End of side A already!

It's hard to believe we're here already, but "Modern Art" is done!  Completing the track's subtly retro aesthetic, I used the mic'd amplifier for the bass in the mix, and panned it 50% right, exactly opposite the kick drum.  This is in contrast with my usual practice of using just the DI signal.

And that's "side A" of Chronicles of a Dead End!  My thoughts on this project, so far, are very positive.  I love how "Days to Midnight", now an apocalyptic wall-of-sound rock number, gets this off to a very atypical start for a prog album.  With "Faraway Island" I feel vindicated, as the weakest track on Escapade has, with a little re-arranging, become a song that works both as a regular track 2 and as side A's big epic.  This actually came about by accident: I found while mixing the keyboards that the organ solo between sections "A" and "B" of "Faraway Island" sounded annoying without having something else to ground it.  That something else ended up being a choir pad, played on the Jupiter-80, which serves the additional purpose of throwing the whole track into a different dimension at, essentially, the moment where the structure makes its first big departure from the simple folk ballad it initially is.

Moving over to side B now, we come to my long-time favourite song in the set.