Note: In April-ish 2008 a batch of defective Modern Dance cds (COOK CD 141) got past Cooking Vinyl quality control. They were recalled in June 2008. This is the last of the 1994 Master issues. If you have one of these return to the retailer for a refund.

The bells and whistles of equalization fever reminds me of cake mix. In the 60s when Betty Crocker or whoever it was invented instant cake mix they were perplexed at first why the idea was not selling to women. They ran consumer tests and found that women weren't feeling sufficiently engaged in the "creative" process - so they changed the mix to be dependent on the "cook" adding an egg. Wham-bam - the product took off. The same paradigm lies at the root of any number of product choices - Apple vs IBM, for example. The Morris Minor is the most sophisticated car ever built - it had a GO button and a speedometer (which was placed in such a way as to minimize it's usefulness.) All the computer read-outs of the modern sexy car amount to nothing more than an egg in the mix. The same applies to consumer electronics.

It's informative to consider just what does happen in the recording studio. The array of equalization options and the racks of effects units are nearly as irrelevant as the bouncing LEDs and five band eq panels of your Japanese home hifi which is itself the product of a fearsome hierarchical methodology that seeks to achieve its aims by brutalizing sonic wave forms. Contrast that with British audio design which emphasizes speaker selection and purity of signal path. On a classic British system you get an on/off switch, a volume control and an input selector. Period. The underlying principle is quite sophisticated - "Who are YOU to screw with the sound? What makes YOU so smart?" Some years ago I remastered one of our old albums for digital reissue. It had been the first album mixed in the new Suma control room and evidently there had been teething problems involving the acoustic shape of the room that no one had been aware of and sonically there were some very weird things going on. The engineer and I got so frustrated trying to "fix" these problems with eq that we were making 15 db cuts and adding 15db peaks at random across the bandwidth just to see exactly WHAT was going on. We still couldn't alter the fundamental nature of what we were hearing. The electronics of the mixing desk had been unchanged, the recording machine was the same, the speakers were the same. What was different was the acoustic shape of the space that we had been listening in. We could make the sound hissy or boomy and we could bloat the midrange but its nature would not yield. It was locked into the spatial soundscape of a room 20 years gone.

No, Sony has alot to answer for. The history of rock music has been rewritten to accommodate corporate apologists, the copyright holders of a limited set of golden oldies, and dance hysteria. (Dance in any form is hysterical.) It's interesting to see how the makers of midi-hifi systems conspire to transform the lean sounds originally targeted for AM radio into the bloated confectionery that consumers identify as high fidelity sound. It's also interesting to consider that cd technology, as originally conceived, was designed to deliver 4 channels of quadraphonic stereo, potentially as significant a development in the spatial reproduction of Sound as the Gutenberg press was for the printed word. The past fills up with failure and lost opportunities. What triumphs is the egg in the mix.

The point is that recording engineers aren't electricians. They're architects. They shape space. Baffles, walls and rugs refine surfaces and define acoustic qualities. Amps are placed in hallways, toilets and closets, at the bottom of ravines or out in the woods. Singers stand in kitchens or at the bottom of stairs angled so as to face an acoustically compelling corner. An engineer I know spent 15 years collecting wood with the proper acoustic qualities. Even electronic effects, reverb and echo units, are designed to imitate space and supply presets that ape the characteristics of various sized and shaped rooms. Massively expensive boxes of electronics are valued for the ability to create nothing more than virtual spaces.

None of these essential qualities of sound can be enhanced with equalization. They can. however, be tarted up to resemble a hooker's notion of couture. And in the end who do you want designing your house? An architect or Joe Blow in the downstairs flat with his "Now That's Architecture 68" cd?

The Tenement Year
The original 1988 Fontana release does not seem to have been mastered. David Thomas and Paul Hamann mastered it January 22-23 2007 at Suma. An alternate mix of Dream The Moon was substituted in the running order and five extras were added: the UK b-sides Postman Drove A Caddy and The B-Side, live in the studio recordings of Miss You and We Have The Technology for the John Peel Show (never previously released), and an alternate mix of The Hollow Earth (never previously released). As well, the sound of thunder that was found on the original Suma mix of the tracks was added - there was clearly some intention of including this somewhere for some reason. The packaging has been updated by John Thompson and added are extensive liner notes specific to the album by David Stubbs.

Cloudland
The album was originally mixed by Paul Hamann at Paisley Park Studios, Minneapolis MN. Subsequently four tracks were re-recorded in London and the others remixed for the 1989 Fontana release. This reissue substitutes in the running order the following Paisley Park mixes by Paul Hamann: Monday Night, Lost Nation Road, Nevada!, The Wire, The Waltz, and Pushin. Five extras have been added: the UK b-sides Wine Dark Sparks and Bang The Drum, the Paisley Park mix of Breath (never previously released), Bus Called Happiness recorded live in the studio for the John Peel Show (never previously released), and a dance remix of Love Love Love. The packaging has been updated by John Thompson and added are extensive liner notes specific to the album by David Stubbs.

Worlds In Collision
Four extras have been added, the UK b-sides Around The Fire, Down By The River, Like A Rolling Stone, and Invisible Man. These were demos recorded for what the band refers to as The Lost Album. The packaging has been updated by John Thompson and added are extensive liner notes specific to the album by David Stubbs.

Story Of My Life
Five extras have been added: an alternate mix of Come Home by Stephen Hague (never previously released), the UK b-side Fedora Satellite, and three b-sides recorded for Story Of My Life but never released - Gripless, Through The Windshield and Stoughton 529. The packaging has been updated by John Thompson and added are extensive liner notes specific to the album by David Stubbs.