Andy Pickford - Terraformer Collectors Edition (2022)

The sun came out just as I started writing this. Perhaps that’s a good omen. Anyway, let me introduce you to my little friend: Terrafomer Collectors Edition. Except of course the 16bit wrap-file isn’t. But the rest is.

I’d intended to start work on this a few months earlier but for some reason I just couldn’t get much in the way of inspiration as to how to proceed. Ultimately though, we iz here :-)

My main concerns when listening to the original CD were 1) there was a ton of compression added at The Townhouse. This was largely due to it being the 90s when everything louder than everything else was the whole of the law. 2) bass in the mix was apparently not my strong point at the time. 3) the sound field is really narrow and might sound squelchy if expanded. As it turned out the severity of these issues was something like nah, nope and hmmm in that order. For starters I’d got pre-master source material to use in most cases, so restoring frequencies and tweaking dynamics was, well actually it was a pleasure to be honest. It was just nice to be able to hear the sound come alive from those old recordings. Sure it shows up a ton of glitches here and there, cos those were the days of DAT. The original pre-master was cobbled together on a wing and a prayer, by me and Graham Getty, using 3 DAT machines, a crib-sheet and lot of hope! It worked! 


The additional material has mostly come from the OG Works live albums and Dystopia which, for the sake of these Collectors editions, have willingly given their lives in order to make more sense being associated with the albums and times to which they belong. Allegedly.

Terraformer

Title track. Remember all of this was done using just a Korg T3EX’s internal sequencer and a portastudio. How on earth I ended up with a passable Electronica sound from it the mind boggles! But I did and it’s rather decent. And boy did I enjoy cranking that bass up on this remaster hehehe :-)

Mesmereyes

A track which, apparently was not bereft of bass at the time. It has some more now :-)

Does benefit, as do all these tracks, from being width separated enough to define individual parts better.

Summers Past

Originally composed back in the early 80’s for Linear Functions (will be sifting through this material sometime soon ok). One of those awfully nice tunes I was always quite good at cos I haz a sentimental side. It’s next to my other mental side :-D

Akira

So we get to the first of the tracks used by GPR for the 12” singles they pressed. Apparently they own it but since they’ve been bankrupt over 15 years and this isn’t the same ISRC recording anyway I’m pretty certain it’s mine ;-)

Can’t say the same for the Beaumont Hannant remixes though. I expect they’re Beaumont’s. Also, for that reason it's best that I don't include them.

Djangotron

Ah that whacky side again! My homage to spaghetti western music. It’s got all the bells, grunts and whips you need!

Out of The Darkness

Lovely tune. Actually so lovely I tended to stray off it for years afterwards. I also know it’s got a special meaning for a few folk and so when stuff like that happens it’s like responsibility. I’m not a disciplined follower of my own work to be honest. It’s not always easy to recreate something I did with any kind of serious attitude about it. I did my best as you’ll hear on the new version. The finger-work on this original track ain’t something I’m that nimble at these days!

Get Dyson
Another piece which comes out of its shell with the addition of bass, sound-field and dynamic buggerings around with. Subject of another of those 12” singles but again, not using this recording.

Darklands

Wheeeeeeeeeeee!!!… When this kicks in it really kicks in!! It’s like, where did all the hugeness come from?!! Also used for 12” but definitely not this recording!!

Asgard

Ahhhh… at last a quiet Asgard. Due to the compression issue, it never really was that quiet on the CD. It’s meant to be a breather and so I’ve ensured that it does its job this time!

Twilight in Valhalla

Again, this is presented as being just that bit quieter in the mix than the following track, because that track is The Furnace and it needs to go to one louder! Awesome melody though. I sure makes some pretty tunes :-)

The Furnace

The hard one to get right! Really needed the earliest source material I could find. The toms and snares have a big punch if done right, but had on most versions become really saturated. Trying to do much with these caused the punch to seem less present. On this master however, all its OG testicular fortitude has been lovingly maintained and tweaked :-)

Still Waters (Run Deep)

Cor blimey! I can hear all the vocal parts individually now! And I know 90s workstation acoustic instruments were shite, but they still scrub up okay. Ah it's just a nice thing and I do nice things nicely. If I can be arsed.

Terraformer Album 16bit whole file.

Is exactly what it says on the can. Use it for listening to the whole thing with its segues intact. Also ideal for reconverting to .wav and burning to good old 16bit CD.

Live Medleys
All these Terraformer-related performances were previously featured on the Works albums. Of course, I’ve remastered them and prepared them especially for this Collectors Edition. Remastering these wasn't as hard as I expected but jeeeeeez who put all the reverb on Akira?! lol ...and just when you think it's enough it notches up even more aaaaarggh!! All the same it kinda just punches through enough to hold coherence.
Brings back a ton of memories all this.

The Furnace (Anvil Mix)

Nah, I am no Beaumont Hannant as I found out by doing this track! I can do slightly weird sure, but out-of-the-box cuckoo was never a strong part of my imagination. Still, I’m quite fond of the piece :-)

Dreifarbig Bomber

Aye, well. Because there is a Zweifarbig Bomber. It’s a little Jan Hammer-ish and proved hard to remaster. Quite hard on the piercing frequencies in places. And very stuck around the centre. I got there eventually :-)

Arc of Infinity
Again tough to get right but that’s because I -never- got it right. It needed pumping up to the extremes of Hardcore Techno but since I didn’t do much of that then I had no idea how to mix it. Fortunately, it’s now sorted :-) But really, this is a frightening track with all that screaming and stuff going down. No happy clappy shite here! Doomy AF and I love it :-) V2 15/04/22 pumped back down a bit :-D

The Girl From Planet X
Old barnstormer done at the time of Terraformer but since the album wasn’t a double, didn’t make it. Something of a favourite of mine as I'm sure I dated her for a bit.

Overlander

At the time there was going to be this gig with me and Bekki Williams. We had a good chat about it and I ended up with this single sample & hold line to use cos I couldn’t get that sound from my miserly T3. Gig didn’t happen of course but I did come out of it with a genuine Bex line on one of my tracks ;-)

Sundance

One of those odd pieces I can’t quite warm to myself, but to some it’s a really good track. It’s all happy and optimistic y’see. Again, shines out very well using contemporary mastering procedures.

The Last Sundown
Ditto the above track really. I’m sure I made this for Ashley Franklin to use as a background track on his show.

Asgard 2012 (2022 Mix) 

Ground-up mix of this from the Vanguard AD album series. Not using the same mix for copyright reasons and all that stuff I like to avoid. Rather pretty, as it always was. Again, as with my new Out of The Darkness version, very keen-eared listeners among you will notice I fecked up the main sequence lines in both cases, by one note! Told you my attention to detail is little short of unimpressive!

Out of The Darkness (2021 Version - 2022 mix)

I’m pleased with this one. After all, it’s not something I’d want to take and then arse around with in any new kind of style just for fun. No, this piece means what this piece means and it had to be done -right-. I hope you like it, it's got a video on Youtube you can look for but Bandcamp doesn't like me to post its link.