Episode 9

The rest of the percussion, and the session's best working principle. Snares get auditioned by feel and by colour, a blue one, an ancient Pearl, an old Slingerland, before the bridge section gets solved by turning the snares off entirely and treating it as a tight tom, damped with a ring, aimed at something Yvette can only describe by image: far away, ominous, marching in the distance.

Then cymbal swells, some later swapped for crashes where a swell was too polite. A gong that rings long enough that you could go take a shower and come back to it. A woodblock that sounds like nothing on its own and does a surprising amount in the track. And a real snare saved for the end, deliberately withheld so it still has somewhere to go.

The moment worth stealing comes when the snare part is objectively good and still is not working. It marks the pocket but has no drive, so the bass drum comes back underneath for bounce. Then Fab names the rule the whole session has been following: review what you have and find where you feel a gap, rather than looking at an instrument and finding somewhere to put it. Colour first, perfection later. "If it's not beautiful, it's not the end."

And it closes on the bill coming due. Lining up eighteen players, a guitar and a bass drum with no click is, in Fab's phrase, negotiated time. No grid, no right answer, just finding the happy average. Which is exactly what the edit is for.