13

It's 10 years since the whole Ghosting Season thing, which is very scary, as it definitely only feels like it was 30 minutes since that whole time.

Anyway, I was rifling around on my laptop the other day, looking for some interesting things to put up, or out, or just to have a listen to and get all nostalgic, and I came across the old demo for '13', which was the last track on the album, but (I think) one of the first I sat down and wrote. It came out of a nice little guitar riff I did, based on a very old tune of mine, but with the chords shifted down a step or two (or three). I digress, because the demo still sounded pretty good, if a little empty and a bit all over the place - the mixing was dreadful, because it was only intended as a demo to be worked on later, so there wasn't much effort put in.

I sat and thought 'could I clean this up?' - thinking the original session file would be long gone, I tried my best to add a bit of bass, or master it cleanly, but the wav was too far gone for any of that. I searched my computer, just on the off chance I had the session somewhere, and after some detective work (I'm utterly dreadful at naming things, so they're always a variation of 'idea' or 'thing' or something like that) I found it! There it was, in all its glory, a beautiful session that hadn't been loaded up since 2010! Incredible. So I fixed the mixing a little, and unmuted the bass channel (there was a bassline in there after all) and cleaned it up a bit.

It sounds a lot more hypnotic and trippy than the final version, and I suppose that's what I was aiming for with it - I think the whole Ghosting Season thing was supposed to be an extension of worriedaboutsatan, but just with a different name. In fact, the GS album was basically supposed to be the follow up to Arrivals, and there was artwork, videos and loads more with this album credited to satan instead. I even have the files somewhere with all the ID3 tags as a worriedaboutsatan album. The fact the GS album starts on a lot of digital distortion (it's called 'bitcrushing') and opens out into the first track is a nod to the way Arrivals ends, with the bitcrushing slowly engulfing the last track. Anyway...

I really love these little demo versions - they have a little something about them, which perhaps gets tuned down in the production process on their way to being on a record. The 'Far End Of The Graveyard (3am Version)' is actually just the demo, and there are a few more pinging around somewhere - I'll have to dig them all up. Anyhoo, here's the newly cleaned up '13' demo, with vocals from Birds of Passage:

Hope you enjoy.