I always go gaga whenever I find an artist offering candid thoughts on the various aspects of how they work – especially when they’re communicating directly with normal people on the same level.

As a result, my jaw dropped when I discovered that the master of gorgeously recorded and mixed sound, Tchad Blake himself, had been posting on the GearSlutz.com forum. He responds candidly on various technical details regarding production and mixing, delving into topics that include mixing, recording drums, binaural techniques (for which he is well known) and even what he used to make that funky drum program on Neil Finn’s Rest of the day off

You can find his posts by doing a search for posts by him: this link should get you the results.

It’s moments like this that I am fond of this Internet thing.

As a side note, it was also interesting to see Richard D. James making some posts about analogue synthesizers around the time of the AFX releases. Worth a read – search for his posts by looking for the word ‘analord’ (the name he posted under)

Given I just made the terrifying discovery that it got airplay on Triple J a couple of days ago, I suppose it’s safe to assume that the cat is out of the bag and that I’m OK to blog about it.

Admittedly, secrecy was poorly maintained to say the least, but nonetheless I’m now officially pleased to announce the existence of my 3AM Remix of Gotye’s excellent song, Heart’s A Mess. Here’s the 20 second snippet I posted a while back:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The remix was an entirely unexpected project, both for myself and Gotye (aka Wally de Backer), but one thing has lead to another and it now seems that it will appear on the next Gotye LP, a remixes and covers compilation scheduled for release in July entitled Mixed Blood. You can read many different announcements about this.

In conjunction with making my own announcement of the remix, I would like to say thankyou to Wally, who offered phenomenally helpful advice and generous amounts of his time to see it through to completion, and to my brother Michael who inspired the project in the first place. Also many thanks are also due to Janet, Colin, Jatin, Yimmy, (the long suffering) Camilla and far above all, the ever-awesome Carly. Thanks also to Michael Morrow for helping out with some details in the mix engineering.

Briefly about the track for those interested: most of the sounds were created and programmed in Audiomulch, following which I transferred everything across to Pro Tools for additional production and mixing. Wally played some brushes on it early one morning while we were playing with the song, and Michael added some polish.

If you’ve just surfed in after hearing it, I’d love to hear what you think of the track. Feel free to drop me an e-mail (link on the right hand side) or leave a comment.

And don’t forget to buy a copy of Mixed Blood when it hits stores! I for one can’t wait to get mine. To sate your appetite for the time being, go listen to the very cool ENS remix of Puzzle With A Piece Missing on the Gotye myspace.

Update: the Mixed Blood track list has been posted.

All hail Johnny Marr!

Update: if you’re here looking for info on my Gotye remix, check out this article: 3AM Remix of Heart’s A Mess

Gotye has announced his first Australian national tour with his mini orchestra, supported by Mountains in the Sky.

Dates are available on his official news release.

See you there!

I’m not sure I know anyone who’s such a devoted fan of Joy Division that they’ll buy shoes featuring artwork from their Unknown Pleasures album, but I suppose someone will be overjoyed to hear about this.

In other related news, apparently New Order are hanging it up. Don’t know where that leaves Bernard – Johnny’s a bit busy with his other pursuits to have another crack at Electronic…

Not content with the small doses of fame, glory and friends he sought in the world of MySpace, it seems that the mysterious and elusive Syms Covington has made the jump across into the world of blogging.

His first post announces an intent to provide an “outlet for film and band reviews” – which naturally sounds more interesting than his past pursuits of shooting animals for Darwin.

(People love my Google Juice)

Consider U2 in 1990-1991:

1. Find themselves as everybody’s favourite band
2. Tell the world “we have to go away, and just dream it all up again“
3. Bono and The Edge write parts of the score for the stage production of A Clockwork Orange
4. Release their best album ever: the expectation defying Achtung Baby, and follow it up with a tour that is unlike anything seen at that point.

Flash forward to today:

1. Suddenly everybody’s favourite band again
2. Are heard to say “Our band has certainly reached the end of where we’ve been at for the last couple of albums … want to see what else we can do with it, take it to the next level; I think that’s what we’ve got to do” (which after the last two albums of mostly dreck, I couldn’t agree more)
3. Bono and The Edge write parts of the score for the stage production of Spiderman
4. ???

Given the neat symmetry of the first three points, I can only speculate that point 4 will deliver accordingly.

… OK, this may once again be a case of my wishful thinking, but one can dream…

Oh and if you hadn’t heard, Popmart is coming out on DVD in June. I hope they remixed the audio, but good news for us fans of their now severly underrated 90s output.

So, I duck into the Sydney CBD to pick up the new album released today by our favourite good times tunesmiths, The Basics. And as a pleasant surprise the packaging really, really looks cool! Maybe my expectations were lowered after the presentation of the last two Gotye albums which I found slightly disappointingly short on substance (good thing the the recordings themselves are, of course, excellent)

Tada:

It contains liner notes, all lyrics, all presented in a manner which looks like business, but never loses the twinkle in its eye.

Here’s the whole kit and caboodle:

Now, shoo! To the record store, you! Go grab yourself a copy!

As for the music, I can already say the tunes are fantastic, having seen plenty of it live. Now to give the album my customary 3-5 initial spins to let it settle in. First impressions are that there’s plenty of new discoveries to be made: the arrangements of the tunes differ (sometimes subtly, sometimes to a great amount) from their live presentation. But I’m not even going to think about writing a review at this early stage of my familiarity with it. But overall, great fun. Go get it.