Mixes are in, thanks to Pete's hard work. (and willingness to run late for dinner)

We had some file pathing problems with Pro tools - somehow  during the transfer between the Laptop installation and the Studio installation, the session decided to forget where the files were stored, leading to a moment of "Holy Crap!' as we searched for the Bass tracks and three missing songs.

Have no fear, everything was there, the program had just gotten a little absent minded and needed some help to remember where the files were. 

Whew.

Some re-linking later and hey presto, some desk mixes. The boys have all picked up their copies for review and we'll spend the week reviewing the raw mixes before we start working out what to fix, change, add, replace, subtract, etc.

I have formed my own opinions but wont share them yet, as I don't want to influence  the responses from the various Ears we have listening to the tracks now.

I can say that a few of them need work, but there were certainly one or two, that even in a completely unmixed state, sounded damn fine to me.

Our objective is to have the album out by mid year, but that's a guide line. If we can get it up to scratch more quickly, great; if it takes longer, so be it.

We're scheduled to be in the studio doing Guitar overdubs etc by Monday 5th of March, which will give us a week to form some opinions before we start messing with it. Thereafter, we have any Bass fixes, additional percussion, harmonica and vocal replacement or overdubs, then harmonies, then mixing, review, remixing, review, mastering, review and...

Yikes. Whilst all this is going on, I am still working on concept art for the cover and as per usual, having to go through many iterations before I come up with something that gains the approval of the guys.

Here's some of the concept art I've been trying.

But my actual preference was something along the lines of:

However there has been some comment to the effect of 'What's with the chicken?'

I can only offer by way of limited explanation, that I am a fan of Little Feats album covers and that our albums have definitely been influenced by them,

although to be fair, Spacejunk was really a follow on from the ideas on Canned Heats 'Future Blues'

Here's a reminder of our spacejunk cover...

In any case, after I got back from recording, and  taking into consideration objections about chickens, I decided to try something completely different.

The letttering is still a bit skewiff and it hasn't met with approval from the two main sources I check for such things, so it's back to an iteration of the original idea: So I tried a Sci Fi Angle...Klaaatu Barada Pollo! B'gock!

 (sigh)

Oh well, back to the drawing board. I've still got a few weeks to go before I need final art. Meanwhile, I'll be experimenting with ideas until I get the peculiar curled eyebrow look from my two test subjects that tells me I have it right - hey the process worked allright  for the last albums :-)