Yesterday, everybody’s order was sent out!

Now that they are going to start listening…some people have asked what exactly is different with the 2020 Mixes on each album….

It’s a bit of a technical question, so here goes:

To make the 5.1 Surround mixes on the Blu Ray discs, I wanted to have the basic stereo mixes as a starting point. Since the songs were mixed so long ago, just recalling them wasn’t totally easy. There were different things to fix, or recall on each song, such as re-recording some of the effects (which weren’t originally recorded, and just playing live during the mix), and semi- re-balancing the whole mix into Pro Tools. When originally mixing, I was essentially mixing with stems onto a 32 channel outboard mixer.

Also, now I wanted to split all of the tracks, so that I had complete control of front to back and left to right (for surround). I didn’t want the mixes to be completely different sounding from the originals, but if I heard something that I thought could sound better, I wanted to be able to fix it…so a little level or eq, or re-balance here or there. It was a lot of A/B-ing the original, and making sure that what I had sounded as good, if not better than the originals. The differences are more noticeable on some songs than others, and maybe for some listeners, they might not even hear any thing different…but they are, in fact, completely new mixes, and we thought that they should be labeled as such.

For the Early Versions of the songs, as a starting point, I went through literally 100’s of CD-Rs that I had made at the time, while working on the album, and listening to an equal amount of ADAT tapes that some of the songs had been recorded on.

I love listening to songs where you can hear both the starting place of the song, and what’s not there when the song was finished…. (different vocals, or different arrangements, or missing guitars or keyboards), and comparing it to where it was when it was finished…it’s a chance to see where the songs were at, at an interesting point in time before they were finished. Some of these Early Versions I was able to find in mulit-track format, and some were just stereo mixes, so finalizing and mixing them differed, depending on the song, but in the end, we think all of them offer a cool look into the songs and where they started.

We hope you enjoy taking everything in, we’d love to hear from you after you get them and have had a chance to absorb everything!

-Statik

We just thought we'd keep everyone up to date on how things are progressing in the Chasing the Ghost and Some Kind of Strange Special Edition releases. They are Limited Edition, and still available for pre-release here, and we should still be on track to start shipping them in October.

For anyone who missed it, we uploaded a teaser video here.

Notes from Statik:

Taking on all of the responsibilities of the record company, as well as authoring this release, and overseeing the whole thing (as with any release) can sometimes take a lot of attention to details, as well as unforeseen costs.

For those who are interested in the details, here is what was happening this past week. Originally I submitted a .iso disc image for the blu ray. The manufacturer said they would have to convert it to another format in order to actually produce it. The only other format the authoring software (that I have, and that you can get without spending too much $$) could output is a BDMV file, so I had to make new files for each release…then re-upload each 20+ GB file, which took the better part of another day! THEN…they said that that format wasn’t correct either, and what was needed was a BDCMF file, not a BDMV file!! So there will still be extra costs for the conversion. (BTW, I asked them about this format question about 6 months ago, but I guess the guy who I talked to at the time didn’t know what he was talking about…typical!!) They also said that, in fact, they couldn’t have converted the original disc image file, so they needed the new format anyway. Also, they said that the second blu ray file got corrupted? during the transfer, so they needed me to re-upload it. So now that they have those, hopefully they can get on with the whole process of converting it to whatever they need, which will be another $189 for each release.

With all of the conversions, we are opting to get a check disc back before they make all of them—so we have to wait for that as well, as we figure it would be best to actually double check it after the conversion, and make sure that they produce the disc correctly, the way we envisioned, with no errors….so that’s another $150 per release.

The good news is that the printed artwork—booklets, and wallet, are in the middle of the printing process, or will be completed soon. Making a physical CD is easier, since we’ve done that before…and the DDP file that we gave them will hopefully be fine.

We should hopefully still be on time to start shipping everything out in October, but we just thought everyone would like to know a few of the behind the scene things that are happening.

-Statik

I am working hard to finalize the Chasing the Ghost and Some Kind of Strange Special Edition Releases.

There are so many little details to think about to finish off these special releases, and to double check everything, but they are almost done!! Not that anyone else wants (or needs) to think about all of the technical details of what was needed to put together this release:

Early versions and bonus tracks

For the Early Versions, and Bonus Tracks, it involved me combing through an old box of ADAT tapes, and CD-Rs that we would make while we were working on the albums, to find all of the best early versions, and forgotten songs from the era. Then I transferred all of that into pro tools, so that everything could be mixed. Some of the songs came from mulit-tracks sessions, and some where just stereo tracks.

First off, we hope you all doing well!! Things sure have gone crazy since our last e-mail, but we have been locked in our studio working on all kinds of stuff, including new music.

October of this year will be the 20th anniversary of Chasing the Ghost, and the 17th anniversary of Some Kind of Strange! Wow! Where did the time go! We wanted to do a re-release that would be the Ultimate Special Collectors Edition!!…so here’s what we came up with:

Special Limited Edition Releases:
Chasing the Ghost & Some Kind of Strange

Special Editions Include: 5.1 Surround Sound, New Stereo Mixes, New Instrumental Mixes, Original Mixes, Unreleased Early Versions, Unreleased Bonus Tracks. Click Here to View the exact tracklisting, and songs, etc.

Release Date: Oct 2020, or sooner.

Pre sales are available now!
We are 100% self funded, so we really appreciate your help. If you order anything else with your Pre-sale—we will ship the rest of your order now. Also, there is a special combo price if you get both releases.

The first 200 copies of each release of the Pre-sale Orders will be signed and numbered. (We are only printing 500),

The First 200 order will also include the following:
Hand-signed thank-you card,
Signed, folded poster to go with the release.
Our Eternal Thanks for helping to support our music.

We think everyone will really enjoy these special releases, and hopefully appreciate all of the work that Statik has put into them.

Check out all the details on each of these releases on our website here.
Chasing the Ghost - Special Edition
Some Kind of Strange - Special Edition
Chasing the Ghost / Some Kind of Strange combo sale

Our deep thanks for continuing to make it possible for us to create new music. Please help spread the word.

Peace + Love
The People who bring you Collide
kaRIN & Statik