Sleepmode promo mixes - opinions?

[Soundseed]

Hi all

I just got these three tracks back from eMasters in London, and the band have stuck them on their myspace at:

www.sleepmode.co.uk

The original backing tracks (all done live), were recorded at The Byre residential in Scotland - a great place to work, with some lovely gear, and very fine hosts. After this we transferred to my modest home set up and overdubbed and mixed ITB using Logic on a Mac Pro, using UAD and URS plugs pretty exclusively. Monitoring was on Adam A7's on stands with Primacoustic Recoil stabilizers.

The band (a four piece) chose a fairly eclectic mixture for their promos, reflecting that they have two lead singers and quite diverse styles. Dream - rocky, melodic with a mad mid section; Follow You - almost a duet, with some very contrasting bridges and some beatlesque panning; Rant - err.. a rant, very much a live rock band in full swing, with other than vocals, minimal overdubs - some hammond and a criminally distorted/spliced Bosendorfer that apparently once belonged to Andre Previn.

The band are using these as promos: to stoke up interest on the live side, and maybe labels too. To give some context, these are three songs from a 15 song album.

Any thoughts, comments, criticism, much appreciated!

Thanks in advance
Chris

[Old Cane]

I'll just say the recording and mastering seem very good, especially for coming across that well on a myspace player. I won't comment on the, uh, music.

[Soundseed]

Originally Posted by Old Cane

I'll just say the recording and mastering seem very good, especially for coming across that well on a myspace player. I won't comment on the, uh, music.

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/image...ies/nu/061.gif

Thanks! The Adam A7's have been great for mixing and eMasters did a really nice job, plus the service lets us do some more tweaks without further charge which is a nice touch. The primacoustics were a great buy too - a very noticeable enhancement not just in the bass end, but stereo field and transient detail too - recommended.

I guess the music won't be to everyone's tastes... I find it a wee bit strange hearing the three songs out of the context of the album, as we've reached a stage where we have full 15 song refs, with a really nice order, links and fades.

Cheers
Chris

[croftish]

Originally Posted by Old Cane

I'll just say the recording and mastering seem very good, especially for coming across that well on a myspace player. I won't comment on the, uh, music.

Just to provide some balance on the music side - I loved the 1st and 3rd tracks, thought they were both very interesting. 'Follow You' lost me though :)

[Soundseed]

Originally Posted by croftish

Just to provide some balance on the music side - I loved the 1st and 3rd tracks, thought they were both very interesting. 'Follow You' lost me though :)

Glad you liked them :-)

Follow You is one that kind of sneaked up on me... but I'm a bit biased having done the brass and string arrangement at the end section. That said, I think I got the panning the wrong way round - the strings merge with the grungy guitar in the right channel so you lose the sense of them. I will probably do another mix with brass to the right as it may sit out from the grunge better.

Cheers
Chris