The Church - any of the congregation here? (Part Two)

Got my Jupiter 13 shipping notice yesterday. It's a pre-shipment notice which means USPS doesn't have it yet.

 

Don't expect too many shipping updates: Asendia are ostensibly owned by the French post office and SwissPost. I've had to be patient when Amazon.co.uk have used them to ship stuff to me in the USA. Asendia tend to use a freight consolidation model: they don't ship items until they can fill a container or whatever.

I too got a notification from the USPS. It hasn't shipped yet.

 

IIRC, these were pressed in Wisconsin or Michigan in the US. If so, why on earth would they be shipping from France?

 

Jupiter 13 has arrived at a post office in Pittsburgh

 

Yeah... 12/1 delivery ETA.

 

In other news, The Church should consider fleeing to the US to escape the lunacy down under. Steve has a longtime Texas benefactor here in Austin. I wonder if this has been considered.

 

what lunacy downunder???

 

I’m not rightly sure that fleeing to the US is escaping lunacy in any way. Quite the opposite, actually…

 

Lol. We'll see how that plays out. Sad to see a favorite band forced out of playing live.

 

Barring any unforeseen circumstances, I presume they’re likely to set up a tour in May or whenever that Morrissey-fest show they’re playing at is scheduled.

 

Response by Steve to a fan on Facebook asking when the new album was coming out.

The Church Band fans | I thought their new album was almost ready in 2020, any ideas as to why we are still waiting for it to drop

“Hey people
Well we had terrible bushfires which certainly slowed us down and then we had the old Covid which really slowed us down esp as Ian in Qld and Ash in Vic and Caino in Alabama.
I majorly reacquainted myself with ‘ the studio’ by making about 6 or so new records and discovered I hadn’t lost my producing ‘chops’ . ( ie I always produced or coproduced all records before becoming a stupid junky wherein I kinda abdicated around the time of Hologram . No matter what you may believe all of the early records are essentially my brainchildren…with help of course…but essentially I always mainly got my way. Deciding to get the thing finished I took this record on myself and went in and completed the task.
Tim and I did a fair bit of work at his place too which was very important .
Still it seemed to me that a singular vision was needed if this thing was to ever get done and re-energised by all my musical adventures during Covids long dreary winter of discontent I jumped back in .
For better or for worse! You will have to decide .
I’m a big fan of democracy but it doesn’t always get the job done.
I was not particularly enamoured with our last record and I needed to react against that a bit .
Working long and hard hours with just myself and a brilliant engineer Andrew Beck with whom I developed an incredible musical gestalt I have finished the damn thing and it is now up to Andrew to mix it.
There’s about 15 to 17 songs to consider . Some of em I’m gonna have to wait and see how they scrub up in the mix before deciding if they’ll make the final record . But there are at least 12 or 13 absolutely brilliant melodic strange and beautiful songs . Ash brought in some lovely playing not just guitar either. He really added to the admixture. Jeffrey is all over the record and you can feel his presence everywhere. Ian too continuing to stake his place with some lovely guitar. Tims invaluable drumming and backing vox .
It’s very hard to sit on this and have to wait until it’s done.
I realise a lot of people will be ready with knives out to savage whatever it is we came up and I knew and I know it has to be absolutely ****ing fantastic just to justify itself and it’s mere existence at all.
I can assure you all now it is!
No resting on laurels. No mediocre church by numbers.
This is the record we should have made a long time ago.
It is as good as Priest and U23.
And some of it even better .
It took a huge burst to get it over the line but it was worth it!
Be patient it’s coming and it’ll blow yer socks off !
Thanks to everyone who ever played in this band we have continued to build on this ongoing thing of love and beauty that is the church.
Still in my opinion one of the best bands ever. Meandering and stumbling and wandering thru the years we are back with this epic masterpiece .
Amen
I’d say it’ll be sometime in March..?
Much thanks to kip McClanahan for financing it!
Damien Gerard’s studio in Gosford nsw , where I now feel so at home .
The other 4 guys who helped me come up with all this.
Just wait n see.
Listen without prejudice .
This record is something else again.
It had to be and it is!
Hurrah!
A triumph!
Ha ha !
Calloo callay
He chortled in his joy!”

 

Classic Steve. Imagine this with proper grammar and you've got an idea of his book Something Quite Peculiar. Interesting that he feels a bit cold toward Man Woman Life Death Infinity – I myself have never been able to totally crack that record outside of some killer individual cuts ("Another Century" chief among them), although the album is by no means bad. And although the sheer volume of SK's recent output (six albums, one a double, in two years!!) makes it hard to digest, the quality is still there 100%. I love what Ian Haug brought to the Church, I love Jeffrey Cain's work on Isidore (and he played nearly every instrument on the stage during the gig I saw!), and the snippets of Ash Naylor's multi-instrumentalism from Steve's Instagram page makes me very, very excited for what this new album will bring. I'm sad that there's no Peter, but I'm excited for something new as well.

 

I hope his ass can cash those checks his mouth is writing.

 

Fat chance

 

Just received my copy of Jupiter 13. The splatter vinyl itself is beautiful, will be giving this a listen tonight. My only concern is that we are kind of out of luck if the vinyl is in any way defective.

 

Got mine today also. Hope to listen soon.

 

Listening to the Jupiter 13 vinyl now and I’m a bit disappointed. On my system, it just sounds a bit dull, vailed, and less dynamic compared to the CD. Acoustic guitars don’t seem to have that shimmer and the sense of space is not as nice. Anyone else feel the same? That said, the vinyl is beautiful looking, flat and pop free.

 

It sounds fine to me but I never listen all that closely. There is some repeated screeching at the very end of S1. I don't mind, I bought it for the physical presence and to give them a few dollars, I imagine their profits might, if they're lucky, be enough for a steak dinner and a glass of wine each.

 

And don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy with it and happy to help support physical product and future projects. It sounds very nice on its own. You’d have to critically headphone compare it with the CD to perhaps hear what I’m hearing.

 

Ya for sure, no judgment at all. The main thing for me is I pay a bit more attention to the music than I do when streaming. It's very good record, especially that title track.

 

I posted a similar thing to the Seance FB group and Martin Kennedy replied with:
“There was a separate master for the vinyl. There definitely wasn’t more compression added to it, just a roll off of very high and very low frequencies to get the best cut and volume for vinyl as per pressing plant instructions. Mastering for CD and digital doesn’t have those restrictions so Simon the engineer had free reign with the frequency, Kenneth. I can’t tell the difference most of the time but I agree your good sound system is probably highlighting this. Unless of course the pressing plant themselves messed with it…”

 

Your audio observation is a good one and interesting. I don't quite hear it that way, but will play the digital and vinyl editions back-to-back in the coming week(s).

My first and immediate understanding of the vinyl is the mastering / plating engineer did an outstanding job. This is mastered old school. You need to really turn it up, just like the heyday of vinyl. So many of the recent releases by The Church, and related projects, have the vinyl mastered nearly as high (brickwalled) as the cd's. Even Intervention Record's release of Starfish is too hot for my taste and IMHO. It does sound great (no real complaints), but I feel the original Arista is better, everso slightly but still noticeably, when turned up.

On my amp, currently using my Luxman (see profile), cd's are 8:30 - 9:00 pm on the volume dial. J13 on vinyl is 1:00 p.m. and metered at 72 db avg. and 82 db max. Perfect balance of everything - highs, lows - it's all there.

 

The pressing quality is quite good, for those wondering or for those worried. Mine arrived packed very securely. No jacket damage nor corner bumps. The vinyl is perfectly flat and centered. The splatter of the vinyl formulation is quite nice. One disc is red with orange splatter and one orange with red splatter. I don't know who was responsible for mastering, plating, pressing this edition; but whomever it was did an outstanding job. Qrates FTW!

Next time: Print a gatefold at Stoughton and put session photos on the inside of the gatefold. Whoever bought this would have easily paid another $10 US for that presentation. I feel like SK needs to see the world of Music Matters and Tone Poet. Can you imagine a 100% analog version, Kevin Gray edition of P=A with Stoughton jacket? I can. I can dream.

 

I compared the digital to the vinyl again today to make sure I wasn’t crazy. I hear the same results. The cymbals, vocals, and acoustic guitars have more shimmer and openness then the vinyl pressing. The vinyl has more overall weight and oomph! Based on what Martin mentioned in his post, it makes sense. Each version has its strengths and I’m super happy to have this on vinyl. The pressing and presentation is wonderful.

 

I can’t imagine a 100% analog version because I can’t imagine there is an analog step anywhere in the recording process.