Anthony Phillips - Slow Dance CD & 5.1 DVD

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I had to listen again after reading this review:

http://allabouttherock.co.uk/anthony-phillips-slow-dance-remastered-expanded-deluxe-edition/

This review makes it sound good, but I'm really not hearing the last paragraph about the surround mix!

With the first disc of this set being the complete, 50 minute, new mix, sounds so much better. It’s after you compare the 1990 version with this new disc that you realize how much music & subtle nuances were missing.

The harp, piccolo, clarinet & trumpet, sound absolutely stunning & provide stunning counterparts to Anthony’s multi instrumentation’s.

The 3rd disc is the masterstroke.This is a DVD & has a 5.1 surround mix as well as the standard studio mix. The 5.1 is amazing & puts the listener firmly in the centre of the music & offers a whole new perspective on the experience.

He never heard it! :)
 
I'd never heard this album before, so I put on as WFH, a really nice album, very classical. Reading the booklet this was a 16/32 track recording. It isn't discrete, there are definitely lots of times when the 5.1 mix is all at the front, then things appear in the rears, then there is some echo in the rears. After the previous 5.1 mixes it has to be deliberate. So did they decide to mix this album like a lot of classical releases are, so ambience in the rears, and peaking when you get musical crescendos then fading away, as you do in concert halls?
 
I have been following and collecting Anthony Phillips' music ever since Geese and the Ghost was released in 1977, and have eagerly snapped up all the surround releases to date. After reading all the disappointing reports about Slow Dance - the stereo mix of which I am intimately familiar with - I wasn't expecting much when I finally got this DVD and put it into my player.

That said, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised, and personally find the 5.1 mix quite enjoyable, with perhaps not as many discrete elements in the rears as previous releases, but plenty of spatial dimension that provides for a very satisfying listening experience. I haven't seen any waveforms, but the rear channels offer up good levels right from the start (at least on my system.. same for Sgt Pepper's) and so I can't quite understand why some people had trouble detecting anything out of the rears.

Your mileage may vary, of course, but I would have no trouble recommending this surround release to fans of Phillips, and specifically fans of this album, as it's my view that Simon Heyworth's mix really does this work justice.. just my two cents.

The unreleased (stereo) vignettes on CD 2 are a lovely treat as well for hard-core aficionados of this particular album.
 
My copy finally arrived today. As many others have said, the mix is quite different from the other Anthony Phillips titles, not as discrete. However, I still found it an enjoyable listen. I had never heard the album before. It reminded me a bit of Mike Oldfield and in some other places Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Now whatever happened to the Tony Banks series? Weren't they suppose to be doing his entire catalog? It's been over a year since the first two were released.

(Oh, and a request for the mods...... Can we get the title of this thread changed. "Phillips" is misspelled. Not that I'm a stickler for that sort of thing, but it made it harder to find the thread while doing a search. Thanks!)
 
The surround mix is not the most active, but is probably more in keeping with the feel of the album that some of the earlier mixes.

Sound great though and I am still hoping this is not the last as Anthony Phillips has been a revelation to me having o my these 5.1 mixes as my benchmark, always engaging Anthony has the second best Genesis related catalog after Peter Gabriel in my opinion. Now let's have those PG albums remixed
 
I just got into this thread as it's life back in 2017, was before my time here.
First what drew me in was the email announcement by Cherry Red for a Jan 2024 pre-sale
of the 2CD pressing. I guess this is just a re-release and not a remix since that was done in 2017?
I'm a huge fan of ProgRock and Anthony, so this announcement just caught my eye. I have the 2017 CD and the DVD 5.1 mix. Though the 5.1 isn't the most adventurous surround mix I've still very much
enjoyed listening to it many times over the years. Too bad this new release doesn't include the 5.1
mix. In any case just a wake-up call for Slow Dance. Unfortunately it doesn't seem too popular here,
only 3 votes on the poll (now 4 with mine).
 
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