Q.7 How did you maintain the feel of the recording?
JMJ: 'The whole project has been done by hand I would say. I mean from the beginning where I really started the composition process and writing the tracks and doing the tracks really with one instrument and one small recorder, a small desk that could work on batteries so I could travel and do some music wherever. And during the recording process I used a lot of analogue processes also. I mean having sounds, playing sounds through small speakers as well as having old analogue tape recorders, I used a lot of tape echoes and not digital kind of delays but tape delays with old instruments, with old tape recorders like the Revox. And also in the mixing process, mixing by hand gave an entirely different situation. The way of dealing continuously with the old textures but also you have the possibility to do 20 totally different mixes in 1 hour. And this kind of almost considering your mixes like when you are using a Polaroid and suddenly having a lot of possibilities, also makes you much less passive in front of technology, because in an automated mixing situation you are always a spectator of your work. When you are mixing by hand, you have to recondition yourself each time to go back to square one, to go back to scratch and play the whole piece again. Exactly like when you are playing with a keyboard or playing with a guitar. The whole piece again. Instead of, for instance, asking somebody to do a chorus on an electric guitar and saying oh yes could you redo that, could you replay that particular note. The rest is fine — it's just impossible. I mean mixing by hand is exactly the same thing. I mean if you are starting from square one you replay and reinterpret the whole piece so it has that kind of freshness and spontaneity that you may lose with an automated mix.'