DON'T GIVE UP ON US/'MONUMENTS TO AN ELEGY' UPDATE

Yes Sir, two down, 7 to go. Sound like I'm counting the days? David having nailed the ambience of DORIAN's sanguinity…

But not before I dubbed the vocal as presented 'uneventful'; or 'too dry' in studio parlance. Ambience added, I felt it worse. "How about 'The Pumpkinizer'?" I suggested; as so dubbed by Butch VIg circa 1990. An Eventide H3000 patch he'd amended you'd instantly recognize from GISH onward. And laughable I still have the setting saved!

"Let's try it," David said, and I'll be darned if it didn't work again for the 1000th time. "It just does that thing," Jeff said, and I didn't argue though I figured with all the new-fangled plug-ins out there the gimmick would no longer be needed.

Together we'd listen to the prints off tape, which ambience-wise always come back a little more stark, but lush. A slight tweak of the delay setting and we were done; David being fast in his brilliance.

And a side note: there's always a bit of sadness at every step of the recording process; from the writing to the demo, the demo to the actual master, from the master to a mix master; and even mastering. As some-thing must be let go of (that you liked) to ostensibly 'get' something better. And I do feel that here too, as DORIAN'S bleak, 80's-ish rough gives way to a print that David masterfully made much more contemporary. My general thought being: "Well, I'm not the one who has to fall in love with it…"

W.P.C.