Reflections on an EP

Category: Elderflower, Releases

We’ve been working hard on the new EP “Elderflower” for just over 2 years. A couple of songs on it were incepted even further back into the annals of DTO history – so she’s been with us a while. We’ve been desperate to finish it and get it out there, but we’ve also been careful not to rush it or deliver something substandard. From the writing through to pre-production then recording and mixing, we’ve been diligent and hard on ourselves all the way. So we find ourselves now with a complete EP, 32 minutes of new music, meticulously crafted and now out of our hands, sent off for mastering. This represents a significant musical and personal milestone for us and we’ve had to say goodbye to it. Once you’ve handed it off for mastering your options are limited, it better be good, it better be the best it can be because no matter the mastering engineer, he won’t make crap shine. Once you’ve uploaded those files to the cloud and handed them over to someone else your hands are tied.

That realisation scared the shit out of us! Especially for us. We’ve always been intent on doing everything ourselves. Written, recorded, produced and mixed by – the whole she-bang.

We didn’t know we would find it this difficult to let go. We’ve never felt this before, not even with our previous EP, which seemed to emerge from much younger minds. The process of making Elderflower has been difficult, and it’s required nothing short of blind, blinkered belligerence in order to complete it to a standard we were pleased with. I suppose that when you pour so much into something, when you struggle for it, endless days smashing your head against the wall until that melody/rhythm/riff forms, it’s bound to pull you in deep.

Mastering will be finished next week, and that’s it, like a prehistoric insect having undergone petrification, it will be eternalised. And we’ll probably have a fucking beer to celebrate.

Cheers