Celebrating its 10th anniversary, Deep Elm Records has released a new edition of Reanimation, the debut from Lights & Motion.
The album was created by a then 24 year-old Christoffer Franzen as he battled insomnia. The new edition is remastered, with two extra tracks: "Gardens" and "Into The Sky."
Franzen explains:
At the beginning, I really had nothing except for a vision of something vast, heartbreaking and beautiful at the same time. I didn't think in terms of music, but in terms of other things that inspired me, things that painted a picture in my head that I could see so clearly. This was in the Fall of 2011. Without any education in sound engineering or music production, I spent countless nights learning how to get the sounds that I could hear in my head to come out through the speakers. I did this by trial and error, reading endless forums about music production, watching tutorials and experimenting. In many ways it was one of the most important events of my life.
In 2022, I spent several months going through my old song projects in preparation for the 10 year anniversary. I had the idea to remaster the album, but when I started to dive into the old projects I found myself hearing things differently and I decided to give all the songs a fresh remix instead. This would turn out to be quite the undertaking as I did a lot more than just remix the songs. Some parts I completely re-recorded. I re-sang some vocal harmonies with better microphones, and for many songs I wrote new string-arrangements that mirrored the original ones, but bloom a bit more. A lot of work was made in the low-end; I must have spent half the time on the drums and bass alone, getting them to really step forward and fill out that bottom octave.
I really love my first album and how it sounds, it was written, produced and mixed on pure self-taught instinct. But because it was my first album and I wasn’t as experienced an engineer as I am now, there are some things sonically that I always knew I could improve upon. So these mixes aren’t supposed to feel night and day to the listener, they should just sound fuller, wider and more hi-fi. I also finished recording and mixed two new tracks that were written during those early years, but for one reason or another never got finished / released back then. They are named 'Gardens' and 'Into The Sky' and they are included on this Revisited 10th Anniversary Edition.
Deep Elm also recently released a new 10-song collection from Carly Comando, The Calm Before, on Nov. 4.
