Exciting news: Last week Chris Athens (in Austin, Texas) mastered the album. Mastering is hard to describe, but it's what makes a recording truly sing. Like porn, you might say "I know it when I see it," or more accurately, you know it when you don't hear it. You can tell when music hasn't been mastered, because it sounds different depending on which audio system you're listening to (car stereo, laptop, fancy headphones). Maybe you only hear the treble on your laptop, but in the car it's all booming bass. So once Michael finished mixing, he handed the songs off to Chris, who unified the volume and EQ of each track. And with that—a mere three years later—we now have 35 minutes of mixed and mastered songs. (We're part of the glacial music movement.) Now we have no excuse for delaying the release of this album any longer. Our goal is for 100 people to take it for a spin, and with any luck this will happen in 2016....or before the next ice age.
P.S. Here's a good description of mastering from Landr's What Is Mastering?:
Mastering is the final step of audio post-production. The purpose of mastering is to balance sonic elements of a stereo mix and optimize playback across all systems and media formats. Traditionally, mastering is done using tools like equalization, compression, limiting and stereo enhancement.