New Glass Ankle demos

Claire (keyboardist/clarinetist/vocalist) and I recorded two new Glass Ankle songs over the weekend for a free CD to hand out to people at our Band on the Wall gig which was last monday, and at the Carefully Planned Festival this Sunday. The CD is entitled “From the Front Room”.

You can download or stream them for free via our SoundCloud page:

There was a concept behind these recordings in that:

• They had to be completed during one weekend only.
• They had to be recorded completely in our front room, capturing the natural acoustics.
• No artificial reverb was allowed to be added at the mixing stage.

Over that last few months I have been slaving away when I can find a moment to try to finish our new E.P. With the E.P. tracks I have tried to keep the quality as high as possible.  I admit I am a perfectionist, and this personality trait is amplified when it is my own songs and those of other band members that I am working on. There are positives and negatives to this: on the one hand I am driven to spend the care and attention to detail the tracks need to be the best they can be, however on occasion I spend too long trying to perfect things that perhaps do not always need improving. With this in mind I will be seeking help from others to provide their opinions and insight so to avoid driving myself completely insane! Anyone up for it?! Your help would be greatly appreciated!

I found the making of “From the Front Room” quite liberating. Setting certain criteria and a strict deadline helped me focus by taking away certain production elements I would normally spend much longer tweaking. The resultant recordings are far from perfect but do possess a certain homemade charm which I believe compliments the acoustic/organic nature of the instrumentation used. Would this charm have been lost had I tried polish everything? Hmm, I do wonder. For now I am not going to improve them, I am happy to let them go as they are knowing that they are rough around the edges. I suppose the initial concept helps me to feel more at ease about it, whereas usually I would be wanting to keep working on them as they are not finished to “professional” standards.

Any feedback is most welcome! Thanks for listening.