Speaker 1: Hey, this is Ryan. I've loved Spouse Dowards and loves
Speaker 1: Spials and that's some really exciting news to share. Review.
Speaker 1: This past August eleventh, we released the twenty five year
Speaker 1: anniversary of our classic nineteen ninety eight album Flux. In fact,
Speaker 1: we've released it on the exact date of the twenty
Speaker 1: fifth anniversary. So I thought i'd take a few bonutes
Speaker 1: to talk to you about Flux Deluxe Edition, out now
Speaker 1: on all digital platforms. So in addition to this being
Speaker 1: a completely new remastering of the original nine Flux tracks,
Speaker 1: I think the most exciting part of this remastered release
Speaker 1: are the dozen bonus tracks, most of which have never
Speaker 1: seen the live day ever before. So fortunately for all
Speaker 1: you love Spouse Dowards fans out there, and for me,
Speaker 1: I've been storing all my DAT tapes. Those are digital
Speaker 1: audio tapes. That's what we used to mix down our
Speaker 1: albums onto back then. So yeah, Angie my partner in life,
Speaker 1: she's my wife and and my singer and loves Spiles.
Speaker 1: She actually was going through the tapes and found the
Speaker 1: original nine songs for Flux, you know, the nine chorus songs.
Speaker 1: But in addition to that, she found a plethora of
Speaker 1: unreleased songs from the Flux. There are all these songs
Speaker 1: that for some reason or another didn't make it to
Speaker 1: Flux or any other like you know, remixes or anything
Speaker 1: like that. And I'm figuring, well, why let these songs
Speaker 1: is like, die on these dat tapes and never have
Speaker 1: anyone hear them? Because I was surprised. I haven't heard
Speaker 1: most of these songs since nineteen ninety eight, and I
Speaker 1: was shocked about how good these songs were, and I
Speaker 1: was really excited to share these with you guys. So
Speaker 1: speaking of these old dat tapes as Flux Deluxe addition,
Speaker 1: almost never happened. These old dat tapes from the late
Speaker 1: nineties have I guess totally been dying over time. And
Speaker 1: maybe my old DAT machine. Yeah, I've saved my same
Speaker 1: digital audio tape machines. I'll take a picture this big, old,
Speaker 1: crazy looking thing. Anyway, I was having tons of technical
Speaker 1: issues getting the songs transferred from the DAT machine over
Speaker 1: to the computer in which I was going to master
Speaker 1: them on. There's all problem. I had problems with the
Speaker 1: tapes themselves, problem with the DAT machine. In fact, I
Speaker 1: had to go to a friend of ours, Nick thank
Speaker 1: you so much for loaning me your dat machine, and
Speaker 1: I transferred some songs using his different brand of dat machine.
Speaker 1: But yeah, long story shore, yeah it this is Harry.
Speaker 1: It was several times when I thought, wow, I'm going
Speaker 1: to get most of the songs, but I'm kno gonna
Speaker 1: get all of them. But I was persistent. I wanted
Speaker 1: to make sure I got this done and got it
Speaker 1: done right, and all the songs are here safely, so
Speaker 1: if all my dat tapes and machines die, now everything's good.
Speaker 1: Back in nineteen ninety eight, I went up to visit
Speaker 1: my good friend and master and engineer Robert Rich and
Speaker 1: he mastered the album. I was sitting there with him
Speaker 1: learning how he does it, and I've picked up stuff
Speaker 1: over the years. I've had him mastered most of my
Speaker 1: albums since then. So fortunately for me, I had those
Speaker 1: original nine mastered mixes of Roberts to use as my
Speaker 1: reference for beginning this remastered reissue of Flux, And I
Speaker 1: have to say it's very challenging to try to match
Speaker 1: up or even dare try to improve what Robert did,
Speaker 1: because he did such a fine on the nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: eight mastering. So my job was not to like say
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make it even better or anything like that.
Speaker 1: I just tried to make a really nice mastering for
Speaker 1: the modern digital world, you know, full of streaming, and
Speaker 1: you know this is not a CD release. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: has to be a digital only release. There's just way
Speaker 1: too many minutes with all the extra bonus tracks for
Speaker 1: this to fit on any digital medium. It's one hundred
Speaker 1: and forty seven minutes in total, so I won't fit
Speaker 1: on CD, I won't fit on vinyl or cassette, so
Speaker 1: this will forever remain a digital only release. Similarly to
Speaker 1: how I took the original audio for the nine Flux
Speaker 1: tracks and just tried to make slight improvements for the
Speaker 1: modern age, same thing happened with the cover art. If
Speaker 1: you've seen the photo, the original nineteen ninety eight cover
Speaker 1: photo from Stuart Goo, you've seen it on like any
Speaker 1: of the streaming platforms. I don't know what happened, but
Speaker 1: somehow it's all murky on these platforms. It's just not
Speaker 1: very crisp or beautiful. So one thing Angie strived for
Speaker 1: with this reissue is to prove that situation, and I
Speaker 1: think she's done a wonderful job. It looks fantastic in
Speaker 1: all the streaming platforms. Angie actually tried to get me
Speaker 1: to make this Fluxury Master five years ago for the
Speaker 1: twentieth anniversary. But anyway, here we are twenty five, hey,
Speaker 1: five more or five better? Right? Anyway, When we were
Speaker 1: going through the tracks a few years back, I found
Speaker 1: some of the audio sounds and samples that we used
Speaker 1: in the original recordings, and the one that had the
Speaker 1: most complete files was the song known as I'll Always
Speaker 1: Love You, and I said, Wow, I'm so glad this
Speaker 1: bassline is here, because this is no way I could
Speaker 1: recreate that and some of the other sounds. So I
Speaker 1: pulled them into my digital audio workstation and started playing
Speaker 1: with it because it's so fun to have those original
Speaker 1: files back to work with. And that started our new
Speaker 1: remake of that song, which we call now just misunderstood
Speaker 1: me an Angie reinterpreting an old love Spirals Dowart's classic,
Speaker 1: keeping true to the spirit of the original song and
Speaker 1: putting our own new, unique interpretations into it. I'm super
Speaker 1: happy with how it came out. Another little known fact
Speaker 1: is that this flux remaster almost had two fewer songs.
Speaker 1: When I thought I was done, I handed it over
Speaker 1: to Angie, showed her all the songs all my work. Said, wait,
Speaker 1: there's you left out two of them. I said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know exactly what you're talking about. I had those files,
Speaker 1: but I didn't remaster them because I thought they were
Speaker 1: already out there in the world. Two songs were already
Speaker 1: on Love Spirals Downwards Temporal, which was like a album
Speaker 1: released in two thousand, kind of a career retrospective. But
Speaker 1: as she said, well, you know, if you want this
Speaker 1: to be the complete Flux everything, you should get those
Speaker 1: on there. Because I was aware she was right. Not
Speaker 1: everyone owned Temporal. Not everyone was aware of these two songs.
Speaker 1: I mean, Temporal's kind of been out of print for
Speaker 1: a while. So yeah, now we have the full complete
Speaker 1: Flux bibliography here. I of the many bonus tracks on
Speaker 1: Flux Deluxe Edition, there's one that totally stands out, totally
Speaker 1: unique is Siffing from all the rest because it was
Speaker 1: not recorded in our studio during the Flux era. It
Speaker 1: was a song we performed live at the Project festival
Speaker 1: in Chicago, and we performed this song from Flux before
Speaker 1: Flux even came out. So this is the first time
Speaker 1: anyone outside of our bedroom studio ever heard the song.
Speaker 1: And speaking of our nineteen ninety seven nineteen ninety eight
Speaker 1: Low Spirals Downwards studio, I should mention Flox stands out
Speaker 1: as the album where I started making music in a
Speaker 1: completely different manner than I had to for all my
Speaker 1: years prior to that. As the first year I started
Speaker 1: introducing some digital audio technology into the recording setup, so
Speaker 1: I was able to like cut kind of what people
Speaker 1: just take for granted now on their computers, doing some
Speaker 1: copy and pasting of vocals and other instruments. So allowed
Speaker 1: us to get way more creative and experimental with how
Speaker 1: we produce music. In the old days, you know, we
Speaker 1: had eight tracks of tape, that's what we had, and
Speaker 1: you put a mic in front of the singer letters singing,
Speaker 1: and that's it. If you want another part, you got it,
Speaker 1: layer another part on top. So for Flux were able
Speaker 1: just to record little bits if we wanted to, or
Speaker 1: big chunks either way. We could process them anyway. Well,
Speaker 1: we could paste them all over, we could loop them.
Speaker 1: I could find something for she recorded eight months ago
Speaker 1: and put it on a brand new song we're working on.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Flux technological breakthrough for us. And speaking of
Speaker 1: reusing vocals that were recorded in the past, I used
Speaker 1: them that recorded in the way distant past back in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two when we were working on Arder the
Speaker 1: song Sunset Bell, that's the song that closes out the
Speaker 1: nine core songs on Flux, I took some of Jennifer
Speaker 1: Ryan's vocals off there and prosed us them in a
Speaker 1: new way and produce the nineteen ninety eight version of
Speaker 1: Sunset Bell from that. I'm sure something many people wonder
Speaker 1: about Flux is why is Kristin Perry Suzanne's sister on
Speaker 1: two of the songs. It's a really simple reason. And
Speaker 1: those were two songs that I was excited about. I
Speaker 1: really wanted them to be on Flux, But for some
Speaker 1: reason or another, Suzanne had some creative blockages with those songs.
Speaker 1: She just really couldn't come up with anything that she
Speaker 1: was satisfied with. But I didn't want those songs to
Speaker 1: die and become these weird bonus tracks or anything like that.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I was determined they had to come out.
Speaker 1: I knew they were great songs, so I had worked
Speaker 1: with her sister before before Love Spiles Downwards Hard we
Speaker 1: made a song or two, so I said, all right,
Speaker 1: Kristin's we want to try working on a couple of
Speaker 1: songs with me that Suzanne had trouble with, and that's
Speaker 1: how that came about. One interesting fact about Flux, the
Speaker 1: song Psyche featuring Kristin Perry was played quite prominently on
Speaker 1: the TV show Dawson's Creek, and that was the first
Speaker 1: time I ever had any music of mine played on
Speaker 1: major television. I remember back when Flux came out in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight, there was a bit of anxiety releasing that,
Speaker 1: both for me and for Project Records, because it was
Speaker 1: quite different than anything I've released before, and vastly different
Speaker 1: from anything like Projects known for. You know, they're known
Speaker 1: for like you know, ambient, thereo, gothic, and this is
Speaker 1: like a pop, drum and bass kind of influenced record.
Speaker 1: So unfortunately, at the time it did really well. It
Speaker 1: was one of our best selling albums as Low Spols Dours,
Speaker 1: and right now in the modern digital streaming age, it's
Speaker 1: our most popular, most streamed record. Another cool Flux tidbit
Speaker 1: is that last year DJ Boardlord played our song Alicia
Speaker 1: on their Early Hours DJ mix on Apple Music. And
Speaker 1: speaking of DJs, this is my first release ever on
Speaker 1: the DJ sites Juno Download and Beatport. You see like
Speaker 1: guitar sitting there behind me. That's my Ivanez Tomman. I
Speaker 1: think I got around nineteen ninety six nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: and that is the main guitar I used on Flux.
Speaker 1: So I really hope you learned a few new things
Speaker 1: about Flux and low Spiles dours that I really help
Speaker 1: you check out this Flux Deluxe Edition that I spent
Speaker 1: so much time on. I've been talked about how many
Speaker 1: months I spent working on this to get it polished,
Speaker 1: sounding beautifully. All the songs transferred, like I said, safely
Speaker 1: so that we can all enjoy these songs for the
Speaker 1: recipe turney as long as, like all the streaming service
Speaker 1: pay their bills right, keep the electricity on. So any guys,
Speaker 1: thanks for listening, Thanks for being fans all these years,
Speaker 1: and we had a great time with the listening party
Speaker 1: on band camp, seeing so many faces or names that
Speaker 1: we haven't seen in so long. People have been following
Speaker 1: us for literally decades, and it means a lot to
Speaker 1: me that I've been able to be a part of
Speaker 1: your lives musically all these years, in decades. That's really
Speaker 1: what keeps me going. That's all hits Versundi guys, so
Speaker 1: thanks so much, keep listening, make sure you subscribe to
Speaker 1: our social media our channel here, and we'll see you
Speaker 1: soon with some more love spoules of downwards content