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Mark Scudder: Felix Culpa Remastered Special Edition

Having total control over your own recordings is both a blessing and a curse. When I got the opportunity to get into the iTunes Store, I quickly sent Don't Wait - but I hesitated with Felix Culpa. The age of the recording, and my inexperience with playing and recording at the time really started to stand out for me, and I didn't want iTunes to have it in its original form. There were a lot of limitations, a lot of things I would have done differently... the album was under-produced or under-performed.

So with ten additional years of technology behind us since the release, I made a new 24-bit transfer of the master tape (the original album was recorded on a Tascam DA-88) and created new multitrack sessions for the album.

"Everything is Perfect" and "August 24, 1996" were completely re-recorded from scratch. I felt these were by far the weak points of the album. An additional ten years of experience playing, recording, and producing brought them up to where they should have been. "Between the Shot and the Fall" was remixed from stems. "Summer Came Without Her" had a few elements added and was remixed from the original recordings. Two never-before-heard tracks recorded around the time of Felix Culpa, "Exordium" and "In My Life Once," were mixed from the new transfer and added to the end of the album.

While working on the album, I had the opportunity to sit down with my associate producer David Nezelek, and he asked me questions about the history of the album and the experience recording it the first time. This dialogue became the commentary that makes up the second half of the album. The commentary goes into detail about how and why the album came about in the first place, the challenges of recording it, and some of the aftermath of releasing it to an Internet that was just beginning to grab the consciousness of the world. Intercut with the commentary are outtakes, alternate takes, and a live acoustic performance of "Summer Came Without Her."