Lucy Jane - Glass and Grass and Sunrays

July 30, 2010 8:36 PM

A song from Lucy Jane about a girl who's not very happy.

This was recorded a few months back (previously). We'd like to release it soon.

Lucy Jane Davies - Piano, voice
Ian R Watson - trumpet
Peter Marsh - bass, glockenspiel
Paul May - drums

posted by peterkins (7 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite

What can I say P....? This is right up my street - I love the overall sound, and it reminds me of David Sylvian at his best and maybe a hint too of Robert Wyatt's work. It is at once very, very English but also with a lovely, lazy jazziness. Luminously gorgeous. Your bass is perfect (you know I'm a fan anyway) and the trumpet soloing is very Jon Hassell and just......superb. Nuanced, poised, limpid....I could go on and on and on. In fact, I usually do..!

A couple of "tasting notes" on the mix. You can take these or leave them, obviously. The vocal may need to be just a touch "wetter" to blend it in with what is a fairly damp (in reverb terms) backing track. Lucy Jane may want to think about a little subtle double-tracing of the hook/chorus - it doesn't really stick out. But, then, it's not that kind of track - so you can disregard that comment. There is a bit of clipping towards the end when Lucy's (excellent) piano solo does a very fast run - you might need to just give the fader a quick nudge downwards at that point - shame to spoil a good track for a minor (and easily remedied) technical glitch.

Oh and it desperately needs some very tasteful acoustic guitar fills and bits and bobs (I'm kidding)!
posted by MajorDundee at 7:15 AM on July 31, 2010


Scrumptious.
posted by askmeaboutLOOM at 11:33 AM on July 31, 2010


I'm going to be a contrarian--I would have mixed the vocal even drier. You've got this huge, atmospheric background with a gentle vocal. I'd stick it right in your ear. Or at least I'd have tried it that way.

But yeah, this is really great. I love the bass just so, so much. Everything is understated and makes room for the lead vocal while still being interesting. This has got a fantastic feel.

And also, as Dundee said, watch that clipping. It's really nasty.
posted by uncleozzy at 10:11 AM on August 1, 2010


thanks all. as to the mix - i think i'm with ozzy and would probably go for making the vocal slightly drier if anything - i kind of like the in your ear thing (sylvian does that a lot). anyways, i don't mind it as is. apart from the clipping of course. this happened when we recorded and didn't get picked up till after the session - a dodgy DI box was to blame. we recorded the basic tracks to tape without a click, so dropping in wasn't really possible on every song (some we did manage to fix). then the studio tape machine broke down. horrors. we ended up having to transfer to digital and mix in a very short time. the clipping issue never really got addressed as a result. i think we'd just hope it would go away. from your reactions i think we're probably going to have to get it sorted somehow, though my guess is it's going to be a time consuming process. i've not had a chance to examine the piano tracks closely as yet. any tips in that direction would be appreciated. the whole thing has been a bit of a nightmare, and it's particularly so because i think we did get some nice performances. oh well...
posted by peterkins at 3:54 PM on August 1, 2010


Try the demo of iZotope RX on the clipping, see if it works. I used it on some really, really heinous audio and it did a reasonably good job. This is nowhere near as bad--ought to work pretty well.
posted by uncleozzy at 4:07 PM on August 1, 2010


thanks for the tip!
posted by peterkins at 3:36 PM on August 2, 2010


This whole thing is really great, but, man, that's a hell of a voice Lucy Jane has.
posted by cortex at 9:40 AM on August 6, 2010


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