Page 18 of The Player's Lounge

“Uh, yeah, that’s what I was thinking.” Quint’s dismissive reply was unconvincing to say the least, causing Isobel to narrow her eyes.

“Sorry, which chorus?” He winced.

“The first.” The snap in Isobel’s voice reverberated around the room.

“First, yeah. That was actually what I was going to say. Second one was all good, right?” Quint felt his answer was enough to warrant opening his laptop again.

Isobel tilted her head in confusion, more rage seeming to bubble under the surface. “We haven’t done the second chorus yet.”

“Okay, then let’s do the first one again.” Quint decided it would be wise to attempt to seem less distracted.

The vocalist stared over at him from the booth and smiled, looking oblivious to the friction boiling away in the control room. He gave him a thumbs up, earning a sarcastic thin-lipped smile from Isobel.

Jerking Quint to attention, she snapped at the engineer to cue up the first chorus, almost disguising her disappointment in the previous take to the vocalist through the talkback mic. The engineer jumped to comply with her abrupt command post haste, wincing at the dwindling atmosphere in the room. Quint could tell he was desperate to nip out and grab some lunch, just to get away from all this.

“Okay, ready to go for another? Just the chorus,” said the sound engineer nervously. “Oh, wait. Sorry, I think we’ve got a crash on our hands. Two secs, I’m going to have to reboot the computer.”

Quint shook his head at Isobel as the engineer stomped towards the computer room, biting his knuckle and muttering expletives under his breath, timorously fake-smiling to Isobel en-route.

Quint knew that all the negativity in the room was the root cause of this technological hold-up, the power of a combination of negative emotions being the catalyst. He didn’t care enough to explain this to the rest of them, who probably would have just smiled politely and shrugged it off anyway.

He could feel Isobel’s icy stare on him while they waited for the computer to reboot, so he pretended to busy himself by burying his head back into his laptop, slinking further down the sofa. Isobel huffed and decided to pretend to check her emails on her phone in a petty retaliation until Luke, the engineer returned.

Luke tried to make polite conversation with Isobel as the computer sprang back to life as he willed it to boot up quicker. Quint could tell that Isobel was trying her best not to seem dismissive, but when she spied him out of the corner of her eye doing a celebratory fist pump due to a surprise profit on ZephCoin, it seemed to spark a fresh fury within her.

He could tell that she was becoming tired of carrying these recording sessions on her own. After all, he was becoming less and less attentive to detail and had his mind focussed on his portfolio. The once harmonious working relationship they once had was falling apart and the reason was, Quint simply wasn’t interested anymore.

The music that was being produced at Wrap’d these days was becoming dreary and stale. There was no substance to it, nothing to make it stand out or to fuel any excitement from the masses. Hardcore musos within the Wrap’d fanbase had moved on to new pastures, finding new indie outlets that were fresh and exciting.

The only thing carrying the current artists signed to the label was the Wrap’d name, once an institution. Quint had recently read in the music press that Wrap’d were gaining a reputation as a laughing stock. It made him sad, because it was as if nobody cared anymore about the brand that once championed the underdog, offering exciting new talent a voice that would never have been heard through a major multi-million-dollar label.

Quint had produced some exhilarating acts over the years, working with some truly inspirational people. People that had humility and a great work ethic, coming from all sorts of walks of life. People that wanted to explore new genres, invent new styles, push new boundaries.

Today, Wrap’d was just signing people based on the popularity of either their social media profiles or the reality TV programmes they had appeared on. In all honesty, Quint found it despicable. These people had no discernible talent or love for music. All they had was the delusion that people adored them and wanted to see more. If it meant releasing a two-bit single, then so be it.

“Quint?” Isobel’s shrill tone tore Quint’s gaze from his screen once more.

“Yes.” He sighed.

“I said do you think we’ve got it this time?” Isobel ground her teeth.

“Um, yeah. Maybe one more, and then I reckon it’s in the bag.” He was biding some time, as he was in mid trade with someFlye-coinand cued up to make a veritable salary this morning.

“Do you wanna take a break? Looks to me like you’re more interested in your bloody chocolate coins than you are in Drizzel.” Isobel nodded over to the studio booth.

“Yeah, cool. Back in fifteen?” Quint’s chirpy tone only infuriated Isobel further.

Without waiting for an answer, he held his open laptop with one hand and picked up his coffee with the other.

“Couldn’t get the door, could you, Iz?”

Isobel stomped to the door, throwing it open so hard, it swung back to hit her in the face. Quint mouthed an apology, scuttling out the door tight-lipped to a quiet corner of the client area.

* * *

Half an hour later,Daisy, the runner, approached Quint with a message from the boss.

“Will wants to see you when you’ve got a moment.”

---