Sunday, October 2, 2022

Today's Listening

Remixed "Revolver" to reveal new layers of the Beatles' extraordinary musical powers 

This week, producer Giles Martin held a listening session at New York City's Republic Studios, where he unveiled his remixed version (prepared with engineer Sam Okell) of the Beatles' legendary "Revolver" album. As the key feature of an upcoming boxed set, slated for release on October 28, the remixed "Revolver" is a revelation made explicitly possible by recent advances in sonic technology.

In some ways Revolver is my favorite Beatles album because they were discovering new ways of composing and working in the studio. Here is Taxman from the new mix:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdTzOUUZ8Vg

What is astonishing, apart from the clarity of the new mix (I think I'm hearing a cowbell I never heard before) is the incredible freshness of the music even fifty-six years later.


2 comments:

Will Wilkin said...

I've noticed on Spotify that a lot of the old classic rock LPs of my youth are now in "remastered" versions that generally I don't like. I want to hear it how I remember it. If I recall, I was disappointed with the changes in some Moody Blues albums. So I'm prejudiced against making any changes to Revolver, one of my favorite Beatles albums too. They really were the best!

Bryan Townsend said...

Good point! Yes, this is a kind of historic revisionism vaguely akin to the "disappearing" of politically inconvenient persons from historic photos. I very much wish I still had the original LPs of the White Album, Revolver and the other albums of my youth. But on YouTube now we seem to have a choice between the 2009 remastering or the 2022 remastering. Be nice to have the unalloyed original.