Saturday, March 22, 2008 : All the initial mixes are now complete. Lindsay sailed through it and found the "vibe" of each song, pretty close to what we wanted it to be. Brian and I worked out a rough tracklist of what we think we want the album to be and Lindsay loaded them up in that order, turned on the "bigs" speakers and also the "space lights" and we listened to the full record for the first time. We are extremely happy with it all at this stage. Now, we are back in Sydney with a CD copy to disect and make changes to before mastering, which I think is happening at Birdland this coming week. Its hard to believe we have made an album. More details on the title and tracklist and all that stuff soon. Paul

Tuesday, March 18, 2008 : The mixing process has begun. Lindsay has put in two marathon days already, ending the initial day at 4AM, long after we had flaked out in bed from the 39 degrees heat of inner city Melbourne. He made us earmark three of the songs we thought we’d want as the more important tracks on the album (for recall purposes) and began work on these. "Exit Strategy" was completed after many hours of work on getting all the correct sounds. It has turned out great, in the very early hours of Tuesday morning. After recovering from the sudden heatwave we made the treck across town on Tuesday morning back to Birdland (via a Greville Records shopping spree where we picked up some Sonic Youth, Sebadoh, Teenage Fanclub and New Order CDs) and heard the first full mix. From there, Lindsay moved on to "Headspace" which was complete around 8PM last night. It also sounds great, but I guess we’re not going to say anything else :) We had to work on some of Nik’s guitar parts to keep its full pop flow in tact. But I’m really happy with this song. Its two minutes of loud guitars and is this quite infectious pop song; the last song I wrote for the record and the last song I committed vocals for. By the time we get back to Birdland today, we’ll get the first mix of "Long Way Down". This is another song that has come up really well which surprised all of us. We loved the song, but it got a little nip and tuck in the pre-production stages and has turned into this big monstrous rock number that kicked everyone’s ass as an album track favourite. We plan to spend all of Wednesday mixing the next four tracks. So. Its going to be a LONG day. Paul.

Sunday, March 16, 2008 : Second phase starts tomorrow. After a few more beers, Bret’s dropping me in Pyrmont, home of all things, RiSH Records. Then we set off through the night to get to Melbourne for morning. There’s a heat wave or something going on ? I think i may still have a few guitar bits to put down tomorrow and we’re scheduled to begin mixing with Dean and Lindsay Gravina sometime in the evening. Thats going to last three days. Then mastering. Its been good having a week away from the songs. Now its time to get back to work. More tomorrow from Melbourne. Paul

Sunday, March 09, 2008 : Today is the last day of recording and I've a lot of work to do. Yesterday we added a bunch of additional guitar parts to several of the songs, including a fair bit of work to "Exit Strategy". This song seems to have everyone's focus in that the guitar parts needed some extra attention to get it right and create a more cohesive feel to the song. Everyone seems to really like this track, which is cool. We worked on vocals for a large part of yesterday. "Numb" we wanted to just capture one wreckless take on the vocal ("You've got to be loved, you've got to be numb")... and mess it up with filters and loop it throughout the song. We have to do the remaining vocals and all harmonies/backing vocals an then we'll go back and add some more guitars to fill out the songs. We have recorded 11 tracks. We're dwindling one-by-one. Nik's gone. Brian died from all the passive smoking and spent the last day ill in a hotel room before heading back to Sydney. The rest of us leave in the morning for the long drive back. Then I'll be coming back down with Brian for 4 days of mixing with Dean and Lindsay. Oh yeah, we hope to have the record out in June. Paul.