Attention is noticing where you are, as opposed to where you thought you'd be. It's easy to get stuck in the detailed work of overdubbing, fiddling and tweaking, but it often doesn't get you far from where you started. Bigger jumps take a type of nimbleness, the agility to switch back and forth from detail to big picture, from zoom to wide angle. The advantage of working in company is that you don't have to do both yourself. With U2 it's very rare that EVERYONE in the room is using the same lens at the same time. Larry (Mullen) and Adam (Clayton) are reliable wide anglers when things start to lose perspective or become too narrowly focused: they become the voice of musical concience. Edge, the archaelolgist of the rough mix, delved back through earlier strata in the song's development, emerging triumphantly with a different vision on a battered cassette. Steve Lillywhite, a welcome addition at the mixing stage, comes in fresh and enthusiatic, free of history, and trusts his gifted ears. Dan listens to feel, to the skeleton of the song, and draws attention to things that everybody else has stopped noticing. Flood reawakens sleeping songs with brilliantly original mixes after we've all gone home. I trust my instincts, wax doubtful or enthusiastic, grumble Englishly and liberally contradict myself. All these shifts of perspective make the development of a song very non-linear: from the inside, the process often feels chaotic, jumping from one identity to another, stretching the song this way and that until it all falls apart, then picking up the bits and starting over.
none of that over-boosting, clipping distorting bollocks..
