Making 'Words for the Living'

Well, we've finally posted a new song... and it only took 381 days from the completion of recording to its release today! It was a tough one, but now that we've got it out there, I hope we'll be on a bit of a roll. The last week saw the completion of mixing and mastering, and it proved to be a bit of a frustrating process, but one that I reckon was worth it.
 
I feel we've taken a step up from the songs on Evacuate – the new ones, as typified by 'Words for the Living', are probably a bit simpler in their structure but more complex in their execution, which is making mixing them a bit of a tough nut to crack. There are more individual parts than usual and Grant has brough with him some more ambitious drum lines than we had on Evacuate. That's not a criticism - his parts on the new album are fantastic!
 
One recording is completed all the individual takes have to be sorted through to pick the best ones, and then carefully tweaked and massaged so that they don't step on each other and so that you can still hear them all at the same time. The choruses of this new song being a case in point – we have a string quartet, synths, guitars, bass, drums, vocals and effects all vying for the same audio real estate. Still we got there in the end, and I'm really happy with the end result. We're working hard to convey a 'sense of space' on these new recordings – recently, records seem to be getting a bit more reverb-y and echoey and I'm all for that.
 
The final challenge is mastering – trying to bring recordings up to the volume 'expected' these days without crushing the life out of them is getting harder and harder. Again, lots of last minute tweaks and late nights over the last few days, trying to make our self-imposed Easter deadline. We just about did it...