Think of those wonderful sounding recordings made in the late 1960’s and the equipment with which they were made. Compare this with what is now available. It is unacceptable to blame one's equipment these days. There is so much striving to obtain better gear, yet some of the most sublime music on the planet has been made by desperately poor people playing on instruments made out of Western industrial rubbish (oil drums in the Carribean, petrol can guitars in parts of Africa). A £50 pocket minidisc recorder can now get a better sound than ANYTHING that was available for a vast proportion of the history of recorded music. The possibilites of such a device would boggle the minds of pre-WWII phonographers as much as extraterrestrial technology might boggle ours.

It is becoming clear that an excess of technology can squeeze the life out of music. The evolution of technology does seem to have been accompanied by a certain "constriction" in a lot of recorded music. A genre of music called "Lo-Fi" has recently come into being, comprising bands and musicians who are trying to return to some kind of authenticity by intentionally using "sub-standard" (i.e. outdated, superceded) equipment.

It is now possible to make recordings of extraordinary quality with relatively simple, affordable equipment. COTD are making the nicest ones we can with the minimum interference in the spontaneity of the music and comfort of the setting. We just have a minidisc recorder and stereo microphone discretely tucked in the corner of a room. The quality could be improved with a bit of effort and thought, but it's perfectly adequate for now, we feel. Some people get a bit too carried away with perfection in the recording of music, and this often compromises the "life force" or essential power in the result. If you've ever heard some of the (unintentionally) "lo-fi" recordings of Robert Johnson, Leadbelly or Blind Willie McTell, you'll know that to reject something merely on the basis of "poor sound quality" would be foolish indeed. If the music is worthy, does it really matter if it doesn’t sound as crystal clear as a CD of Brothers In Arms?

We make no claims to be part of anything, but we can see that the (admittedly marginal) "Lo-Fi" movement is a clear reaction against the over-technologisation of music, due to the effect it has had on the "soul" of recorded music. Over-technologised music is often described as being "soulless". The epitome of "soulfulness" in music is of course "soul music" (rooted in "gospel music", rooted in African singing, rooted in the beautiful organic singing of a non-technologically-oriented people). So is some kind of music/technology "devolution" just beginning to get underway? This could be interesting...