Well I've been tinkering at the mastering stage for a few days now with the occasional false dawns. Yesterday I remembered a forgotten technique to fix what I thought ailed the sound - basically one more round of multiband compression and overall compression to regain levels and presto! everything sounded groovy. In recent years I;ve been a bit compression shy, but when you stck the instruments up it really does help. So Ive burned 6 copies and will print covers today and will get head together to send off to duplicators for 100 to be copied.

So I guess I can say that (cue fanfare) the Songs for Dreamers CD is NOW OUT!
I put  anew track on myspace (Don't Turn Away).
Soundclips and info (to be added to) is here.
As with Close the Circle the lyric sheet is online. Sorry no filk or silly songs on this one (Monkeys on the Moon was held over in case Obama gets in as I explained before). Will save and compile all filk and silly songs for The Stupid Album someday.

Thanks to the wondrous Becket Gladney for groovy cover art
     back cover.

At 1am last night I accidentally shifted my mental powers from the new album to shifting the Earth's crust. Result - Earthquake. Sorry about that.
Truly was a strage moment tho - the strongest earthquake I felt apart from that one in San Francisco in the middle of my set at Ethel & Ray's house - which led to gags about me bringing the house down etc.




  

Saw artwork for Bridget's album - not to my taste really - very generically  new age "Celtic Woman"  and not very "Bridget" - It doesn't look bad - . But I stay out of artwork issues with the new age label these days. I used to get stuck in and pitch my corner, but now I realise that I don't really have a feeling for their core market and what that buyer thinks looks cool.

My taste comes out of growing up listening to lots of German jazz label ECM and recently electronic labels like Hypnos with their moody and minimal "arty" covers and the singer songwriter world where you actually want things to look quirkily different. New age covers need to look cosy and be very descriptive of concept or title with no ambiguity. I tend to like an air of mystery in cover art - well in art too.
Everyone has a different cover art background and experience. As a kid Caravanserai era Santana covers were the coolest.  The Vizier thinks cover art begins and ends with Roger Dean's Yes covers - whereas I always thought they looked a bit naff.

Plus I'm not a visual artist or designer really - I enjoy having  ago but it's not my trade -  My fave cd cover I've designed is probably Continuum - Neptune. and was quite pleased with Chocolate Bossa and the new Planet Scanners CD.

Some fave cover art out there