super quick at the end of this one because Robin had to change the first tape...
Hypnotist: ...and got the second recording with mere seconds to spare. FIRST BIT OF STUDIO CHEATING ALERT - me and Jason's backing vocals were a bit, erm, erratic, so I took the best that each of us did and repeated it for all the lines. What are you goin' to do, huh? Sue?
Higher Than Reason: On the night by this point technical problems and mis-read setlists had totally ruined our momentum, but again on tape this turned out to be cracking. Amazing fact - you may remember that the bass wasn't working for this song. It was on tape, very quietly, but boostable to the reasonable level here. So Jase played this entire song without being able to hear a thing he was doing. And it's played fantastically. Bow down. We are not worthy.
Forget About Me: We've probably done it better at some points in the past, but the loud bit has a certain last gig desperation that is affecting to me.
Covers: Jim's justifiably proud of his piano playing here.
From This Height: Again, probably not the best time we'd played it ever, but good nonetheless.
Building: And finally we're starting to get into the swing of the gig
Agony: After doing lots of delicate audio balancing on the rest of the songs, on this one I was at pains to make Jim's guitar deliberately too loud. Hah! End of Tape 2, hence another audience falling swiftly off the end of the world.
Finest Little Space: Jim's brother inadvertently made this a nice edit. He yelled "Jim, get your cock out!", Jim replied sarcastically "OK", everyone cheered, and that's where we fade in, sounding for all the world like a smooth, together encore.
Solved: STUDIO CHEATING ALERT - Jase's replacement bass lead was pathetically short, so he couldn't get near enough to his microphone to do his backing vocal at the end. We re-recorded it here. So there.
I Can't Wait: You just have to listen to this one. Gets me quite teary, especially when Andy says "thanks, it's been fun" at the end.
top