In the late 80’s and earl 90’s while I was playing in the Head Full of Zombies in Colorado Springs, Fluorescent Echo was rocking the Boulder scene with synth pop. I never bumped into them back then but I did end up meeting Fluorescent Echo’s songwriter, programmer, producer and backup vocalist Heather Valey out on twitter. Now a sound designer in Austin TX, she and Denver-based members J. Forest Kelly (vox) , and Michael Smith (guitar) have reformed to release a brand new album called Glow.
There a 5 original synth driven songs followed by a cover of “Warm Leatherette” . The rest of the album is made up of 5 remixes of the original tracks. I was honored to have been included and remixed the song “Now is Now”. Listen to the original here, and my remix here.
You can buy the album here as a digital download (MP3, FLAC, AAC…) which includes lineR notes and scans of a lyrics notebook which is super cool. That same site has link if you’d also like a phyiscal CD.
Remix notes on “Now is Now”
I worked on the remix over a three week period in January. My notes are below:
FUN FACTS
- I started with 22 clean stems with no FX.
- The final remix had 53 tracks. Not all tracks were used during playback as some were used for resampling and such.
- The entire song was produced, mixed and mastered completely within the digital domain within Ableton Live 8.2.7 on Windows 7. Production started on my older HP DV6 system. I moved the project to my newer HP Envy 14 half-way through the production as I needed more CPUs and GBs :^)
- I used over 100 instances of digital effects – mostly Ableton but also SugarBytes (Effectrix), Tone2 (AkustiX), and Image-Line. I also resampled using effects to create audio clips.
- While I mostly used the source content from the stems for the remix, I did program and play some new parts. The intro and last chorus drums were programmed on SonicCharge uTonic drum synth with heavy morphing. I added some new arpeggiated analog synth line via U-HE ACE. I also used Waldorf Largo in the verses to create a subtle bass to warm up the mix. I also used Tone2 ElextraX to boost the energy out of the bridge.
- I worked on the song in multiple sessions over a period 21 days from January 4th-25th 2012. Project took about 14 hours actual work.
For more detailed production notes read this post.
What a pleasure to work on such a great song with so many hooks and great material in the original stems. Bravo Fluorescent Echo!
Mark Mosher
Electronic Musician, Boulder CO
www.ModulateThis.com
www.MarkMosherMusic.com
Synthesist, Composer, Performer from Boulder, CO
