The Pond - The Early Years: 2008 - 2010 (RSD Exclusive, Colored Vinyl, Orange)

'Early Years' is made up of three albums, 'Psychedelic Mango' (2008), 'Corridors of Blissterday' (2009) and 'Frond' (2010). The first two were never originally mastered, which meant we could just take the 16bit WAV from the CD copies we found and master them for the first time. The CD's by the way were from the CD Pressing Plant down the road from us, we just took our digital 8 track files down there and asked for 'some CD's please!'. Frond was mastered and luckily the guy who mixed it (Sam Ford) had the pre-mastered mixes for us to use. We did flirt with the idea of running these onto tape, or mastering them with heaps of valve gear to try and 'warm' the very digital recordings up, but at the end of the day, they were made by 3 bozos with very limited recording knowledge, skill and equipment, but a lot of imagination. It made sense to try and improve them with this master, but also keep the spirit true to the original recordings. We hope you enjoy the early years of Pond. Jay Watson "From the band's conception under the teeming purple branches of Mulberia, it's first steps around a filthy share-house carpet in Daglish, to some of it's first words - "mango" "duck" "bucket" - these songs form a sepia photo album of Ponds giddy first days, lovingly re-touched and remastered by Jay and Gin. They were the best of times, and probably not anywhere near the worst of times. Just some barely adult idiots with limited access to money or the internet trying to be silly and trippy in equal measures, while lacking the intellect or maturity to see how vastly overambitious they actually were." Nicholas Allbrook