The Beatles Revolver

I fundamentally reject altering someone else’s art as a means of updating it for modernity as a replacement, in this case, if it were being done so that forever more we hear nothing but the new stereo product.

“Is Revolver remixed in multi tracks still Revolver?”

Absolutely not.

Yet I welcome a respectful experiment that gives us an opportunity to appreciate their art from a different angle, so to speak, that illuminates their art such that we can better appreciate the original.

The things is, we’re at a remarkable threshold of technology.

So-called ‘AI’ (which at present is really only brute force machine processing with no intelligence at all and requires a knowledgeable human handler who necessarily must add his input) does have the capacity to do things we could hardly imagine.

Consider what Peter Jackson did by steadying and colorizing WWI footage.

If, in say, 1975, one went to The Beatles and explained that it were possible to ‘correctly’ do the transfer from mono to stereo, as with today’s technology, I wonder what they would have replied, and I readily admit that their answer might well have been no.

I’d like to hear Paul’s and Ringo’s opinion on the matter; in fact, they should be involved in the project.

I’m not against remixes in general. It wouldn’t be done if Paul, Ringo, Yoko and Olivia didn’t approve it.

The Beatles were one of the first groups to push the envelope on what could be done in the studio, so it seems likely to me that they would still want to push that envelope.

Geoff Emerick, who was the engineer on many of The Beatles’ albums, says the guys were always pressing him to get different sounds for their songs, to the point where other engineers didn’t want to work with them because they weren’t happy if you couldn’t produce the sound they wanted. Oh, and they worked late and did marathon sessions too.

So, I’ll give it a listen and keep my copy of the original mix too.

Yes it’s still Revolver the new Beatles remixes so far have all been excellent.

Looking afresh at any recording doesn't detract from the original. Aside from the technology involved here any album mix that involves multitracking of any kind (even four track) is representative of a set of views at a point in time. Other perspectives can give additional insights into the music because producers and mixing engineers are constantly having to prioritise what the listener gets to hear, and, in consequence, what s/he doesn't.

I, for one, am looking forward to hearing the new mix.  Last year, I heard a bootleg remix from someone who dubbed himself Lord Reith who de-mixed and re-mixed most of the Beatles' material, and when I heard his new version of Revolver, it was an absolute revelation. 

There seems to be two reasons the mono mixes are usually preferred: the first is that the mono mixes were the priority since that is how most fans would actually hear the music (and therefore somehow more "authentic"), and the other is that the stereo mixes of the pre-Sgt. Pepper material often interfere with the "willful suspension of disbelief" since they commonly have the elements hard-panned to the left or the right without much blending across the middle; hearing the drums in just one speaker, for example, is just plain weird.

So when I heard the Lord Reith remix with the instruments and vocals blended across the channels much more naturally, I really connected with it in whole new way.  In fact, the final track, "Tomorrow Never Knows," never made much sense to me, but with that remix, it suddenly came alive.

So if a very talented guy somewhere on the Interweb using an alias can create such a magical version, I can only wonder what someone with the last name Martin can pull off.