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Impressed with myself.

So recently I’ve been listening to a lot of Streetlight Manifesto and the earlier projects of their singer Tomas Kalnoky.

Tomas was the original singer/writer for the cult favorite ska act, Catch 22, best known for their 1998 record ‘Keasbey Nights‘, which many will argue to be the band’s best (or only good) album. Well back before Catch 22, Tomas was in a punk band named Gimp.

After Gimp disbanded, Tomas reworked one of their songs, ‘Supernothing,’ from a slow acoustic track to the faster, more upbeat version that appears on Keasbey Nights. The original, perhaps because it is so different, has become a favorite among fans. Sadly the only copies of this album floating around the internet are of poor quality. Probably due to having been taken directly from tape copies that, it seems, were not high fidelity to start with.

Tonight I had a bit of free time and decided to throw Supernothing into Soundtrack Pro to teach myself the software and to see if I could do anything about the quality. I was surprised by the results. I managed to correct the volume problems and remove almost all the tape hiss with just a few clicks. I’m impressed with Soundtrack and how easy it was to do without noticeably distorting the audio. If someone like myself, who is virtually tone-deaf, could manage to do something with it in a matter of minutes, that says a lot.

The immediate difference is subtle but evident at loud volumes, through a car stereo or headphones. The removal of the hiss, and the boosted volume makes it vastly more listen-able than before in my opinion.

I’m debating doing more of this type of thing with some other projects, including ‘Rules of the Game’ Catch 22’s pre-Keasbey demo that is also only on tape, but I’d like some feedback on how people think this sounds first.

Anyway, I’ll let you be the judge of my work.

You can check out the original here:

And my cleaned-up version:
http://www.subism.com/audio/gimp/supernothing.mp3

4 replies on “Impressed with myself.”

I think it sounds awesome. You would totally be my hero if you just re mastered Better Than You!

Thanks for this,
Tim

the link to the original recording doesn’t work anymore. Do you know another site to find this and other gimp recordings?

All I can say is after spendin a day on the net tryin to find Smiles for Macavity on either tape ( as in for sale) or to be downloaded i’m left totally confused (mostly because i cnat understand torrents even tho they hyave been explained many times to me) and in my personal opion after hearin supernothing i think you should re-master the entire album and let it be downloaded on ur site :D. Let me know if u do cos i really want the album to finish off my Kalnoky Kollection.

And finish by saying try listenin to Alone in the crowd again and u’ll find its an amazing album! and that the orginal supernothing is not emo in anyway and to say it is, is an insult for the Ska roots that Mr. Kalnoky believes in.

i thank u

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