HW - new Warrior reissue!

[Carl Edlund Anderson]

On 15 Jul 2013, at 01:19 , Jonathan Smith <smithjm77x7 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> Wilson is such an an impressive talent. I wasn't aware of any of his
> remixes except the King Crimson and his own of course ones. I hope that
> Warrior is commercially viable enough to make other HW
> albums commercially viable-- even new ones.


Well, remastering doesn't cost much; remixing I suppose costs a little more .... But I think principally it is a way for the labels to sell us yet another copy of the album! ;)  Not that it's a rip-off, really: Wilson is very good, the sound _is_ noticeably improved (at least for fans familiar with the earlier releases). The new mixes and (for those who can use it) 5.1 mixes are interesting additions. If it's worth our buying another copy voluntarily, then we can hardly complain.

An album like _Aqualung_ really benefited from the treatment, simply because most of the mastering jobs over the last 40 years have been so lame; perhaps the original vinyl was great, but that's not much good to me.  The most recent remastering jobs were better than the earlier ones, but the remix sounds a lot better still. There are improvements to be heard in the new mixes of other things, like TAAB, though frankly they are less noticeable than with the likes of Aqualung.  (Perhaps, if the original tapes are still around, Wilson could have a go at Imaginos! :D Ah, well, I doubt Sony or whoever sees that as a terribly good business.)

Again, my only objection is that Wilson is _so_ faithful to the "spirit" of the original mixes that, OK, yes, they tend to be clearer, etc. but there are times were I would just like to hear a different production approach, rather than just remixing. I mean: that would be more interesting.  Probably only to me, but .... :)

I recognize that past efforts to remix or re-produce have often been mistakes or have dated quickly: the heavily remixed ZZ Top stuff that tried to make everything sound more like Eliminator, Ian Anderson's own efforts are remixing some Tull songs in the early '90s (sometimes some interesting stuff, but mostly just slapping a bunch of late '80s drum production in there, which I remember sounding like it added oomph at the time, but 20 years further on just sounds a bit heavy handed .....)

I mean, seriously: would a "faithful" remix of (the much, but not wholly unjustly, maligned) _Chronicle of the Black Sword_ really do anyone any favours? :)  There is, of course, music for which it would be pointless to strip away '80s production (e.g. "In the Air Tonight") but there is a lot of stuff that might benefit from not sounding like a "product of its time", too.

Admittedly, Wilson's remix work is not focused on that; he tends to work on very good products of their times :) but that does mean that there's only so much difference (excepting for the hard core fans, who have long since reverse-engineered every fader tweak from the original sessions in their heads! ;) ).

Cheers,
Carl

--
Carl Edlund Anderson
http://www.carlaz.com/