Live EP coming along

Spent another night working on the 'Flesh Water and Bone' Anubis Live LP last night.

My opinions on the tracks as they stand:

The Deepest Wound:

A fast pace and spirited version of the 230503 lead off track. A very powerful vocal and the band is aggressive. Dougie in particular is on bitingly good form. The solo is more of a guitar organ duet on the live recording. And I even got most of the notes right.

Steve is tight and Nick is glued to him throughout.

A great opener played very well.

Waterfall:

Bittersweet version with some sensitive vocals and good harmonies. A couple of wayward notes that need to be corrected. Elsewhere, sublime.

The drums are steady and tight throughtout. Nick shines on this one as the bass part tends to extemplorise on the slightly more staid album version: no bad thing.

The guitar solo is very faithful to the album- perhaps a little extra drama wrang out of it. But beautifully played. Doug hit the tuner at the end of the solo, hence it takes 16 bars for the rhythm guitar to come back in. Rather than go into overdubbing, and seeing as how it's not really that noticable, best left alone. After all, it's a live album!

Keyboards are fairly standard fayre. Some faster hammond wanking at the end. Sounds OK.

Waterfall Jam:

This is the live coda to waterfall, and as such is not heard on 230503 in the studio.

Some very moving guitar work and some nice bluesy hammond.

Nick and Steve are absolutely as one on this piece.

The Bond Of Mutual Distrust:

One word. Savage.

Our live highlight at this stage sounds (dare I say it) more cohesive and natural on stage, and the grinding riff is absolutely on the money.

Robert is in stunning voice on this one and I even do a pretty good job backing him with some notes that dogs can only hear. Doug aids and abets from underneath.

The keyboards are arranged differently from the album. A benefit of playing the songs so much after recording them. In truth there's a part of me that probably prefers it this way.

Middle section is utter chaos and the drums and bass are relentless.

Disinfected and Abused:

A tight and venomous version of the epic track, played much more quickly and aggressively.

Guitar and Moog duets are good. A couple of bum notes from me again, but I'm not about to go re-recording them. I can't guarentee I wouldn't stuff them again anyway.

Mellotrons sound positively huge as I think I put more reverb on them... perhaps accidentally. Either way, it is good. now I have to work out what I did and do it all the time.

Steve is extemplorising all over the shop and gets decidedly syncopated at times. Thankfully he untied the knots as well as he tied them on this occasion.

Nick, again is particularly effective down in the bottom end and is stuck to Steve with araldite.

Harmonies are great.

5/8 section comes on like Heart Of The Sunrise on methamphetamine. All tricky riffery and a mellotron feeding frenzy. If only I could have played this to 24 year old David Eaton when he started writing this.

A bit of a sticky moment in the denoument... Steve is a beat early and we all had to follow suit. Some may not notice it. I don't think Steve did...

Either way, I'd have liked to have corrected it but it was not feasable. So it is what it is. It would be criminal to not include such a great version of a song for the inclusion of one fuck up most would not even notice. Hell.... it's live!