When you have created, produced and mixed a track, we're largely of the opinion that you cannot objectively complete the final stages of the track's creation, as your head and ears are too involved in the track, and your head and ears will struggle to make objective decisions on the final necessary tweaks to the stereo pre-master file. A mastering engineer who's job is to provide such objectivity on a daily basis to all types of music, via a pair of £20k speakers and equal quality ears, we feel, is money well spent. Our first EP we feel of real note, The Sasquatch EP (Passenger Records), was released in Summer 2000 and mastered by Shane at Heathmans (now Finyl Tweek). The difference we heard between our (pre-master level) mixdowns was massive. We'd never really heard such a transformation between pre-masters and masters before.

From hearing these masters, we began to consciously check out who's music around us had a certain shine that we loved listening to. Whilst working with friends and fellow Passenger artists, The Body Snatchers (Baobinga & Ginz) on our 'We Here' (ft. Yolanda) remix, we got to hear their debut album, and were pretty astounded by the quality of the finished product. After speaking to the guys we soon realised that we wanted to speak to the mastering engineer who had provided the final sparkle to the album. This is when we begun communications with Kevin at Wired Masters, London. Once initial thoughts were communicated on what we were looking for, we spent a couple of days going back and forwards, getting the first release finalised. As mastering was far from our area of expertise, a few things had to be explained to us that weren’t possible to be done at the mastering stage, and once clear in our minds that certain 'huge' block waves were generally created at mixdown stage and not mastering, and that infact, we most probably didn't want this type of master, we were all good. The slightly overdriven 'hot' sound has become vital to our sound, and we feel we'd largely be unsatisfied with masters from somebody who didn't use without hardware to master our tracks now.

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Upon embarking on our club mix of 'Saving Me' we felt that the nonchalant vibe of the track might not be to everyone's taste, and so opted to create something much tougher and darker. We loved our club mix at the time, although looking back it seems we far from managed to capture the feeling of the original in the club mix, which has taught us the valuable lesson of using the vocals and other important parts of a good track when attempting to remix it, after all it is those parts that usually make the listener like a track in the first place. 

Having worked out an agreement with the Black Noise lads for the remix, we were eagerly anticipating their email with their interpretation of 'Saving Me'. We're hugely respectful of how capable they are as producers but had slight reservations as to how the vocal, coupled with the instrumentation we had selected for the original, would fit with their sound. However, when the hugely fun disco house remix dropped into the inbox, any reservations went right out the window! To capture the whole vibe of the original track whilst keeping only the vocal was a massive triumph and the remix has definitely become one the most successful on the label to date.

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Tune in next week for more bite size chunks of Stamp! Beats information/revelations. :) 

M&J