Sunday 2 January 2005

I'm in the land of the first edit. I'm finishing my notes on the first edit of the Kellie for Linn Records, and have finally got to the position where there is a first edit of the Lion CD, which I'm editing myself. The land of the first edit is a nice place, in that the records now have a shape rather than being hours of takes and a lot of written notes, but in a sense it's all downhill from here, as most of the work still to come entails tracking down all the things you don't like. You don't really get to listen to the music properly and enjoy it; instead, you're listening to weed out all the little distractions that will stop you and other people from enjoying it. That violin squeak here, the dodgy edit there, that place where the harpsichordist played random nonsense and nobody noticed at the time, the distant ambulance siren (no I'll leave that in, see if you can spot it in the Kellie).  It's a tiring process: I can only listen with that level of concentration for 10 or 15 minutes at a time before my brain starts to fry.

The Lion CD (or SADN II) is quite a beast. It's still lacking a couple of tracks - we're going to record some fiddle tunes in February - and there are no vocals anywhere on it yet, unless you count the snippets that appear in the middle of 'Road to Sanaig' of the four of us talking about what we think about on stage. But the overall shape is, well, a bit baffling actually. We've got 63 minutes of music so far, so there's room for weeding.

My New Year's Resolution is to reply less promptly to emails (unless they're very short).

People used to assume that as a person got older, their taste in music would mature towards more complex forms, as though you would grow out of pop music and into opera. Of course this is a laughable idea now.  But I'm a little intrigued at my increasing capacity to listen to country music - I blame Loretta Lynn's album with Jack White. I've been listening to Willie Nelson's new album at home, and what intrigued me first about it is that it's got lots of very classy musicians playing on it, but they hardly play a thing. They keep right out of the way to showcase the main event that is the man's voice.  And doing almost nothing in a very classy way is a skill that only the best have, in whatever musical genre: it's the art of moving the audience without drawing attention to yourself. Then when they turn the light on you, you can put on your spangly pants and go berserk of course.