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Brooks Arthur has engineered and/or produced some incredible records over the course of more than 50 years: Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, as well as Blowin' Your Mind, which featured "Brown-Eyed Girl", some of the best-known early Phil Spector stuff, Springsteen, Dusty, Peggy Lee, Marvin Gaye, Neil Diamond, Gordon Lightfoot, and a long, long list of others.
Maybe it’s just a coincidence that I live not far from the little country studio Brooks once had in Rockland County, New York. But it is part of the local lore here- the place where some of the early Springsteen tracks were recorded, among many others.
The choice of the recording we discussed was no coincidence, however: Janis Ian's Between the Lines has been a musical and sonic benchmark for me since its release in 1975. It is neutral but rich sounding, intimate in its focus on Ms. Ian’s songs and voice, but grand and spacious and full of instrumental nuances.
The key people behind this record are still with us today, continuing to make music. Janis Ian still records and performs; Brooks still records, produces and acts as a music director for films; Robert Ludwig, who mastered the record at the time of its original release, is still as prolific as ever. Here's the piece, called
The Art of Recording: A Conversation with Brooks Arthur

Regarding Aqualung, I finally have the Steven Wilson remix and it easily bests the MFSL.

Slaw: It really does bring a different perspective to the recording; I think I also re-ranked the old DCC as a really good listen (but that one is costly). Wilson’s remix of Benefit is also a huge improvement over the original in my estimation. I think Steve Wilson is a genius. (Check out In Absentia, one of his Porcupine Tree albums if you haven’t listened to his own work- it was reissued and is readily available on vinyl).
Don’t know if you saw it, but I recently interviewed Ian Anderson on the early Tull records. And there are more Wilson goodies in the pipeline.
best,

Since my only reference (was) the MFSL, I believe it does bring an obviously different perspective, by comparison. (A while back, I started a thread, about what Aqualung pressings were best. Then, you replied, upon your shoot-out, the SW re-mix was your favorite).

I did not even need to go back to listen to the MOFI. What I hear is the following:
(1) I'm hearing a 40 year old recording that sounds like it was recorded recently.
(2) By comparison, from my memory... the PRAT is much improved. Why? There may have been an original speed inaccuracy, or the fact that everything has been cleaned up so much, that there is the perception of a more "lively" presentation?
(3) Every aspect of this lp is now, sonically correct and I can find no fault with it in my system.

I also think SW is a musical genius and have 95% of PT's output and am building my library of SW's solo works.

I just noticed that you started the Vinyl Press. I will look in to it. Thank you for your dedication to our hobby!

Slaw- thanks for the kind words. I’m going to equivocate a little in saying that the Wilson remix is my ’favorite’ - i think what I concluded was that it was a ’no brainer’ given the improvements SW made by remixing the album. Some of the early US Reprise pressings are very good, and can be found cheaply. I’ve had my MoFi copy of the album since it was released by MoFi. The 45 rpm Classic is very open sounding in the mids, lot’s of detail and nuance; but at a certain point it really becomes subjective. I will tell you it wasn’t easy to listen to Aqualung that many times, given the number of copies I compared.
If I had to pick a favorite Tull record overall, it would probably be Stand Up, though in listening to all the early Tull albums again recently, I do think Aqualung is a masterpiece as far as composition and performance are concerned.