This turned out nicely! The original stereo recording has always been interestingly dry, and the bass and drums were prominent, but the overall sound was a bit harsh at high volume. The 5.1 mix is extremely listenable at high volume, and SW even improves on the drum/bass axis -- Mark Craney is clearly the MVP on this album, listen to him go nuts at the end of 'Uniform' -- it's massive now. And holy cats, Steve Wilson actually got adventurous with *motion* around the 5.1 soundstage on this one. Stuff moves around! Nice!
All that makes this A an 'A-' for me instead of an 'A' is some usual Wilson/remix issues that glare when you know a song *really well*. Certain original effects and echoes aren't convincingly replicated -- to his credit, Wilson even talks about one of them -- the Eventide reverse echo used on 'Fylingdale Flyer' -- turned out to be too hard/random to replicate. The other issue is the one where Wilson usually fails for me, when he does fail -- it's that he doesn't always get the 'drama' of the original mix right -- the occasional 'spotlighting' moments , shifts in level that the original mixes had that add excitement. Subtle perhaps but when they aren't there you notice them. A good example is Jobson's brief piano break in 'Black Sunday' that , on the original mix, bursts on the scene from the left channel at 2:27, a real ears-perking-up moment. In Wilson's mix it's kind of overwhelmed by the enormous bass/drum/powerchord stabs , or at, least, doesn't 'pop' as it used to. Ditto Jobson's violin on 'Pine Marten's Jig' , it's there, but it's not as fierce sounding as it should be. (It might even be a pattern..Jobson's parts tend to be a bit more homogenized into the mix here than they were on the 1980 mix, to my ears. Martin Barre' on the other hand, is promoted in the mix! )
But mostly everything is 'right'. The strange staccato-backed verses of 'Batteries Not Included' sound fantastic. Even end-of-album tracks that I tended to skip before , like '4WD' and 'And Further On', shine. I hope this mostly excellent remix raises the status of this underrated album. Musically some of these tracks have to be among the most difficult to play. The time changes are dizzying and dazzling.
Bonus tracks -- the one that's really interesting is the long instrumental 'Coruisk '.
Live tracks and video....haven't heard/watched 'em yet. (I'm familiar with Slipstream from older DVD versions)
