I’m realizing there is no pause button in life. No matter how many times I throw myself onto my knees, palms flat on the earth and beg Time to just wait. Just give me a second to catch my breath. Time, please, just let me smell the roses.
'Time Is Running Out' was probably the most difficult song for band and producer to nail down, especially with regard to an intro that required mucho experimentation. "We tried out all sorts of percussion ideas," says Costey, "including people clapping their hands and slapping their knees. At one point Wally even miked up Chris and Dominic scratching their heads to produce a shaker track, and that worked suprisingly well, but we didn't end up using it. Eventually, we concluded that the bass would comprise the centrepiece of the intro, so we had to come up with a unique, very characteristic tone, although I wasn't totally convinced about the bass line that we initially settled on. We spent an entire day trying to get the greatest bass intro sound ever created in all humanity, and by the end of that time we went with an acoustic bass guitar running through a ton of pedals and different amps. Then, just as we'd attained a sound that we thought was pretty good, Matthew walked in, listened to it and said, 'Fantastic, you've just spent eight hours on a flanged bass?' He was right of course, not having spent hours on the floor, toying with pedals and cables. We didn't keep any of it. Still, there was always good give-and-take like that, and we trusted each other enough to go with our respective ideas."
Rich Costey on recording Time Is Running Out, Sound on Sound interview, Dec 2003
there's so many books to read and not enough time because there is so much work to do and so many things to actually experience in real life and skills to learn and practice in art and things to ponder over in philosophy and science and answers to find but again there's not enough time because there is so much work to do outside, do you get me?? do you understand the troubles of my heart??? :(