RE-RELEASE-CJC-FORM

It may seem a little odd 'rereleasing' this album. Form is about 8 years old, has had numerous tracks from it put out on vinyl and various compilations and had a full long player printed as the first Forwind release back in 2008.

Back in 2008 when I went about compiling the album, I took all my finished pieces from the said period and tried to find a track order and listing. Many tracks did not make the cut. Others were shortened with various little edits and then mastered with what tools I had to hand (at the time using Studio 64 linux distro running just Jamin!). Not having the appropriate hardware or monitoring for mastering can be problematic particularly when the source material is a sampled and sequenced digital work. For this edition I have changed the version of Elastic (previously released on vinyl on Psychonavigation - PSY 002) from what was included in the 2008 edition. The reason being that during the recent mastering of Form at Cyclone it became apparent that the previously released mix was essentially distorted !

It seems that in my attempt to master Form on my own in 2008 I had obviously overlooked some glaring problems. Lesson learnt, never master your own output. A mastering engineer will immediately hear glaring issues that you won't.

This kind of audio in my opinion really needs warming up during the mastering which can be difficult to achieve without some nice and expensive analogue kit, something like this Manley for instance. Graham at Cyclone did a fantastic job here. The lower mids as usual were problematic but also I had over EQ'd the life out of it in the 2008 version. Graham managed to restore life to it and also give it a well needed polish.

Form is an album that was written between 2001-03 while I lived in Dublin and in my home town of Dungarvan. For majority of that time I was studying at the Music & Media technologies department at Trinity college Dublin where I was fortunate to be lectured by the likes of Donnacha Dennehey, Dermot Furlong and Roger Doyle. I would like to think the course material (such as electroacoustic composition and survey, Psychoacoustics, DSP) deeply influenced my output during this period. All instruments were originally sourced. Either recorded live or created from scratch from sampling or DSP. It features vocalists such as Laura Hyland from Clang Sayne and Suzanne Spratt whose previous choir experience adds a definite haunted feeling to track 4, In Between.

This remastered version finally has the feel to it that I was trying to achieve way back when. The artwork delivered by Paul Finn back in 2008 perfectly captured the aesthetic that we were after. At last, 8 years later, I can now sleep soundly knowing Form is actually finished. Anal, I know I know ...