Album mastering complete!

John (our electric guitar player and leader of The Telethons) finished up the overdubs and final mix on "Snap Snap Goes The Mousetrap" mid-last week, which concluded all the mixing for the album.

Yesterday, I visited Major Matt at Olive Juice, and we mastered disc 2 of the album. My initial opinion that Disc 2 has a more natural flow (with a few oddball inclusions to break things up) than Disc 1 was confirmed as I sat there listening to Matt work his way through the disc.

This is certainly not to say that disc 1 is inferior. I feel like both discs are equally weighted with top-of-the-line "hits" and intriguing "deep cuts." This double-album is 2 1/4 hours of solid, worthwhile entertainment. Hell, a lot of James Bond movies can't even promise that.

Also, I realized yesterday (the 17th of October), as we were finishing up the mastering, that we were finishing the album 2 years to the day after we started recording it. The first Fustercluck!!! recording session was 17 Oct. 2007, and I recorded basic tracks for "Emotional Tourism" and a few other songs that day. At that time, the album was still going to be called Get Happier!!! (a reference to Elvis Costello's Get Happy!!); now, only the triple exclamation points remain.

So... now the only thing I'm waiting on, before sending the materials off to the pressing plant, is the finalized cover art from Toby Goodshank and Preston Spurlock. When I ask them for updates, all they can tell me is "Feester's Qweest" over and over again, which I'm sure is just some artist thing.