Incoherence

Today (8th November 2024) there’s another new/old release. This time it’s “Incoherence”.

This album was recorded in 2003, the year when I had my studio in the Somerset village of Mells, after moving out of the Walcot Gate address where I’d been for many years. I finished mixing it just a few days before I had my heart attack. My recovery from that was comparatively fast but I wsn’t really up for a daily commute at first, nor for doing any remixing. So the album came out with that initial mix unchganged.

At different times over the years I had some regrets about that: there were elements of clunkiness whcih I felt I could have been corrected. I never did anything about it until some years ago I began to wonder about a vinyl release for the work (it had only ever been on CD before). Since that involved finding a Side A/B split point I went back to the original multitracks to see how that could be managed. Well, one thing led to another and eventually I ended up with a completely remixed version.

I say “version” but there are in fact two variants. I’d decided originally that the album should run continuously – in fact it was the last long-form piece I made. Fair enough, but perhaps that made for something of an arduoous listening experience. I’d always regarded individual pieces of the work as songs in their own right – they’d been given their own titles in the initial track listing – but now I thought it might be interesting to separate them out as discrete items. This would also show exactly how I’d pre-planned and worked on the various transition moments.

As I say, the album is out today, on Esoteric. Yes, there’s a vinyl version at last; and the CD version is a double disc, the “songs” version and the continuous one. All have the new mix which to my ears is much improved. I hope you enjoy it.

It’s worth saying at this point, by the way, that I’m not going to keep on going back and reworking things from the past. In fact I think this is about it for that kind of activity. I’m currently working on a number of new tunes and hope to have an album finished early in 2025. Not sure exactly what it’ll be yet but surprise is the essence of life, eh?

Next week I’m off to Italy to do some shows (about time, you may say), so I’ve still got a fair bit of rehearsal to do. Onward!