Oh look! A boxset…
Out of desperation, I grab a used jiffy envelope and pretend that I’ve just got this box set in. Oh, the hilarity!
Tag Archive: ian mcdonald
This is the debut solo album from Phil Manzanera and features a galaxy of progressive rock talent. It’s an even split between instrumental pieces and sung songs.
Another decade passes and here another chance to buy those albums that have influenced your younger years. Nostalgia is a wonderful thing and it has the astounding ability to part a fool from his money just with one twinkle of his nefarious eye.
But I digress, the reason I purchased this album was not for a misty-eyed look back at my late teenage years when I first became aware of this record, but because I was interested to hear how they processed this record for a surround-sound audience. This “new” edition features a 5.1 surround mix by Steven Wilson, a fellow I have a lot of respect in the mixing department, and this review will be concerned with this and not the new stereo mix of the album, which is also featured in the package.
Lots and lots and lots of faces…
The album comes in a cardboard sleve that holds two plastic trays, which fits a little too snugly inside a slipcase. The first test of the listener is to see how they can remove product from its protective packaging. Simple tip: hold the edges lightly and abruptly move the set forwards as if you are trying to get the last dribbles of ketchup from the bottom of the glass bottle.
The album comes with a nice booklet featuring pictures of the band in action from the time and there are a couple of pix I wasn’t that familiar with, which makes this collection stand out a little from the other releases. Robert Fripp writes some sleeve notes about the life and times of this band, but his notes feel a little downbeat compared to his previous writings about this period. The second part of the booklet is taken up with the obligatory Sid Smith “Official Mouth of CrimsonTM” take on this incarnation of the band. After a decade of reading Sid’s enthusiastic and engaging scribblings with the various other releases and DGM Club releases, I began to lose consciousness. This isn’t a poke at Sid, I was just hoping for another voice or maybe some further commentary from Broof, Wetton or Cross. But this is a minor niggle in a rather classy package.
The first track to grace my surround system is the title track. A solid slab of instrumental guitar-based prog. The one word review would be: dense and this pulls up my main issue with this album actually being released in 5.1 surround. Red is just a dense record by nature that there is very little space for the music to move and in terms of dynamic spread, might as well have been recorded in mono.
Here Wilson puts the audience in the middle of the studio and it works in a way. There’s little else for him to do really because the instrumentation is so dense. It’s a great mix, but you tend to wonder why did they bother because this music doesn’t need to put the listener in the middle. It is a juggernaut ready to run you down. But the clarity is there and you can hear everything…and that’s a good thing, I guess.
The mix of Fallen Angel show the limitations of the recordings of the time, for while the instrumentation is bright and dynamic and lends itself more to the surround format, John Wetton sounds as if he has a sock in his mouth, the flat reverb on his vocals just sits badly in this mix. I guess there’s little anyone could have done about this now, but while it works on the original mix, the vocals just sound odd in this lovely wide mix. Those of you who love Fripp’s acoustic work and his use of harmonics will be able to pick out his fine work here.
One More Red Nightmare is a revelation because you get to hear a lot of little flourishes that were buried in the original stereo mix and it really works here. The same can be said of the “Providence” track, a song originally recorded live and put out on the album with any audience noise removed. In this context, you can hear the “life” of the song, such is the quality of the original recordings you can almost hear the air move around the audience. This track probably benefits the most from the surround mix, but there is a problem. Either I’ve put my ears on the wrong way around this morning, but it sounded to me as if Robert Fripp’s guitar had been mixed to the left and David Cross’s violin had been mixed to the right, when the converse should have happened. I sound like the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons when I go over such details, but this isn’t the first time Fripp and his pals at DGM have fudged the mix (similar cock-ups appear on the original prints of the Eyes Wide Open DVD and Neal Jack and Me DVD). I am hoping that I am in the wrong and that this was meant to be. But this is a niggle too as it sounds really good.
The crowning achievement of this record, or possible this incarnation of the band, has to be the closing track Starless. Here the slow majesty of the song builds up, mellotrons tastefully mixed to the rear and the instruments given plenty of space in the mix. I felt that there needed to be a little extra clout in the bass department as most of the bottom frequencies appeared to be take up with Broof’s bass drum. But the saxes sound sweet and there’s some great separation for the oboe too. If you love this song, then this is the best way you are ever going to hear it!
On the DVD, you also get the legendary ORTF Melody broadcast did band did back in the day and features four tracks from that period. Again, seeing Starless performed live is another reason to buy this alone.
There are also a number of extra surround mixes and a high-resolution stereo track for you to explore, making this package pretty definitive. Hey, they should have called this the “Definitive Edition”. Oh no, they did that back in 1990s!
Overall: well worth the cash.
