Some more fantastic news on the 5.1 surround sound remix front. Richard Chycki has announced on his blog that he is going to remix three more superb Rush albums… Fly By Night, A Farewell To Kings and the wonderful Signals.
The only worrying thing about the announcement is that these albums are
to be included in their ‘Sector’ series of box set releases currently under way.
I hope this doesn’t mean very costly box sets like the current Immersion releases from Pink Floyd. The Dark Side Of The Moon edition is retailing at a staggering £99.99 in our local HMV store and selling for about £85 on Amazon!
Although, if I could only have one 5.1 surround sound album, very close to the top of the list for me would be my beloved Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd. It is without doubt my favourite Pink Floyd CD and even at the inflated price of £85 it’s going to be very hard to resist. It’s only money, afterall. 
Update : 22nd October 2011
The Sector box sets have been announced… Sector 1 with Fly By Night 5.1, Sector 2 with A Farewell To Kings 5.1 and Sector 3 with Signals 5.1. Prices range from £48 to £36 at the time of writing. So at those prices, I’ll be waiting until at least the new year to see if the prices drop. The 5.1 mixes on their own would be an instant purchase, but not when I own all the other CDs in the box sets. I’m not happy.
After our recent trip to foreign lands the boys and I finally found time to devote 40 minutes of our time to listening to Moving Pictures in 5.1 surround sound.
Wow is the correct word to describe this remix, it’s been used in other reviews and it’s perfect. The clarity and strength of this remix is superb.
I know this album pretty much note for note, I still remember buying the vinyl on release day some 30 years ago, but I didn’t notice the typewriter in The Camera Eye before. The solos are clearer and more defined. The Bass in Red Barchetta is sublime, yes, I know it always has been, but it actually improves on my enjoyment of that driving Bass sound.
A wonderful birthday present for me, perfect timing. Thanks guys… now how about 5.1 mixes of Permanent Waves, 2112… oh and Power Windows… and Presto, Roll The Bones… and… 
My son recently popped up on instant messenger and asked if I’d heard the news about Rush’s Moving Pictures album?
My reply was, ‘Tell me it’s a 5.1 surround sound mix’.
‘Yes it is!’
Moving Pictures is still one of my favourite albums of all time. Seven tracks that mean a lot to me, even 30 years later. I’ve already mentioned elsewhere my sheer enjoyment of the night our eldest son played the Bass part in YYZ for his A-Level music recital, I’ll never forget that.
Richard Chycki is carrying out the remix and quite frankly I can’t wait for this. It’s being released 14 days before my birthday… and no I won’t be able to resist it for another 2 weeks I’m sure!
It seems we have the terrible original mix of Vapor Trails to thank for this project. Rush have finally admitted that the mix was bad and Vapor Trails is being remixed too.
Just listen to the difference between the two remixed tracks from Vapor Trails on the third Retrospective CD and you’ll hear what I mean. It was a sad day back then, when I released even Rush had been a victim of the Loudness Wars.
And to top it all, Rush are working on a new CD, expected to be released early 2012, with longer songs again. Excellent!
It’s a new year, a new decade even. It doesn’t seem 10 years ago we were concerned about the over hyped millennium bug. I can still remember calling manufacturers of equipment that we had installed and getting their ‘Year 2000 ready document’ sent to us. Then the carefully worded document being sent to the customers.
I’m not a new year resolutions person, but I do find myself looking to make changes as a new year dawns. Don’t we all? Nothing drastic, but hopefully for the better. A re-tweet on twitter summed up new year resolutions for me…
My New Years resolution for this year is 1024 x 768!
Music wise the holiday has been great. Lot’s of new CDs and DVDs, too many to take in in the holiday. Which CD didn’t Santa bring me? Less Is More by Marillion. After posting about it and looking forward to it so much I forgot about it. And the VAT has gone up by 2.5% today too!
One CD/DVD 5.1 mix that Santa did bring me was A Curious Feeling by Tony Banks of Genesis fame. The new 5.1 mix is stunning. His orchestration of the keyboards really benefit from the extra channels. I’ve always liked Kim Beacons voice too and was sorry to read in the sleeve notes that he’s no longer with us.
We watched the Joe Bonamassa Live from the Royal Albert Hall DVD. It’s a fine mix of his own material and some blues standards. Guitar playing at it’s best, from smooth blues to raging solos. Just listen to the guitar sound on the opening track, Django, nothing out of the ordinary, just spot on. Eric Clapton makes an appearance that clearly is the icing on the cake for Joe himself. Oh and there are two drummers, which is an unexpected bonus for me. Anton Fig has stepped in to boost the drum sound. The two kits are separated left and right which works very well especially during the drum duet throughout High Water Everywhere. The duet greatly enhances the live version of the song Joe originally covered on his You & Me CD. So click the link and buy it, you won’t regret it… honest.
Marillion are working on a new acoustic album. And watching the episodes of Racket TV, it’s going to be great. The snippets of the reworking of a favourite of mine, Quartz, are sounding stunning.
Quoting from their website…
This Album will be made up of new acoustic arrangements of songs from our vast back-catalogue of music All five members of the band are looking forward to this chance to showcase the essence of our songs in this alternative, intimate and exciting format.
Tumble Down The Years is featured in one of the TV episodes. That’s a song that’s passed me by. Lyrically it strikes a cord with me. Kaz and I are certainly tumbling down the years and damn the river.
Now, where are they playing this Less is More tour? We have to be there.
We had a great night out on Saturday. Hollow Earth played an open air concert at the Railway Tavern in Coltishall. A summers evening with classic prog rock… mmmm bliss.
Their version of Fifth of Fifth is great, and yes they do perform the full version, wonderful piano intro et al. Have a listen. Sorry about the shoddy camera work, but the videos aren’t that bad considering they’re from my Canon IXUS 960 IS digital camera and handheld. Not easy when the songs are 9 minutes long.
Hollow Earth, Railway Tavern, Coltishall
Here are the links to the videos that I’ve uploaded to YouTube at the request of Merv, their marketing guy.
Hollow Earth – Comfortably Numb
Hollow Earth – Locomotive Breath
Hollow Earth – Fifth of Fifth
Sometimes things just go against you. Today Steven and David had band practise at our place. For some reason, David decided to wire things differently and put his pedals and cables in front of his beloved AVT50X Marshall valve amp.
During the session somehow a cymbal stand was knocked over, it fell in front of Dave’s amp and sliced into the mains cable. The result was a bang and flash as the cymbal cut into the cable and shorted live to earth.
The up shot is Dave’s amp now makes a lot of horrible noise and very little guitar sound. We fear the short circuit has damaged a valve. 
Black Clouds & Silver Linings has just dropped through the door! Time to listen to it in full, although with 3 discs it’ll take a while. Only £12!
- Disc 1 – the album (only 6 tracks)
- Disc 2 – 6 covers
- Stargazer
- Tenement Funster/Flick Of The Wrist/Lily Of The Valley
- Odyssey
- Take Your Fingers From My Hair
- Larks Tongues In Aspic (Part 2)
- To Tame A Land
- Disc 3 – the album’s instrumental mixes
F1 qualifying is on the Beeb in a couple of hours too, we’ll never make it.
On a friends advice, I ordered a Lightscribe DVD writer and 50 blank Lightscribe disks on Saturday morning. The bundle was a snip at £30 including postage. They arrived yesterday and I began work on making many demo CDs for Steven’s band, Cuttin’ Edge.
Nero worked perfectly, it detected the Lightscribe drive and enabled the options in the Cover Designer. To be fair, I did download and install the Lightscribe Control Panel before running Nero, so perhaps that gave Nero the information it required.
Below is a scan of the final disk. It features the Cuttin’ Edge logo that was drawn by Jon Haward, which is perfect for CDs. To ‘print’ the label side of the Lightscribe CD, takes about 15 minutes, by the way.
Cuttin' Edge demo CD Lightscribed
We’re very pleased how the disk has turned out and is an improvement over the first drafts of paper labels. Now Mike has to distribute them to local pubs, which hopefully lead to some more gigs appearing at the Cuttin’ Edge website.
Oh and thanks Ant, I’d forgotten all about Lightscribe.
This morning we finally got time to listen to Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King. The Dave Matthews Band are back on course, after a serious hiccup with Stand Up. Having said that You Might Die Trying was featured in the second episode of the new season of House the other night. Initially I was convinced the song was from Some Devil because it sounded so good, but I was surprised to find it was from Stand Up.
The main thing I noticed on first listen is that electric guitars pop up all over the place… a good addition. Secondly, no fade outs on any track. It feels like the tracks are written and performed by the band so natural endings are the norm. And those drums… Carter is really high in the mix and sounding great.
And best of all, this CD is not a victim of the Loudness War.. look at the extract of the Audacity sample picture… peaks and troughs, dynamic range. At last these bands are waking up to the fact that less is more and we all have a volume control.
Mmmm, dynamic range!
Listening through again as I write this confirms my initial thoughts. It’s going to be a fine CD. Like most of my favourite CDs, the songs are coming through over time. Lying In the Hands Of God (with a burst of one of my favourite sounds, acoustic slide guitar), Why I Am, Squirm and You & Me have leapt forward so far. I’m sure others will follow.
Oh and Steven informs me Seven is actually in 7/4 time. I’ll take his word for that, my technical music knowledge is limited to say the least.
Isn’t it typical, new CDs are turning up like number nine buses now, Chickenfoot arrived this morning. It’s going to have to wait a bit.