Philip J Reed says at NintendoLife.com:

Lucas M Thomas at IGN.com says:

Evan Campbell at Nintendojo.com says:

Bruce Thomson of Nnooo in Thomas Whitehead’s article at Nintendolife.com says:

I’ve  just been informed that the album is now available on CD Baby, with iTunes and other outlets to follow very soon. Now on iTunes. Also on Amazon. Sweet. =)

Having experienced two previous Strut & Fret productions, Feasting on Flesh and Cantina at the Spiegeltent in years gone by, I had high expectations for this show. Feasting on Flesh is one of my favourite shows of all time and was filled with a wild spontaneous energy that pushed the boundaries of good taste and uses for chocolate cake.

The Dream Menagerie was fun, though it was also a lot of other things and I found the experience somewhat confusing overall. I wanted to enjoy it- though I felt like I was trying to enjoy it a lot of the time. The performers were highly energetic and engaging; their commitment to some often thin (or non-existent) material was brave and commendable. I just wish there’d been some actual substance to this show. Something to hold it all together. I don’t want to appear ungrateful for the tickets- I had a great night, but I think I need to be honest about the performance itself, and honestly, it’s difficult to describe as it left me rather bewildered.

Photo by Andrew Curnock

The show continues the somewhat recent tradition of being non-traditional; doing away with narrative, structure, and possibly anything to do with meaning of any kind. Perhaps this trend is inspired by a deep creative desire to break away from the restrictions of predictable narratives. Maybe we’re witnessing the exploration of a brave new creative paradigm where paradoxically the most profound meanings lie in subject matter which is in itself, meaningless. Or maybe there was a writer’s strike, or paying good ones just got too expensive.

I still don’t know what to make of this show. I’m glad I saw it, I had a great night catching up with a friend, but to a large extent this show made me feel uneasy. Granted, those wooden seats in the Spiegeltent could have come from a sweatshop factory floor and could use a little padding, but the show itself imparted a different kind of discomfort all its own.

There were high production values in many areas, but something was missing.I will attempt to illustrate my point. Apologies in advance if this detour into metaphor doesn’t quite mesh, but I don’t know how else to attempt to explain this one.

Imagine you’re taken out for dinner at an opulent five star restaurant. There’s candlelight (real candles, not those tacky battery powered ones), exquisite silverware, soft music and a wonderful atmosphere. Your host points out some real delicacies on the menu to whet your appetite, and the wine list sounds amazing. You’re salivating with anticipation. Before too long, the waiters come and rearrange the table, refill your water glass, and you’re momentarily distracted by something shiny out of the corner of your eye. When your attention is drawn back to the table, you find your host slumped back in his chair with a satisfied glow, telling you what a wonderfully delicious meal you’ve both just enjoyed. Confused, yet somehow bound by convention, you end up agreeing you’ve just had a great meal, although your tummy is still rumbling as you leave, and you’re not sure what just happened.

Look. I love The Mighty Boosh. I get surrealist, absurdist and occasionally pointless humour. I like things that are silly and stupid and don’t make sense. But I don’t like them without a solid context. I need an anchor point; somewhere to stand to gauge and appreciate just how ridiculous (and hopefully funny) a situation might be. I need to know the show has a direction, and that eventually, even a series of dud jokes will somehow click together and something hilarious will be revealed. If you want me to come with you on a journey into awkward confusion, there needs to be a payoff.

I felt like the show was a bit of an experiment on the audience, and I was one of Pavlov’s dogs. We were all being tested to see if we’d conform to the conventions of theatrical entertainment, even in the absence of conventional stimuli.

We’re holding some rope lights. They’re eventually hoisted to the top of the tent. Someone turns the lights on! (crowd applauds)

A rope falls from the ceiling. It’s a long rope. It’s mildly amusing, but for no reason. A good writer might have used this to create something hilarious, and I was ready to laugh at the punchline, but it never came. Instead we had uncertainty and awkwardness leading into rope gag, followed by more awkwardness. I didn’t get it. (crowd applauds)

The fat lady sings… a bit. And burps. I don’t know why. (crowd applauds)

We’re all under a giant sheet. And then we’re not! (crowd applauds)

There’s a donkey. It walked in a circle. (crowd applauds)

I struggled throughout the show to reconcile why the audience was clapping at, well, apparently nothing.

Certainly there were some splendidly silly, humorous and entertaining tid-bits, circus tricks, and delightful musical tangents, and with a thread of purpose or direction they might have been ten times funnier and more entertaining. But they weren’t really held together with anything at all, and too many of the gags didn’t have any attempt at a premise, which left me struggling a lot of the time to make sense of what was happening and why.

“If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream”

The Shakespearean dialogue at the end of the show seemed a lot like a “get out of jail free” card in many respects. It allowed the performance to be pointless, it validated any and all criticisms, yet rendered them powerless.

My tri-lingual mate Mark offered a German word to help explain a feeling we both got from the show: fremdshaemen. It’s a word to describe the feeling of being embarrassed for someone else. There was an overarching theme of awkwardness. The first notes I made after seeing the show were “Awkward. Confusing. Bordering on self-indulgent.”

I don’t want my review overly critical, as that would be unfair. There were some very talented displays from some gifted performers and I saw glimmers of Noel Fielding, Bill Bailey and even a touch of Shaun Micallef being channelled here and there. With a few tweaks, the show might possibly have struck genius.

I’d also heard there was something involving motorbikes. A radio review from one family said their kids loved it, so I was almost expecting a watered down kid-friendly variety hour with a motorbike stunt show featuring all the artistic appeal of truck-a-saurus.

Pessimism has its advantages, as it allows you to be completely surprised and delighted from time to time. This was a brilliant show: incredibly high energy, well paced, with some of the most elite physical performers I’ve seen ever. Including the Olympics.

There were multiple moments throughout the show where the whole audience could not help but gasp in amazement or almost-slipped-and-died terror. I caught myself exclaiming, ‘That’s impossible!’ and possibly swearing with astonishment numerous times, and overall having a bloody good time.

Technically, the show was truly remarkable. Each display of physical mastery warranted and received tumultuous applause, and in that sense the show did take itself quite seriously.

I’m a massive fan of Brisbane’s local circus scene, particularly the performers from Briefs, and have become used to the very spontaneous and interactive style of their shows. So I guess it was a bit of a change for me to see a circus show where the fourth wall was well and truly intact.

Apart from some light-hearted ‘let’s embarrass some audience members’ bits between acts, there wasn’t much room for audience interaction. In saying that though, there didn’t really need to be. This was a series of incredible physical performances that really did deserve their ‘ta da!’ moment and applause at the end.

Musically and stylistically I was a little unsure of what angle the show was taking. There were some incredibly cheesy musical motifs straight from 1985, and some of the costumes were also very ’80s.

In this aesthetic there was plenty of room for the performers to add some tongue-in-cheek attitude, perhaps along the lines of David Hasselhoff, which could have been the icing on the cake, and could have explained the tacky music. Could have. But they weren’t actually joking it seemed, so in this respect I was left a little perplexed.

I had the pleasure of attending the show with the incomparable Leigh Buchanan, who was kind enough to give me his thoughts on the show at interval:

Photo by Andrew Curnock

It’s like David Copperfield ate a whole truckload of clowns and vomited them on stage. I can not wait for Celine Dion in the second half.

From a style perspective, she wouldn’t have been too out of place.

The master of ceremonies role was filled by an incredibly talented clown, whose people skills, physical prowess, expressiveness, and entertainment value were truly commendable on their own.

To give you a rough overview of my personal interpretation of the show’s rhythm, it went a little something like this: make some noise, laugh, be inspired, be awestruck, laugh, be impressed, be distracted, be impressed again, be amazed, laugh again, laugh and be impressed at the same time, followed by some more combinations of be impressed, amazed, and entertained, rinse and repeat.

There wasn’t much in the way of existential pondering or introspective arty stuff, so if you’re into that kind of thing, the opening act with the contortionist on the aerial hoop was about it.

Overall the show really did have something for everyone. There was beauty, poise, strength, extreme balance, physical comedy, contortions, and extreme physics with motorbikes. What more could you want?

Photo by Andrew Curnock

It’s not every day we get a singer/songwriter of such high calibre doing shows in the heart of Brisbane.

Photo by Andrew Curnock

From the first 30 seconds of the first track, Grey Ocean, and the accompanying waves of goosebumps that came with it, I knew we were in for a real treat. The lush string arrangements, powerful and haunting voice, and emotive lyrics blended perfectly to create something truly wonderful and rare. The whole show was an absolute privilege to witness.

Photo by Andrew Curnock

I count myself as a definite fan of Lior‘s work, though admit it’s really only his first album that I know well. It’s been five years since Autumn Flow came out, though I have vivid memories of having to pull my car off the road in a hurry to really appreciate the title track when I first heard it on the radio. That emotional jolt was revived and amplified seeing Lior live last night—there were some truly sublime moments of vocal, musical, and lyrical mastery that reminded me of the magic that’s possible in live music.

The ‘by request’ element of the show kept things unpredictable and interesting, with a handful of cover songs making an appearance in a completely new light. Lior‘s cover of Bon Jovi’s Livin’ on a Prayer was as hilarious as it was musically accurate. His ‘remixed’ interpretation was immensely fun as well; exploring the naive innocent side of the lyrics, Lior decides that the natural musical backing to highlight this trait would be the theme from Sesame Street. A moment of pure joy.

The only thing I could fault with the show was the audience. Like an unfolding perfect dream being interrupted by a lawnmower on a Saturday morning, there were several moments of inappropriate noisy behaviour by drunk and uncouth individuals. These added an extremely unwelcome ‘surround sound”element to the show I wish I could have turned off.

The rear left channel was occupied by some dreadlocked ‘gentleman’ who deemed Lior‘s show the right time to practice hocking phlegm as loudly as possible and making trumpet-mouth sounds for a large portion of the show. And the rear right channel was a booth of loud drunken workmates who thought the Courier-Mail Spiegeltent was the natural next step for a Friday evening booze-up. This selfish behaviour detracted from an otherwise powerful and amazing experience.

Photo by Andrew Curnock

Lior‘s second and final encore was Nature Boy by Eden Ahbez and was one of the most electrifying live performances I have ever seen. Starting acapella, Lior showed what an incredibly well controlled and finely tuned instrument the human voice can be. Throughout the entire show his voice was spot on, and the beautiful blending with guitar, double bass, and arias of lush strings cast a spell that will be remembered by many for a long time. There’s one more show tonight, don’t miss it!

It’s not every day we get a singer/songwriter of such high calibre doing shows in the heart of Brisbane.

Photo by Andrew Curnock

 

From the first 30 seconds of the first track, Grey Ocean, and the accompanying waves of goosebumps that came with it, I knew we were in for a real treat. The lush string arrangements, powerful and haunting voice, and emotive lyrics blended perfectly to create something truly wonderful and rare. The whole show was an absolute privilege to witness.

Photo by Andrew Curnock

 

I count myself as a definite fan of Lior‘s work, though admit it’s really only his first album that I know well. It’s been five years since Autumn Flow came out, though I have vivid memories of having to pull my car off the road in a hurry to really appreciate the title track when I first heard it on the radio. That emotional jolt was revived and amplified seeing Lior live last night—there were some truly sublime moments of vocal, musical, and lyrical mastery that reminded me of the magic that’s possible in live music.

The ‘by request’ element of the show kept things unpredictable and interesting, with a handful of cover songs making an appearance in a completely new light. Lior‘s cover of Bon Jovi’s Livin’ on a Prayer was as hilarious as it was musically accurate. His ‘remixed’ interpretation was immensely fun as well; exploring the naive innocent side of the lyrics, Lior decides that the natural musical backing to highlight this trait would be the theme from Sesame Street. A moment of pure joy.

The only thing I could fault with the show was the audience. Like an unfolding perfect dream being interrupted by a lawnmower on a Saturday morning, there were several moments of inappropriate noisy behaviour by drunk and uncouth individuals. These added an extremely unwelcome ‘surround sound”element to the show I wish I could have turned off.

The rear left channel was occupied by some dreadlocked ‘gentleman’ who deemed Lior‘s show the right time to practice hocking phlegm as loudly as possible and making trumpet-mouth sounds for a large portion of the show. And the rear right channel was a booth of loud drunken workmates who thought the Courier-Mail Spiegeltent was the natural next step for a Friday evening booze-up. This selfish behaviour detracted from an otherwise powerful and amazing experience.

Photo by Andrew Curnock

Lior‘s second and final encore was Nature Boy by Eden Ahbez and was one of the most electrifying live performances I have ever seen. Starting acapella, Lior showed what an incredibly well controlled and finely tuned instrument the human voice can be. Throughout the entire show his voice was spot on, and the beautiful blending with guitar, double bass, and arias of lush strings cast a spell that will be remembered by many for a long time. There’s one more show tonight, don’t miss it!

This is a difficult review for me to write. The consequences of me shooting my mouth off with unbridled honesty in conversation are different to those involved when committing words to text.

First, let me say how much I like the Spiegeltent. It’s such a great venue. There’s a sense of history to it, it’s structurally sound, and the stage crew and bar staff really do a tremendous job. Here’s a photo:

 

Now, where were we? Ah, The Suitcase Royale. Such a great name. Their marketing blurb was quite enticing, and the photo they gave the press looked like it could have come from a very entertaining show. Rumour has it these guys put together some brilliant theatre productions and are actually quite funny. I’m a bit confused why they’d risk tainting their good name with what they did last night though.

Rather than gamble your reputation as quality entertainers with a musical experiment, it might have been a good idea for these guys to use a different name, because I’m going to have a hard time shaking the associations of last night’s performance from any future Suitcase gigs.

Here’s another photo!

Photo by Andrew Curnock

Granted, a Monday night gig is bound to have a different energy to a weekend show. People are back at work, the energy is somewhat muted in the crowd…and I was more than prepared to give these guys concessions if the audience wasn’t really up for dancing, or the jokes weren’t going as well as they might have hoped. But that would have required some solid material on their part.

Not being familiar with The Suitcase Royale in a theatre context or a musical one, I was not sure what to expect. I wasn’t sure if they were comedians having a go at music, or the other way around. After about six songs, I still wasn’t sure.

The formulaic folk-by-numbers arrangements for every track gave me the strong impression these guys are not about being musically innovative in any way. That’s fine, as it leaves ample room for the lyrics to be clever, interesting, funny, or at least in some way compelling.

There’s nothing wrong with tired musical wallpaper being a foundation for well-written lyrics. Sadly, that option was also left apparently unexplored. Vocally, it was a repetitive drawl of mostly unintelligible cliches rendered in the style of Nick Cave meets Alf from Home & Away.

The only remaining space for some genuine entertainment, save a natural disaster or sudden blackout, was the banter between songs. The guys did make reference to a show of theirs about zombie wombats, called ‘zombats’, which sounded like it could have been quite funny, as opposed to everything they presented last night.

In addition to a pointless anecdote about being charged for extra luggage when flying Qantas, there was a running gag about their CD price starting at $10 and gradually increasing as the show progressed. This was funny for the wrong reasons. I’m really sorry, but honestly I wouldn’t have accepted a free one.

I can’t remember another show that I’ve actually walked out of, and I felt genuine sympathy for anybody who paid full price for a ticket. This kind of performance might have a place in an open festival. I can certainly imagine people walking past stopping for a song or two, or possibly even dancing if they were sufficiently intoxicated or liked predictable trite folk music.

However this approach relies on riding the wave of a larger event, where the work has been done for you, the crowd is primed, and so long as your drummer keeps in time nobody is going to care too much about musical laziness or lack of lyrical depth.

The good: Great venue. Friendly door staff. Animated and energetic drummer. Double bass player did well to hold up such an unwieldy instrument.

The bad: The remainder.

Mortal Engine is a laser light show and visual feast that will give you obesity of the eyeballs from having so much eyecandy.

Mortal Engine is an interactive ground breaking tour-de-force that will snap you out of existential malaise and make you feel something worthy of numerous exclamation marks!!!

Not that I want to oversell it, I strongly recommend this show to everyone with a pulse. If you’re thinking of seeing the show, there’s no harm in checking out the clip on youtube first. http://goo.gl/NWdkI – I saw this years ago, and it’s what drove me to want to see the work in person, and I was not disappointed in the least. If you’d like a wordy synopsis, the programme for the show is totally on the money in describing the intent and vision of the show. I’m not going to compete by trying to summarise it for you in more eloquent prose, nor offer lofty metaphorical descriptions of a show as abstract and ambitious as this.

I can only offer a handful of impressions, and give you an idea of how I experienced the show, which is handy, because having to try to summarise what I saw last night from an objective point of view would be thoroughly exhausting I’m sure.

There are “lasers”.

The show is possibly recognised first and foremost for its remarkable use of technology. While the technology is certainly cutting edge and complex, its use is remarkable for different reasons. It’s new, but it’s not really about novelty. My inner geek had plenty to analyse and contemplate from a practical and technological “how did they do that?!” perspective, though the actual content of the show, the powerful performances of the dancers, and the mature use of tech as an extension of the piece rather than a distraction, had a very real emotional impact.

The exploration of archetypal binaries harks back to the beginning of storytelling itself, and somehow the potentially complicating or distracting technological layers of this show seem like a natural and seamless progression from centuries old shadow puppetry. Throughout the show, the `wow!’ defeated my `how?’ and there were several moments where my analytical mind gave way to what could have been glimpses of enlightenment.

There’s dance.

I’ll confess I struggle with contemporary dance as a genre. I’ve seen enough shows to identify what I perceive as a sometimes self indulgent, pseudo high-brow, `emperor’s new clothes’ quality which often leaves me feeling bewildered during the performance, and alienated in the forced-polite chit chat after the show. I find many contemporary dance works are vague for the sake of being vague, and in the absence of narrative, or even a strong theme, audiences are gently urged to conclude `this is art’, and gloss over the hefty ticket price and dashed hopes of actually being emotionally engaged by a performance. This is not one of those shows. Mortal Engine is a work that engages the mind, delights and challenges the senses, and has a strong emotional architecture. Part dance performance, part technology showcase, and part journey to the centre of the universe, Chunky Move have performed technological and artistic alchemy here, and I just want to tell everyone about it. The energy of the performers matches the intense audio-visual assault, and in doing so adds a depth and subtlety that gives a strong anchor to something very human and real.

There’s powerful audio.

The soundtrack is stark and powerful, and is not so much a `layer’ of the piece, as it is a central performer. The audio has been engineered with some heavy duty equipment to make this a show that you physically feel as well as hear, and I hope the QPAC building has strong foundations, as I’m sure they were tested last night! The music and sound design complement each other and the visual & performance aspects beautifully, although there are occasional instances where the contrast in volume and mood is a bit like a poke in the ear with a sharp stick. This is not lazy psychedelia or an introduction to new media performance for tourists.

The show is tasteful, meticulously well thought out, and flexible enough to allow genuine nuance from some very talented physical performers. Touching and powerful moments that will stay with me include: incredible projected shadows and malevolent crawling entities, a virtual wall made of virtual glue, and feeling momentarily separate from the entire audience inside a cubby house of laser cut smoke.

There are parts of the show where you’re experiencing pure mathematics; sine waves of various amplitudes and frequencies have a one-to-one relationship with the lasers and you literally get to see and feel some incredible sounds. It’s this mathematical quality that made me wonder on some level if I was witnessing in actuality what happens when you divide by zero. Combined with the raw universal human emotion of the performers… and the incredible visuals… it was so overwhelmingly RAD it has defeated my vocabulary, but I don’t mind in the least. Thinking about this show makes me smile.

Mortal Engine represents an exciting milestone in live performance, and will not merely spark imaginations for future shows using new media, it will set them ablaze. Go see it.

This is the first time I’ve worked with Microsoft’s Kinect (using a modified version of the Synapse program), and these are very early days for me using Ableton Live.

The installation opened yesterday, and will be running for a couple of weeks with an additional performance theatre element provided by Backbone Ensemble. The project is still in development and will evolve over the coming months. Stay tuned. =)

So, give me a call- hopefully I’m not too far away from my computer- and choose a question:

What are you…

[looking forward to] | [excited about] | [worried about]…

… in the area of
[technology] | [cars] | [sports] | [world events] | [mobile phones & gadgets] |      [ christmas presents ] ?

… and why?

This is just a vague starting point- there’s no right or wrong way to respond- just be yourself, tell us what’s on your mind, and try to keep it under 2 minutes. I can’t guarantee I’ll be at my computer 100% of the time, or that any of this audio will end up being used, but thank you in advance for helping out! =)

Looking forward to chatting soon!!

=) Andrew

photograph by user eleaf on flickr- creative commons licence

With the plethora of professional production tools now so readily available- it’s tempting to believe that it’s simply talent and dedication that gets bedroom producers over the line and into nightclubs and on the door for A-list parties.

Everyone with a $1500 computer can download and learn to use any number of audio tools and, theoretically, be producing tracks that once required multi-million dollar studios. With this price barrier removed, with studios no longer the exclusive domain of the few, surely anyone has a shot at being a producer now? Plenty try.

While acknowledging hard work and talent are very important, I can’t help but suspect there’s something more to this puzzle. As a software geek and soundtrack illusionist myself, albeit from a different era, I find it very hard to believe that talent and hard work alone can take an enthusiastic teen to an established and respected producer of high calibre tracks with no external input. There’s just too much to learn.

To get tracks as polished as this one from Porter Robinson [Porter Robinson - Say My Name]
takes more than just a few years of experimentation and a willingness to trade a social life for nights at the computer playing with all the controllers in Fruityloops.

Don’t get me wrong, I have massive respect for Porter and similar artists- there’s an intricacy and discipline evident in a lot of their work that’s both inspiring and well, from a certain point of view, depressing at the same time. Just how did he get that bass to sit so comfortably in that incredibly well sculpted soundscape? How did he get so much control over that synth? It’s a deceptively simple dance track- you can focus on the basic 2 notes of the bass riff- or lose yourself in the world of detailed chops, stutters and very clever dynamic modulation.

The wealth of knowledge required to cross the gulf from merely playing with presets and twiddling the cutoff knob, to having a synth yield to one’s every creative & expressive impulse; getting beyond just playing notes to truly mastering the myriad mathematical and sonic possibilities of a synth engine- well, it’s like taming a wild animal, and not something you learn in a few weekends on your own. And that’s just one instrument!

Beyond that- there’s the mixing, the dark art of compression, and the craft of shaping a track over several minutes and keeping it interesting. Call me lazy, call me misinformed, call it sour grapes if you like, but I’d like to suggest there’s a very well hidden cache of knowledge that is quite hard to come by, unless you happen to live in the right city and/or have the right connections.

I’ve seen the curriculum of those audio engineering & ‘go be a rock star’ schools- heck, I even attended one- and I know that you can get yourself a degree in this field, and at best you’ll come out with the ability to describe what compression and EQ are, a vague understanding of the importance of microphone placement, and some interesting stories about resonant frequency phenomena. You certainly won’t be a producer. Not a good one.

Mastery of mixing and production can take a lifetime- and that time might just as readily be wasted reinventing the wheel if you don’t have access to the knowledge of masterful techniques already discovered.

You need knowledge; hard earned industry knowledge that has taken generations to acquire, and is jealously guarded by a secret society of powerful record company producers who wear dark robes, pointy hats, and chant incantations whilst making sacrifices on the new moon… I assume.

Unless of course I’m mistaken.

If there is an innate talent for understanding how to produce music that “you either have or you don’t”, I’ll at least sleep better after finding that out for certain, and begin to accept my lot in life. If however, I have a point, allow me to take this opportunity to beseech everyone who reads this post- both of you… where are the mentors? Where do people like Mylo, Porter and the rest of the cool kids learn to mix so well? Is there a school I don’t know about? Is William Orbit running workshops at the electro equivalent of Hogwart’s Academy?

If so, how does one score an invite?

The game soundtrack is establishing itself as a bona-fide musical genre in its own right these days, with the music from many games available as a separate entity on iTunes and other music sites. The music from the Bit.Trip series (Gaijin games) is a personal favourite, and the soundtrack to Pop (NNooo), Remote Control by Beat Therapy (my debut album) was well received when we launched that.

From a production perspective, the Escape Vektor soundtrack will be a bit tricky to make an album out of. The music is adaptive in-game, so the best way to respresent this as a stereo waveform of fixed length is a bit of a mystery.

Using a similar mechanic to Pop (Nnooo), layers of the soundtrack are grouped and linked to elements of gameplay. In Escape Vektor, there are typically 3 layers of instruments in a music track. A level starts, and the music is pared down and minimal. Once a percentage of the level is complete, the next layer of instruments kicks in, filling in the gaps of the soundtrack to add another layer of interest to the previously minimalist score.

This is a great way to get maximum life out of what would otherwise be a 2 minute loop, and from a gameplay perspective it works really well, though I’m scratching my head at how best to capture this effect and still showcase the music as an album. Stay tuned.