This is probably old news to those of you who follow Mr Urbanowicz on twitter/instagram, but I just noticed that his professional status now reads "retired" as opposed to the previous "semi-retired". I'm not sure if this is a permanent arrangement, meaning he's left the world of producing/making music for good. I really hope it doesn't. I've already written about my own opinions on what Chris brought to Editors here, so I won't ramble on too much in this post. I hope that this is a "first farewell" retirement, because the idea of him not using the undeniable musical talents that he has anymore would be a real shame.
I still ponder the fascinating question about what Editors' album 4 would have sounded like with Chris' input had it reached completion, even though we're all too aware that there was an irreparable schism between the main players which made that impossible. Would the band have pushed the electronic side of the music even further as has been suggested in interviews from around the time of ITLAOTE? (see this post for details). I love the idea of TWOYL with lots of little sonic jagged edges over those pristine pop surfaces, coming from that juxtaposition I've discussed before between Tom's songwriting style and Chris' in terms of the clearly different ways that they hear music. Sadly, we'll never know.
If this really is the end then thanks again Chris for "bringing the edges", and I hope you never truly put down the guitar/electronics because you had a part in some amazing work over the years.
