Martin Page - In The House Of Stone And Light

If I may editorialize for a sentence or two, this track is a personal favorite of mine from 1994-1995. It still sounds like nothing else that came out before or since. The production is stellar in every way, and it sounds superb on the air.

And extra kudos to drummer Jimmy Copley, who plays it with memorable fills that all propel the song forward. Not a wasted note anywhere in the whole drum track! As a drummer myself, I can vouch that it's not easy to compose such a memorable-without-being-flashy drum part to such a mellow song. Phil Collins plays on other tracks on the album, but I doubt he could have bettered what Jimmy Copley did for "In The House Of Stone And Light".

LP version (printed 5:00, actual is roughly 5:00)

The LP version fades in, and the last note has a very long reverb trail, making the timing a little difficult even if you use software to analyze the track. The song runs 89.3 BPM throughout (live drummer playing to click track).

The song sounds stellar on the full In The House Of Stone And Light album. Great dynamic range (an increasing rarity in late 1994), excellent EQ, no evidence of noise reduction on the fade.

There's a digital clone (digitally exactly 1 dB quieter) on the promo CD Spotlight On Hits Pop Vol. 24.

The same analog transfer (not a digital clone) is used on the promo CD Hot Hits Pop Vol. 34.

All three of the above sound excellent. The full album is available on Qobuz (as of Oct 2025), and seems to be a digital clone of the 1994 CD.

Edit (printed 3:59, actual 4:09)

I thought that it would be a simple edit of the LP version (delete intro, then one edit), but both are impossible without access to the multi-tracks.

I thought that the first edit would just delete 0:00 to 0:21.7 of the LP version (timing from In The House Of Stone And Light CD). Unfortunately, the whooshy sound over the drum fill is much brighter on the LP version and much duller on the Edit. Minor detail, but dialing back the whooshy sound for the Edit makes it feel like you're not joining something already in progress.

I thought that the second edit (at 3:47 in the Edit) would just delete 4:08.7 to 4:35.6 of the LP version (timing from In The House Of Stone And Light CD). Unfortunately, the edit is actually a cross-fade that blends two vocal lines: "Looking for the child" in the primary vocals, and "I must go there" in the high-pitched background vocals. Editing the LP version on the snare on the word "child", which seems like a good place to edit, sounds horrendous without the cross-fade.

Discogs shows two promo CD singles (Mercury CDP 1276 and Mercury CDP 1390). Both have "Edit" as track 1, and an unlabeled version (LP version) as track 2. I don't own either one.

Aside from the promo CD singles, the first place the song appeared was Hitmakers Vol. 104 (August 12, 1994). On this disc, the waveform peaks are all shaved off, as if it's a volume-adjusted clone of a disc that was mastered too loud. I assume that this release coincides with the promo CD single Mercury CDP 1276, but can't confirm. I don't know how Mercury CDP 1276 was mastered.

Mercury kept working this song, to their credit. I suspect that the promo CD single Mercury CDP 1390 was released in December 1994, because the Edit turned up on Top Hits USA T0255 (December 23, 1994) and Hitmakers Vol. 109 (January 27, 1995). The Hitmakers disc is mastered quite well, and I suspect that it's a digital clone of the promo CD single (1390). There's a digital clone of Hitmakers (digitally exactly 2.3 dB quieter) on TM Studios Goldwav track no. 0011759.

The song was a hit in early 1995, and turned up on the recurrent disc Top Hits USA RH029 (April 1995). The mastering on the Top Hits USA discs in 1995 used an extra analog step, which made them sound much worse than the promo CD singles or the other discs listed above.

All of the above run at 89.3 BPM.

There was a commercial release of the Edit on Time-Life's Classic Soft Rock Vol. 10 Heat Of The Moment (2007). The sound quality is very close to Hitmakers Vol. 109, except that it runs a teeny bit faster at 89.6 BPM. I suspect, but can't confirm, that the Time-Life disc is a digital clone of the mastering from Razor & Tie's multi-artist compilation Poplife (1999).

My recommendations

Given that the song has only appeared on four commercially released full-length CDs, I recommend hunting down a copy of the CD single. There were commercial releases in Europe and Australia that included the Edit and the LP version. Commercial CD singles in the US only included the LP version. The two US promo CD singles also include the Edit and the LP version.