HW: EMI Reissues

[Doug Pearson]

On Tue, 8 Apr 2003 11:43:25 -0400, Steve Youles <youless at LVCM.COM> wrote:
>WOTEOT has too much going on for one word to charactise it as successfully,
>but if anything I would take 'Lush' away from ASAM and apply it to Warrior.

I agree - both those thoughts crossed my mind while I was making the list.
But the list was as much a description of what the overall sounds of those
albums are, as a description of what a person re-mastering those albums
should strive for.  ASAM is really the only one on the list which doesn't
quite live up to that description in its original form.  But the elements
are all there - the fx-laden/sax freakout section of "Reefer Madness", the
massed brass on "Steppenwolf", the forwards/backwards Gong on side 2, and,
of course, Simon House all over everything!  You're probably correct that
the album should really be remixed, to make it (IMO) more lush, and less
clean (clean works fine for the Hawklords album - although you're right
that it's still garage rock next to contemporary '78 Steely Dan or
Fleetwood Mac!).

>Astounding Sounds - the word I would use is 'Hollow'.  I don't mean this
>perjoratively, but all the instruments sound as though they're circling
>around the periphery and in the middle is...nothing.  (On Quark, you would
>find Ade Shaw's bubbling basslines and Simon House's excellent keyboard
>work at the eye of the hurricane -avoided saying 'cyclone' there, Tom!  On
>Space Ritual everything sounds as though it's built around Dave & Lemmy.)

Yeah, that's a good description, and I think that if there was a way to
thicken up all those peripheral instruments in the mix (as I said above,
they're *there*, they just aren't mixed together right), it would
compensate for a lot of that emptiness.

>au contraire, I think the *material* is excellent.  I wonder if
>it would be theoretically possible to remix it, as you described your
>friend Karl doing, and discover the hidden centre of this album?  Not that
>you can 'put back in' what was never there in the first place, of course.

Sometimes, even a good remastering job can make a huge improvement in this
area.  I suspect that it might pose the greatest challenge to whomever
remasters those albums (although PXR5 will be the most *work* for them).

On Tue, 8 Apr 2003 19:56:53 +0100, Captain Bl at ck <starfield at SUPANET.COM>
wrote:
>To my ears, Warrior and Quark were both processed through what sounds like
>some form of 'energiser' such as an Aphex Aural Exciter; this basically
>adds top end 'fizz' in the form of low order distortion.

I find that those things can sometimes improve individual instrument (or
vocal) tracks, usually do improve poor source material (live tapes, bounced-
to-hell 4-track mixes, etc.), but are not helpful to high quality source
material.

>Astounding was not, I believe done this way,

I only have the Griffin version.  It doesn't sound processed or bass-
lacking compared to the vinyl, but it does sound like a standard 90's (much
better than an 80's!) digital transfer.

>plus it sounds like the keyboards were recorded direct to the desk
>rather than the usual practice of miking up the keybard amps.

Was this the first album on which Simon House used string synth instead of
Mellotron?

>Also the bass playing has a lot to do with it;
>Rudolph sticking with almost root note playing and very tight timing
>compared to the more extreme fret board excursions of Lemmy and Shaw.

And the drums somehow sound more spikey and less thumpy than Warrior, even
though it's the same two drummers.  Probably recorded with more (and
different) microphones in more isolation, as was becoming the trend in
those days.  Pretty amazing difference that one year and one bassist makes.

    -Doug
     jasret at mindspring.com