Listening Room: Holocaust, Psychotic Impetus & The Sides of Honesty Remasters

by Evan Schafer

/
1.
After All 04:12
2.
Nocturnal 07:00
3.
This Isn't the Indy 500 03:19
4.
Locked Inside 03:01
5.
Ambient 11:01
6.
Shepherd 05:15
7.
Another Cold February 03:14
8.
Neon 04:07
9.
Holocaust 03:37
10.
This Night... 04:06
11.
Hallucination 05:30
12.
Edge 05:13
13.
Icy 03:14
14.
Painting the Earth 04:35
15.
Equal 02:12
16.
On the Roof 04:01
17.
Still Life 05:08
18.
Storm Has Passed 04:17
19.
Echo (Poetry) 04:22
20.
Psychotic Impetus 04:10
21.
Impact 03:49
22.
The Sides of Honesty 04:20
23.
Curled Up 02:02
24.
Andrew 03:32
25.
More Than You 04:06
26.
Under Duress 06:26
27.
Curious People 03:27
28.
My Corrections 03:19
29.
Tattoo 05:23

about

A Note on the Remasters

When I went into the process of remastering Holocaust, Psychotic Impetus and The Sides of Honesty, I knew that the process wouldn’t be as simple as listening back extensively to master tracks. Rather, this ended up including the rediscovery of the best ideas that had been recorded and used in the original masters and subsequent releases, but then finding new and exciting takes previously unused or even creating brightly remixed versions of the originals, providing a new voice to old works.

I didn’t want a--by all definitions--“traditional” remastering project. Since my entire goal when I set out to create a record is to constantly be enlightening the listener with unique and even brazen works of art, the same goal applied when returning to previously recorded songs. A truth that became strikingly clear as I went through each collection of master tracks was that I was a blindingly un-detailed engineer and mixer of my own records, but the production itself was surprisingly fine. True, as time passes and we learn and grow as artists and people, obvious things start making themselves known. People would approach me and tell me how much they loved the songs on these records or others, but that they preferred my newer works most of all. Wondering why this was, I set out on a journey to re-envision my three most commercially and critically successful records.

What had made them fade into the background while albums like Point Inspiration and, most recently, Babelism, took the spotlight? For sure, people hadn’t forgotten tracks like “Edge”, “Still Life”, “Impact” and “Curious People”, had they? Or, perhaps, they were boring all along and never contained that certain spice. Or, perhaps, it was a damning mixture of both, which would ultimately create a challenge for me. So I took the common ground route. I knew that the songs stood the test of time--enough critics had lauded these three records for that to be plainly evident--but I had to create something different. A remaster project for the ages.

Holocaust was a beast unto itself. The master tracks, as many people know, were recorded directly to 16-track analog masters along with countless overdubs, effects, and even vocals and percussion recorded to a consumer-grade 4-track tape deck that belonged to my father and sat in a dusty basement for years. In common-speak, this means that critical pieces of Holocaust’s tracks were captured on simple cassette tapes and bounced to the master 16-track, sometimes with all four tracks of a particular cassette being bounced to a single track on the reel-to-reel master. A lot of work went into tracking down the cassettes in particular, but then having to systematically refile everything in order of recording on these tapes was a documentation nightmare. Old track logs that were rendered at the ends of sessions were also referenced, but because I never took proper care of logging the cassettes in the reel-to-reel track logs, it was like creating the record from scratch . . . a second time.

“Nocturnal”, “Shepherd”, the title track and “This Night...” contained the most bits and pieces that originated on these cassettes. Another truth that I discovered fairly quickly through replaying these cassettes is that nearly all--probably 95%--of my vocal takes were recorded with such a close mic technique during the session and a glistening treble in the post-production mixing, that even if turned up slightly, a hiss was very much present. Comparing to the instrumental masters which almost never contained this hiss, I wondered if this was the case in records previous to Holocaust as well as subsequent ones. Realizing that this was indeed true, and by all means an unconscious production decision, I scrambled to be sure I showed off this element to its greatest effect on every track throughout the process.

Remastering, I learned, is not about trial and error, as is the case with the original recording sessions, nor is it about perfecting audio that is, somehow, imperfect. It is, however, about analyzing what had been done by the artist themselves, the producer, engineer, etc., and the thoughts, ideas and intentions that had gone into the production of each track and then thinking extensively about what would bring new life to those once “final” masters. Taking into account that, for each album, some data had undoubtedly been lost in the progression of time and the improvement of technology and software, I had to painstakingly account for and evaluate what had been lost. In particular, certain synthesizer patches on each of these three remastered albums no longer existed, forcing me to choose between remastering a downmixed former master that contained no available way to level each recorded instrument and vocal, or find a suitable alternative that would fit in the original’s place, perhaps allowing for other instruments to shine over a particular passage that hadn’t before.

Some things I also learned: pianos need to be less bassy and more bright; basses need to be more full and not so dark and muddy; drums need to lie above the rest of the mix just slightly, along with the bass, so that a strong rhythm section is procured at the outset; and, if none of those things exist in a song’s mix, a more plaintive, sparse mix is necessary so as not to be overbearing on a listener’s ears. These three records contained examples of both grandiosely- and sparsely-arranged tracks, so it took quite some time to find the right balance for individual tracks as well as how they flowed from one into another.

Brass, strings, woodwinds. I like to play around with those things a lot, particularly on Psychotic Impetus’s tracks, even though I’d begun this experimentation on Holocaust in lesser amounts. The sessions for tracks arranged with these orchestral seasonings oftentimes took place separate from when I would track the basic piano, keyboards, bass, drums and guitar, as the case may be. Vocals almost always took place last, but sometimes I would get a little slap-happy at the opportunity to perform live with a group of session musicians, such as on “Still Life”, for which the master vocal was recorded simultaneously, in the same room as the group of brass players, but fortunately for mixing purposes, to a separate track, which allowed for next to no leakage. I’d done several vocal takes by myself privately, but none of them really had the umph that doing it live with musicians surrounding me had.

In the tracks that contain any mixture of brass, strings or woodwinds, I decided it was important that these hard-working musicians be heard more than they had in the original final mixes. An obvious exception to that, of course, is, in fact, “Still Life”--the brass section opens the track and is featured prominently on the first chorus and coda--but other tracks didn’t necessarily contain boldly up-front arrangements for these instrument groups, so it took some very tactile balancing, sometimes by a millimeter or so on the mixing board levels to properly give them attention.

Remastering is an art, and not one that I as a producer ever thought I would embark upon. Even with delving into the worlds of classical composition and film scoring--often considered the extreme edges of a vast musical sphere--I always thought that remastering would take place down the road, no less by somebody that wasn’t me, when a tenth or twentieth anniversary edition of each record would be released. But so much had been me during these processes that I figured, why the hell not? I adore the new mixes for what they have become, as I adore the originals for what they were then. I hope that for listeners near and far, new and old, the works revisited over these three discs are passionately received. There’s nothing new about the content itself, but I am proud of the new visions presented over these two hours of music. I call this remastered collection Listening Room because it takes a good room--preferably, by my standards, a quiet room with no other people in it--to hear all of the nuances brought out in these new masters. There’s familiar and unfamiliar here, and as an obligatory note, all unnecessary production missteps such as audio clicks, fading problems and the like have been corrected. Except for the hiss. I love that damn hiss, and may it live on forever.

-Evan Schafer, November 2015

credits

released November 28, 2015

Produced by Evan Schafer
Cover art concept and execution: Evan Schafer

Remastered recordings ©2015 Cherry Blossom Records, Ltd.
Publishing ©2011, 2012 EvAn Music Companies—Holocaust
Recording ©2012 Cherry Blossom Records, Ltd.—Holocaust
Publishing ©2012 EvAn Music Companies—Psychotic Impetus, The Sides of Honesty
Recording ©2012 Cherry Blossom Records, Ltd.—Psychotic Impetus, The Sides of Honesty

Thanks to, as always:
Yamaha, Steinway & Sons, Fender, Alesis, Logic Pro, Apple

Special thanks to:
My parents, Debra and Bill, Paula Jones, PJ DiMuzio & Nelson Vicens

Extra special thanks to:
John Joseph Madden

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Evan Schafer Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

My name is Evan Schafer. I am an indie musician with a strong grounding in traditional composition, but the material always has a unique flair. I guarantee not being bored out of your gourd when turning on one of the records. I produce, mix, and engineer everything myself, and have done so since late 2005. ... more

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