Had a system failure in the home studio. The harddisc with all of the new album plus a few other projects fell into a deep coma! Unable to wake up the piece of hardware, it slowly dawned on me, that the back-up I had was several generations old - yes, I have not been as careful as I ought to be - thus making what I now had an album consisting of cuemixes, way below par, and not worthy of release in any form.
Fortunately, my brother had no problem in keeping calm, and phoned the harddisc manufacturer. When he finally got an engineer on the phone, we were asked to send the disc to Holland, as the disc was simply a malfunctioning series.
A few weeks went by with data recovery at their expence, before the disc was sent back to me.
Unfortunately the currier was not able to deliver it for days, as they did not understand the simple request of adress change. On the third day of delivery to a wrong adress, my wife descided to pick it up for me and hence avoiding me making a scene...
The album is back, and it's in good shape...
Now backing up!

 

The currier who could not figure out where to deliver the parcel

Hooray! They've send me foam!

Oh, there's something inside...

It's my harddisc! Weeeee!!!

back in the cabinet

Today I was reading a magazine called Soundvenue, where there was a doublepage article about Kate Bush's 1985 album 'Hounds of Love'. The article mention the Fairlight CMI workstation, and that sent me on a nostalgic journey.

Me with a Fairlight Series III in 2000

When I, in my early teens, developed an interest in music production the Fairlight was in it's autumn. But it was still, despite DX7s and affordable samplers THE machine. I was so fascinated by the myth of this machine. All of the artists/producers I admired used the Fairlight: Oldfield, Jarre, Parsons, Gabriel, Bush... All of them had the Fairlight. But none of the instrument shops had it. That was how mighty it was. Out of reach, only available to the greatest. I dreamt about Fairlights.
In 1991, and without any production skills at all, I tracked down the danish Fairlight dealer, and went to his office and asked if I could please see one. He told me, that he didn't have any, but was kind enough to give some brochures. As I walked away I peered through the windows and saw, that he actually did have a CMI. That was how close I came.
Nine years later, as the Fairlight had gone into the historybooks as a difficult, bad sounding machine, the opportunity finally came, and I was invited to spend a few hours with the Series III Fairlight. And I was disappointed! It was so slow, and the 8 bit resolution sounded so wacky (the Series III was a 16 bit machine, but I worked mostly with the IIx library which was 8 bit).
I guess the strenght of the Fairlight belonged to the artists who used it, and not - as I thought - to the machine.
I am still a bit fascinated by the machine, and I have bought the Fairlight IIx sample library, but I guess I'm more fascinated by the myth and the artists of the 80ies...

So, according to the calendar summer arrived today. This means that I have three months to keep the initial plan and release the new album this summer.
I doubt that is possible.
I am even beginning to doubt it will be a 2009 release.
The editing of the last two vocalsession is proving difficult, and I have turned to Oblique Strategies for help.
I don't know if it helps...
Yet...