The remastering starts

Having spent almost five times as long on the recording of our second album as we did on the first, and being much, much happier with the result, we decided it would be a good idea to go back and apply all the lessons we'd learned in the last five years to the older work and bring it up to the same standard. Remastering is, after all, a well-tried activity in "proper" music circles, and as that first album never enjoyed an official public release we figured we'd prefer to make it as good as it can be before letting it loose.

Suburban Nostalgia contained 10 tracks written by Beresford & Wallace, but we also each did a cover of a Genesis track. Retaining these covers would lead to all sorts of copyright complications and royalty payments (which we avoided first time round by not selling any of the small number of physical CDs we created for family and friends), so the remastered album will only contain our original work.

I've already redone the artwork in preparation for the new release and tonight we got together at Annie's place to start re-recording tracks, beginning with one of the ones I'd always been least pleased with. Old Love was written with a key transition in the middle which really stretched my range. Half of the song was either too high or too low, depending where I started, and the result that made the final cut of the first album sounded painfully thin and reedy in places. Happily, with new vocal warm-up techniques and some minor transpositions, the new recording is much stronger and includes some nice harmonies too - something Annie is becoming famous for. I have to admit I totally hate recording the harmonies. Although my musical memory has improved over the months, it still takes me several... takes... to "get" what she's trying to achieve. There's no denying it makes the final sound much richer, so it's something I have to put up with, but I don't have to like it!

Anyway, one down and nine to go before Suburban Nostalgia is re-released - this time for digital download.