There is a recent Beherit interview about his electronic experimental stuff in big state owned media. Quite amusing actually, to have the Finnish state radio put out long text + 1,5 hour audio podcast about Beherit. Anyways, he concludes that after years of doing all with mouse, on the laptop, he moved back into doing analogue stuff. One of the reasons was as simple as getting it done.
Experience that when you got the option to return back to mix, and start tweaking little details, you will. If you just have to finish the track on analogue mixer, synths and such, you will basically lose the setting after session is done and moving on to next. This creates both need to focus - to be there making the track. Not just editing the track. It also creates finality. Stuff is completed, and you either like it or not. Make new take or move on to new track.
Most of stuff what I do, has same kind of element. If not in whole track, then always most of stuff appearing in track is multi-layered recording on tape deck. There is possibility to adjust a bit EQ or compress or such. Due often there are bunch of layers in one stereo (or mono) track, one just can't go back and adjust levels or any details of individual sounds.
This is totally conscious move, as it has big difference in sound, does everything sort of melt together, or is everything floating separately. One can of course start doing all sorts of tricks to get the good saturation happening later on. I feel that the real deal is better than all sorts of editing tricks to emulate result.
Especially for noise, I feel that it is almost like... metal drummers. You got the true masters, who have the skills. You got the brutal aggro players who don't really need the skills. Just energy. And then most of people, got neither. They got the basic sets of "this is how it should be done", and that averageness appears in form of not being really good enough, but also cleansing all the barbaric elements. Mistakes, odd fills, all the "what the hell just happened" -things etc. correcting drum hits on editing grid. In old noise, even the master often had the accidental goofy sounds, things falling apart for a bit. They would leave it as is, while nowadays it seems as if only seemingly "neat stuff" remains and rest stuff is cut out. Suddenly the "neat stuff" might not be that neat. That can very easily lead into being on same category as "average modern metal drummer". I would prefer not to be in such category.
So when track is done? It is just a gut feeling, BUT, I like to create this situation where things happen. There is the drive, motivation and energy to want to record, then there is recording process where things get done. If aim of session is not source sounds, but to play tracks, I generally play things until things worth to record emerges from speakers. Then I hit the rec button. That recording, with all it's flaws that may happen during live-mix that happens on the stop, will be the core of track or even ready track as is. When options are either keep it, or reject the recording, you know it far easier than when toying around if some particular layer should be +1dB or -1dB or if the envelope curve of echo is perfect now, or should you tweak it... I want noise to happen - not to be just editing.
