Present Imperfect album artwork

Present Imperfect

Remastering puts bass left, right and centre of DIY classic.

 11 Sep 2017

Ablemesh's classic long player Present Imperfect has been remastered and can now be downloaded as 10 individual songs for the first time, with added bass!

"I love the extra bass" says singer Gordon. "Jon put down two more bass guitar tracks and split them hard left and right across the original stereo master recording. So, now you’ve got bass left, right and centre. Only Jon could pull off a crazy idea like this!"

Remastered for 2017, Present Imperfect captures the band at its performing best, delivering 3 minute pop songs with a genuine sense of urgency.

However, the original stereo masters (all that remained of the album) lacked the bass frequency that has been such a big part of the impact of the live band. And that's not the kind of thing that a bit of extra EQ could solve.

Jon Poole then suggested a highly unconventional fix.
He would overdub more bass guitar. Normally this would sound disastrous. However, Jon’s idea was to put two new bass tracks at either end of the orginal stereo recording. The result is bass left, right and centre. And problem solved!

For Present Imperfect songwriters Sean Walmsley and Gordon Glass (pictured right) feature on guitar and vocals, alongside Jon Poole and Bob Leith (Cardiacs) on bass and drums . 

4-TRACK GENIUS

Jon Poole's production here is especially remarkable as he  originally captured and mixed all the performances on a 4-track cassette recorder! By ‘bouncing’ the tracks he succeeded in making 4 tracks sound more like 24! So this might just be one of the most sophisticated 4-track cassette recordings you’ll ever encounter.

Upbeat tracks like Crown Jewels sit beside, or flow into, atmospheric numbers like Mountaineer (new video here). And the music still sounds fresh over 20 years later.

In 1995 Present Imperfect was originally sold on cassette. Then in 2007 a professionally mastered version was made available as two long digital files representing sides 1 and 2.

Today listeners can download individual tracks and add the songs to playlists for the first time... with bass left, right and centre.

The album download is priced £5 and is initially available exclusively from Bandcamp  along with a mobile-friendly booklet of lyrics and photos. 

The new Ablemesh album Sunshine to mist is scheduled for release on 2 Oct 2017.

Listen now!

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