On Saturday, the Spiral paid respects to the man who mastered Days From Evil, Reid Rejsa. He put the final coat of polish on the album for us. In return, we treated him to dinner at Sushi Tango in Uptown.

Our server, Janelle, was the most informative sushi waitress one could ask for. Short of busting out a PowerPoint presentation on Sushi, she was able to help us wade through the menu, so to speak, and make some informative and tasty decisions.

I like sushi, but don’t eat it often enough to know more than the difference between the dragon roll and a caterpillar roll. We ordered a smattering of everything, including a small whitefish, head and all, stuffed with rice and..well, himself. Once Vlad was et (we called him Vlad because he had a skewer though him, so obviously he was Vlad The Impaled) anyway, once he was emptied, the remains were taken by Janelle back to the chef, to be tossed into the deep fryer and then we had Vlad Round 2 (or Vlad The Deep-Fried). The eyes were said to be good luck, and Reid was given first pick, and he bravely chose the right eye, which he said had the consistency of a gummi-bear. Colin and Xtina had a Rock-Paper-Scissors contest for the other eye. Colin won…er, lost; depending on how you look at it. Either way, Colin ate the other eye.

All in all a great time, and it was good to sit back and celebrate two years of work we’ve put into Days From Evil by putting an evening’s worth of wine and sushi in our bellies.

Alas, a couple minor glitches are keeping the Version 1 master of “Days From Evil” being declaired as Finished. Surprisingly, the issues don’t have to do with the sound, they have to do with the track markers; where each track starts. The track markers for Monsters and The Last Song had to be nudged around a bit.

The version 2 master was completed on Friday the Thirteenth, 2007. We are giving the version 2 master a thorough listen, and have even uploaded some of the songs to myspace (www.myspace.com/jaggedspiral).

Once the “Days From Evil” master meets our exacting standards, we will stamp it with the Jagged Spiral Seal Of Approval…um, that is, after we design the Seal, and once the Seal meets our exacting standards…

We still have to design the cover art / liner notes, as well as select the official Jagged Spiral Band Logo.

Work, work, work. Oh well, even though the pay sucks, we don’t complain too much, since we can all drink on the job and the dress code is pretty lax…

The Premaster for “Days From Evil” is complete.

Let me repeat that, because it is significant. (And slightly louder, for the reading impaired)

THE PREMASTER FOR THE PHENOMENALLY UNCANNY, OVERLY-AMBITIOUS DEBUT ALBUM “DAYS FROM EVIL” BY JAGGED SPIRAL IS FUCKING COMPLETE!

I felt more emotional about a month ago, when we *thought* we were almost done. Over and over. There must be a dozen CDs laying around here that say ‘Premaster?’ on them. The differences between them are not obvious. Nit-picky, you might say.

But if there is one thing I’ve discovered in the past (nearly) two years while working on Days From Evil, it’s that the project is never Done until you proclaim it to be Done. It could always be edited more. It could always be re-recorded and tweaked and adjusted a little more. And it might even be improved. And it might not. At some point in the process, you gotta realize that no one else can even hear the ‘improvements’ you are making, and you are wasting your time re-re-recording tracks that were fine on the first take. At some point, you have to decide that you have done your very best, and sometimes the best you can do is get rid of everything you simply cannot live with.

At some point, you gotta take your hands off the wheel.

So the performances for Days From Evil are hereby proclaimed to be finished. And the mixing. And the effecting. And the arranging. We now move into the uncharted backwaters of Black-Magic-Mastering. The rule in recording your own music is: You don’t do the mastering on your own recordings. We have to turn our work over to someone else, someone who has not had two years of constant contact with the music. Someone to listen to our mixes with a fresh ear and an accurate sound system. Someone to tweak, polish, buff, shine, high-gloss, fold, spindle, mutilate and polymorph our songs into something better, and turn a collection of 9 songs into an album.

I warned you. The end is near.

When Jagged Spiral writes it, that’s when.

It’s un-ironic that The Last Song is not, in fact, the last song we will be working on for Days From Evil. The Last Song is finished, as in “mixed to Cigar version” although Josh said it was more like a Cigarillo. Regardless, that’s eight down, and one to go. The song Run will actually be the last song, which should be finished next Saturday.

I can’t tell you how exciting it is to be so close to completion. I mean, we are discussing things like liner notes and where to get the CD’s duplicated. How many do we order? What should we wear when we take the stage at the Minnesota Music Awards ceremony? What about a CD Release party?

CD Release party? Come again? Yikes, you mean we will have to learn all those songs? Songs we have NEVER played together live before?

Oh boy.

Maybe we can just have a real Listen-type listening party, and Jagged Spiral can sit in the audience and listen to the album in its entirity. Or hide backstage like Metallica did with The Black Album. Pussies.

Whatever. The cigar mixes for all songs should be done on Saturday, and then we go into mastering.