Sour Pop

Perhaps Michael's crash or crashthrough approach back fires here. Too many ideas and a lack of coherence lead to a set of songs that do not sit together well.

Michael's Production Notes

"We tracked most of the songs at Karmic Hit in Rozelle. Karmic Hit was owned by Steve Kilbey at the time and was the birth place of some great records like the brilliant Refo:mation album, Pharmakoi/Distance Crunching Honchos with Echo Units. Sour Pop, unfortunately, is not a record in that class.

Tim Powles played drums and engineered. We tracked to a Tascam MS 24 track 1 inch machine. Jon and I used the same gear we had used on You Buried Me, though sometimes Tim would duplicate a guitar send to another amp like a Fender twin for variety. I think the guitar on Oblivion has a fair bit of that ratty Fender sound. Tim used a Mapex kit I think.

We recorded Oblivion, Drowning, Remains, Vivid and a later discarded version of Buried at KH before transferring to 2 inch and mixing at Charring Cross. Charring Cross was located in a terrace building which had been a shop in Waverley with a lot of cool gear including some kind of old Neve desk and was a bit of a darling of the indy scene at the time. I don't think it worked for us. I don't like any of the mixes done there except Oblivion which is tolerable.

Following this we recorded and mixed two more songs - Handbrake and a different version of Buried at Sony's studio in East Sydney. The recording room was a bit dead (in fact, some people referred to it as a vortex) but it had an MCI 24 track 2 inch machine and an MCI desk and some decent microphones so there is definitely a fatter tone with more air around the vocals on these songs.

We had been working with John Butler playing drums live for a while by this time so he sat in the chair for these songs."