The End is Nigh!

No, I'm not taking about dogs and cats living together or mass hysteria (though I could because that shit is coming yo). I'm talking about the end of the long drawn out process of making an album. It's been a long while since I posted an update on Coaxial Moments and right now I'm in the process of fighting to get the disc produced exactly as I want it. But let me back up and fill in all the fun happenings between my last post and right now.

On February 3, 2008 my kickass wife and I were blessed by the birth of our daughter, Charlie. That's an entire blog entry in itself. However, there are a few moments from the totally rad labor experience that tie in with the genesis of this album. Very late in the labor and only a few hours before Charlie was born, one of our midwives was checking and listening to the baby's heart rate using a Doppler monitor when I noticed the thinger had a 1/8" output on it. So, needless to say, there will be an appearance of Charlie's in-utero heartbeat somewhere on the album. My placement of this audio gem is also one of the reasons production/duplication of the CD has come to a screeching halt. More on that later...

My man Beeftheque hooked me up with a sweet turntable (that, surprisingly, had digital coaxial outputs on it) and mid-February, I laid down the scratching on the outro of "Dry Socket" and that marked the end of the actual recording phase of the album. Hooray for this.

Somewhere in here, the song formerly titled "Whack" was renamed "Regulus." Upgrade, indeed.

Next came the mastering phase. Luckily for me, the mastering was done by the illustrious Brian O'Neill of Stewd Yoe in Bristow, VA. He is one patient dude. I'm not sure how many times I made him redo the tracks, but it was a lot. In his defense, most of the issues were due to shitty mixes, so I had to go back, remix the track then send it to him to be mastered yet again.

After more than a month of this (we both were having fun getting thrown up on by our kids), shit was finally done done.... well, until I realized that I hated how "Sneaky Falls (198X)" turned out. Rather than slap yet another "back to square one" request on Brian, I decided to just remix and master this tune myself. So if that song ends up sound like shit to you, it's 100% my fault, not his! If I could have avoided this, I would have but trust me, it was shittay. It was a classic example of tweaking a track to the point where you suck all of the life out of it. It reached a point where the magic that initially made me choose this song to be on the album was gone. I ended up reverting the mix to sounding very close to where it was the day I wrote it (September 17, 2003).

Now that the music was locked down, I began the artwork and layout for the insert and packaging. I put just as much work and artistic energy into this as I did with the music. It's been a long time since I undertook such a large visual project and it felt good to do some graphic design again. The art ties in with the album really well and I'm extremely pleased with how it turned out.

The next step was burning the master. Sounds easy, right? NO! Being the demanding fellow that I am, I decided I needed some trickery on the CD authoring tip. I needed the disc to be EXACTLY 42 minutes and 00 milliseconds. I also needed two songs to have pregap tracks. This is where the issues with "making the dream a reality" started to kick me in the face. I figured with all their mighty technology, DiscMakers wouldn't have any trouble recreating a CD I authored in my attic. I figured wrong:

I am currently in possession of 100 kinda-close versions of Coaxial Moments and it hurts my feelings. The packaging and printing came out super-nice and professional looking, but the pregap stuff is nonexistent. Effing FROWNY FACE. I had even called DiscMakers a few times to make sure that there was no funny stuff with the CD. I was looking for 100 EXACT copies of the master I sent them, no more, no less. Unfortunately, they didn't really get this.

I immediately contacted DiscMakers and they offered to knock off 25% from the duplication cost. Although that would mean about $100.00, it would mean that I would have a CD that I ALMOST dreamed about producing. Luckily for me, I have a great support system backing me. I thought back to an e-mail I got from Lucas in February when I was fretting over the mastering process. It simply read, "I say go with what you want...no compromises." I immediately called Antje to get her input and she concurred that I should hold out for a product that I'm 100% happy with.

The down side to this is that the prophesized (not a real word!) release date of June 7, 2008 wasn't going to happen. This also hurts my feelings.

So as I type this a new master is out for delivery to DiscMakers' New Jersey facility for evaluation. There's still a chance that they might not be able to do what I want them to. If that's the case, I will try to see if they'll let me burn the discs then send them back for printing and packaging.

I just want this to be over and done with. I'm so sick of working on this album.....