am i finally awake? i'm a little groggy, but i think it's the air. overall, i think i'm feeling refreshed.
it's taken me some careful listening to decide how i want to organize the confused ep. i almost immediately removed the duplicate from 1998, as it was immediately clear that this was pointless. i've noticed repeatedly, now, that the archived 112 kbps mp3 sounds better than the cd-r - probably because it was converted to mp3 one less time. i keep blaming everything on the fact that i'm 17. but i really am 17. in fact, i just turned 17. you can't expect kids to get through life without making mistakes. further, i know that the music is very intricate at points, but this whole technology thing was still a different world. it's not just that i'm 17. it's that i'm 17 in 1998. back then, using a computer was still something that got you taunted for being a nerd. this was before the concept of hipster geekdom - nerds were really just flat out fucking nerds. so, digital media still had this taint to it, by way of being associated with a circuit board. in 1998, i'm still the elite nerd kid that even knew what an mp3 even was in the first place. and, fuck napster, by the way - you get the good stuff through private ftp servers.
the point is just that i didn't really know how badly an mp3 breaks the audio quality. in fact, i thought that the result actually sounded better over mp3. i had seriously convinced myself that an mp3 compression was a crude mastering process. psycho-acoustics, indeed. this excuse will go away soon, but right now it's still very real.
what's left can be partitioned into three sections.
1) the first five tracks, which were all remastered and finished in 2015/2016.
2.1) original mixes from 1997/1998 (this track was written in '97 and recreated with the machine in '98).
2.2) remasters of those mixes from 2013, including the inricycled cut.
the question is whether i want to cut the disc off at section 1, leaving all of section 2 for bonus material, or whether i want to cut section two in half. i've opted for the latter - keeping 2.2 on the disc, and 2.1 off of it.
on the one hand, it may be easy to argue that i don't need any of the vocal parts because i remastered the vocal version for this track. but, it's also true that the 1998 vocal mix is very different than any of the first five tracks, and the 1997 mix is practically a different song. i did not find that also holding on to the original mixes was worthwhile, but i do think that they should be accounted for.
i want to separate them out a little bit, though. just a gap in the audio, making the last two tracks seem like they're hidden in plain sight. so, what i'm going to do is drop the inricycled mix in to track 6, and then leave an audio gap in between. the original versions will then be bonus mixes, in addition to that.
i am pretty much certain on that track listing, but i will need to listen to the material before i finalize it.
