I picked up the Nektar Live In New York SACD last Friday night when I saw Nektar and Caravan play the last show of their US tour at the Keswick Theater outside Philadelphia. I've listened to it a number of times, so here are some of my impressions of it.
The show from the Academy of Music, September 1974, was recorded on 16 track tape. It was also broadcast live on WNEW-FM. The Bellaphon lps/cds of the show were taken, for some reason, from the stereo broadcast which was very compressed, so the sound quality was very thin. For the new SACD remaster, the original 16 track recordings were found in the vaults and used. Unfortunately, they had suffered water damage. The engineer of the project, Paschal Byrne, had to take each individual track and convert them to digital.
Despite the multitracks, much of the instuments and vocals were difficult to isolate, so it was decided to make the 5.1 remaster the best possible reproduction of the live concert sound. This being said, the end result is quite satisfactory. The instruments and vocals are super clear, the bass response is excellent, and the overall mix is of the all around surround variety.
While much of the music is in more than one channel, the sounds have been assigned in a very tasteful way. The vocals come clearly from the front speakers, but you get some echo and reverb in the rears. The drums are up front in parts, yet certain cymbal sound and kick bass will be coming from the back. There are parts where the lead and bass guitars are up front, and the keyboards are coming from the back. And as well, on guitar solos, there is echo and reverb coming from the rears. In places the audience is all around you, and at times distinctly from the rears. There is also separation of sounds between the front l&r speakers, as well as the rears.
Now it is not as discrete as the CD-4 of Live At The Fillmore by The Allman Bros., but it is also not the typical sound up front, audience and ambience in the rears of many current live discs. Considering what they had to work with, this album is an excellent example of how an almost lost live recording can be archived as a showcase piece of rock history. And quite simply, it blows the Bellaphon lps/cds out of the water. They also included the entire performance on this 2 SACD set, including the introduction by Allison Steele, comments to the audience by the band, and the part in Remember the Future where a roady kicked the main power cable out and cut off the sound in the middle of the song (which was edited out on the lp/cd).
This SACD really sounds like you are sitting at a live show, they went all out with this one when they could have just done it as a remastered 20 bit cd, and reportedly it cost a bomb to do. All through the efforts of their own record label, Eclectic Discs, without the support of any major label or distributor. Copies are a limited pressing, and depending on how well it does will determine whether a second one is in order, or whether the new album, Evolution, gets the 5.1 SACD treatment.
Since the tour was pretty successful, they managed to fill the halls and theaters that they mostly rented in advance, they are now set to put Down To Earth out as an SACD 5.1, as the multi track tapes for the quad mix are in excellent condition and won't need much mastering. There's also a spring tour planned for the west coast, with possibly a couple of NY/NJ shows to kick it off. The band is back in a big way, they were quad pioneers and now are totally embracing the new multichannel scene. The new album is getting great reviews as being a continuation of the sound and concept ideas that they had going in the mid 70's, yet with the idea of moving on into the future.
All in all, this release is one you'd want to grab for your collection if you are a multichannel enthusiast, especially if you like their other releases. It's an excellent cross section of their classic period, and their playing at this show was a creative peak for the band. Very satisfying.
