The Dawn Collective

There’s a quote by French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau “Patience is bitter, but the fruit is sweet” which has been very fitting to the process of releasing our debut album. The album which we began tracking in late 2006 and finished mixing close to a year ago is one step closer to being on the shelves of stores and scattered throughout the net. The album is finally mastered! And the fruit of our labour is oh so sweet.

We enlisted Don Bartley to do the job. He’s quite good at the mystical art of mastering albums. He’s mastered a lot of albums. So it was a pretty easy day for us. Don did most of the work. We just sat back and enjoyed hearing the mixes come to life with extra presence and punch. There are moments on the album which when polished up feel like a warm hug and then moments that smack you around the face and leave you crying like a little girl on the ground. We made the decision to keep a lot of the dynamics in the mix, to keep it breathing a bit. There were also a few anomalies that we needed to fix up. One was this low rumble whenever Andrew was singing in one of the slow songs. The assumption was it was vibrations picked up off the mic stand. Don fixed this with some magic eye looking application which is a graphical representation the energy of certain frequencies. Gotta love technology. There were also some clicks of me turning pedals on and off at a point of a song. It’s the catch of tracking nearly everything live. You end up with some unique “performance related” sounds in the mix. We did end up keeping in some little surprises but you’ll have to find them for yourself when the album is out.

Much discussion was had about the word “shod” which is part of the title of a song on the album Ghosts Shod in Steel Shoes. Turns out that shod is the past tense and a past participle of shoe. I did not know that. And to be unshod is to be barefoot perhaps. With the track listing written out we realised how long some of our song titles are, which is diametrically opposed to Pearl Jam’s Ten which consists of mostly one word song titles.

The tracks came up well and the challenge of sorting out segues and the gaps between each track was next. It’s always a tricky thing as the mastering studio feels like a bit of an artificial listening environment. A few transitions were quite easy and natural, some required a bit of agonising but you want to get these things right so there was a purpose to us being pedantic.

Overall, we were really happy with the flow of the album. It’s so satisfying to hear it done. Now to focus energies on all the other jobs that need to get done and things that need to be in place for the release of it. Thank you all for being patient - it’s great to finally be able to say it is not far off now! We hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed creating.

Note to self: next time you’re heading to Katoomba, take a beanie.

Last Friday we headed up into the Blue Mountains for our first gig in Katoomba. We’d been invited to play with some local bands (Stop Hard and Olivine) at the Carrington Baroque Bar and Nightclub - a rather long winded name, but a rather nice room. It felt a bit like The Heritage in Bulli - chandeliers, lounges, polished floors, red curtains - just the sort of place we like.

We’d left the city early in the afternoon to beat the traffic, so ended up having quite a bit of time to kill. And of course, when in Katoomba there’s one activity you have to do - see The Three Sisters. We dutifully drove down to Echo Point, and wandered over to the lookout just as the sun set. Quite lovely, but the cold was starting to get to us, so we didn’t stay long. After a brief detour for a bit of local wine tasting, it was back to the Carrington for sound check.

Well not quite - the other bands were still setting up, so we decided to grab an early dinner. There’s nothing much better on a cold day than a bowl of soup, and the roast butternut pumpkin soup on offer hit the spot perfectly. Naturally there was some rather deep pre-gig dinner conversation happening (which Batman movie really was the best?), but once we’d settled that it was back to the venue and on with the show.

Playing in a new venue can be a little worrying. On one hand you’ve got a new crowd, which is normally a good thing. On the other, you have no idea what the sound will be like. Thankfully the crowd were lovely, and there weren’t any problems with the sound either, which made for a very enjoyable gig.

Once we’d left the stage the DJ took over, so we packed up and weaved our way through the dancers back out into the cold. Heaters on full, we drove down the mountain to a soundtrack of Sarah Blasko, and a view of distant city lights - not a bad way to end the day at all.