Paradox

The Pleasure of Pain

The album is essentially a "bedroom recording" project from 1991. The songs selected weren't originally intended to be in a collection; rather, they were selected because they were different, and it was educational and fun figuring out how to record them using the gear Doug somehow had managed to acquire.

The centerpiece of the studio was Doug's brand-new 8-track cassette console which was synched with the MIDI sequencers in his stage rig. The combination provided six tape tracks (for vocals and bass guitar) plus virtual tracks (for everything else). Six songs in the collection were multi-tracked. "The Letter" and "Goodbye," however, had been previously recorded "live" for reference using stereo tape decks, those tracks being included at the last minute to round out the set. The album was mixed in one afternoon and was distributed on compact cassette in December 1991.

The project tapes were lost in 1992 or 1993, but a third-generation distribution copy of the album was cleaned up a bit digitally in 1998, and the original eight tracks plus several bonus tracks from the 1980s went to CD in October of that year.

A better clean-up of the original album was performed in 2002 and went to CD in May 2003.

In 20-somethingteen, the master tape was located. Unfortunately, the mastering deck's drive belt had aged poorly, rendering the unit unusable, and replacement parts were unavailable. Fortunately, a viable Dolby C decoder eventually was obtained for use with another tape machine, and the master audio was digitized—for the first time—in July 2019. After a non-inconsiderable amount of audio restoration, remastering (though the album had never been properly mastered) commenced in 2021, with a slew of sundry setbacks delaying completion until January 2023, when the first "30 Years On" CD was produced.

Listen to the tracks, and feel free to download the album for your private use.
Please feel free to buy Doug a cup of coffee!

Nine O'Clock


Twelve


Looks Like It's Over


Treading Water


Teazy


The Letter


There Never Was


Goodbye

Download album with artwork (mp3)
Download album with artwork (lossless m4a)