Too much polish/too little polish

I am listening to the pre-production rough mixes. Peter (Walsh) has done some great programming: in fact some of it is so good that we need to make sure the album doesn't end up sounding TOO good, too hi-fi. So I wrote to him:

While I really like all of those warm, glistening synths and well-defined percussion sounds, I think some grit should be part of the FF sound. Why do I think that? Because this is a globalista project: we start from village roots and we go out in the world, pipers playing at Christmas in the Apennine mountains and London deejays, Tamil rappers and Italian accordion and all that. We bring you the sound of this part of the world, and we line up with our brothers and sisters in Sri Lanka, Finland or Eritrea in the brave new world where no culture has any longer the power to be hegemonic (and there is a poetic justice in using a hi-end anglo producer to make this point!).

The other thing I am unconfortable with is an instrumental set of tunes in 6/8 (traditional, of course) that we call "Dai e dai" because we've spent a long time trying to make the programming work in 6/8.. The tunes themselves are great, but the track itself (even in our own demo, this has nothing to do with the producer) seems to be too much based on editing, stop-and-go, vocal samples etc. There's just not enough meat on the bone. Maybe we should just play the damn thing in a more natural way, THEN add production in a way that respects the tunes themselves more. Or maybe we should do a different set of tunes instead, like our old (and well appreciated by audiences everywhere) "Return of Melchiade". See what he thinks.