After The Long, the Short and the Tall of It we all scattered to do finals and thought little about any further music activity. After graduation I stayed on to a do a sabbatical role and Steve was doing his masters but it was well into 1991 before we hatched a plan for another album.

With Tush off working somewhere and few of the other original contributors around Bath it was clear we were not going to be able to do a long multi-session studio recording so we switched to the idea of doing a live session over one weekend when we could gather enough of us together.

In the intervening period Alan, of open air concert fame, had acquired a second-hand 24-track mixing desk, PA, foldback monitors, microphones and associated equipment from an audio company for use by the students union. It wasn’t state of the art but it was a lot better than anything we had had access to before. We booked the performance room of the Arts Barn on campus for a weekend in June and set about trying to create a live studio. (Note: for later Bath students the Arts Barn and Buildings were located where ‘The Edge’ is now situated, sadly the original Bath stone buildings – the only structures on campus built before the late 1960s – were demolished to make way for it around 2014)

It would be incorrect to give the impression that everything was done over the weekend, Tush and Steve had actually spent quite a few evenings together putting down the core structure but a lot did happen over a very intense 2.5 days.

Friday evening consisted of a lot of experimentation and tweaking until we could get the right set-up. Freddie still had a key part to play in being the playout vehicle and master timing for all of the pre-recorded core components but it was far more ‘live’ than either of the previous two albums. There was also considerable time pressure so retakes had to be kept under control. By late Friday night (well really early Saturday morning) we were making progress and happy with the overall approach.

Saturday was a solid day of playing and recording with various guest musicians coming in for different tracks. We carried on long into the night fuelled by a few beers. By Sunday things started to get experimental with even kettle drums making an appearance. By late Sunday afternoon we had a master finished.

It was certainly a bit rushed and you can hear the acoustics of the room creeping in, however, because we were using proper live equipment (even legendary Sure SM58 microphones) the audio clarity and quality is actually better than the first two albums (although still mastered on to an open reel Revox B77) but it suffers from a lack of post production. In addition the live elements show up the quality of the pre-recorded elements from a very poorly Freddie who was definitely nearing the end.

Sheer was completed on the Sunday and felt a bit like a demo tape rather than the studio mix of the previous two. As it was all completed in less than 72 hours the mixing across the tracks is consistent which makes for an album feel but the downside is that mistakes in balance, EQ and reverb, etc. also tended to run through the entire album. With little time for retakes and no ability to ‘punch-in’ at key points we just lived with the mistakes.

When I revisited the master in 2018 it was probably the tape-based master which gained the most from post-production and mastering, with compression, limiting and EQ dealing with some of the original issues. It was still a two-track master and littered with both performing and mixing issues so not everything could be fixed but it did gain considerably.

For me it marked the end of a chapter, an enjoyable few days with friends having some fun and leaving with an audio ‘photograph’ of our final student days.

For the 2024 remaster some of the newer tools available have further helped, even managing to adjust vocal levels using some clever AI.

The new 2024 digital remastered version is available on Spotify and most other streaming platforms.