Monkey House “Remember The Audio” - Dolby Atmos mix now available as a lossless download!

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sjcorne

sjcorne

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I had hoped to make this announcement yesterday afternoon, but some unfortunate 'technical difficulties' got in the way.

Given that hundreds if not thousands of new Atmos mixes have hit Apple Music and Tidal over these past two years, I’m guessing this is one title that may have flown under the radar for a lot of people here.

https://music.apple.com/us/album/remember-the-audio/1622910747
I’d never heard of the band before, but it turns out they’ve been around since the early-90s and even managed to crack the Billboard Jazz charts with their 2019 album Friday (hopefully coming soon in Atmos!). The Steely Dan influence is undeniable - SD alums Michael Leonhart and Jay Graydon appeared on their last two albums - and given Elliot Scheiner’s unfortunate stance on the format, this may be as close as we get to experiencing the Dan's music in Atmos.

This release marks the beginning of a partnership between IAA and Alma Records, an independent Canadian label focused primarily on Jazz and World music. I’m told that Alma is committed to remixing much of their back-catalog in Atmos, with several more albums such as The Florian Hoefner Trio’s Desert Bloom and Hilario Durán’s Front Street Duets already streaming on Apple Music.

Multiple-time Grammy & Juno award nominee John ‘Beetle’ Bailey is doing all the mixing and rest assured, he really gets surround music. The Atmos mix of Remember The Audio is, in a word, phenomenal. For me, this honestly ranks up there with any and all of the Steely Dan/Donald Fagen 5.1 remixes. It’s got all the clarity and clever use of the expanded soundstage that you’d associate with one of Elliot Scheiner’s surround mixes, but extended even further via judicious deployment of the side and height channels.

Of course I’m biased, but I’d actually rate this higher than SDE’s last few Blu-ray releases (Gilbert O’Sullivan, Shakespears Sister, Eno) for music, mix, and sound quality.

With recent releases such as this, Lori Lieberman’s Truly, and the Jacob Mann Big Band’s Greatest Hits Vol. 3, IAA is beginning to establish itself as another audiophile-friendly alternative to immersive streaming. SDE’s Blu-Ray series is unlikely to cover every worthwhile streaming-exclusive Atmos mix - there’s simply too many good ones out there, just look at all the recommendations in our SDE thread - and should sales and influence continue to grow, we may be able to gradually ‘unlock’ more popular titles from bigger labels.

Assuming this music is up your alley, I’d urge everyone here to support this. You won’t be disappointed!

https://immersiveaudioalbum.com/product/remember-the-audio-monkey-house-atmos-mkv-mp4/https://immersiveaudioalbum.com/remember-the-audio-monkey-house-dolby-atmos/
 
Oh. My. God. This is HUGE! I don't know what I could add to Jonathan's announcement—or to his excellent review of Remember the Audio at IAA—but the short version of my message would be: you need to know about this band, and you need to buy this record! (Also, judging by the low-bitrate version that's been streaming on Apple Music since summer: anything John "Beetle" Bailey does in Atmos will sound fabulous in high-res. Mouthwatering to hear that there's plenty more in the pipeline.) I already shelled out for a high-res stereo download of this album a few months ago, and even with my diminished year-end bank balance, I will happily sacrifice more simoleons to hear a lossless Atmos mix.


Long version? Well, my sermon would have two themes: first, that
  • the availability of hi-res Atmos mixes of the Monkey House catalog is a big effing deal in and of itself
—but also, implicitly, that
  • when IAA pulls off a noteworthy “get” like this, we need to support them in the same way and for the same reasons that we support D-V and SDE.
I know there’s already a lot of support around here for Claim #2, so I won’t waste any more breath on it. But how to convert the skeptics when it comes to Claim #1? Well, there’s always the lazy “If You Like…” approach, I guess. So, okay: if you dig Steely Dan, Boz Scaggs, Gino Vanelli, Ambrosia, Hall & Oates, Toto, Little Feat, Rickie Lee Jones, Christopher Cross, mid/late-70s Joni Mitchell, early Pat Metheny Group, Mike McDonald-era Doobies, etc., etc., then you’re bound dig this band, too.

But if you need more persuading and you’re willing to indulge even more long-windedness, then I’ll open by declaring that Monkey House is one of those gobsmackingly great bands that’s been hiding in plain sight for way too long. (Which is to say: on the north shore of Lake Ontario, where the American media only intermittently remembers to look. Although the band’s Toronto-born founder and bandleader, Don Breithaupt, has been a successful L.A.-based commercial songwriter for a long while now.) And as long as I’m being hyperbolic, I’ll raise the stakes with a pronouncement that their two most recent albums, Friday and Remember the Audio, are absolute stone killers.

As @sjcorne has demonstrated, the obligatory thing to mention when you write about Monkey House is its debt to Steely Dan—and fair enough: Breithaupt is a huge, unapologetic fan. For one thing, he wrote the book, literally, on Aja. (It’s a great book.) Then there’s the fact that the last few Monkey House albums are packed with appearances by Dan alumni like guitarists Drew Zingg, Jay Graydon, and Elliott Randall and trumpeters Randy Brecker and Michael Leonhart. (Not to mention other A-list guests like Blackstar saxophonist Donny McCaslin, Snarky Puppy guitarist Mark Lettieri, Pat Metheny vocalist David Blamires, and the Manhattan Transfer.)

And yeah, Breithaupt’s songcraft also has obvious affinities with Becker & Fagen’s: literate lyrics, fat hooks, righteous grooves, complex harmonies, jazzy key changes & chord progressions, gorgeous horn charts, polished arrangements ... I could go on. But he’s not some aping—no pun intended—fanboy, and his band is no shameless Steely Dan knockoff, either. For starters, Breithaupt’s vocals are more Don Henley than Donald Fagen: smooth, not snide. Beyond that, there are plenty of other influences that he also cops to: The Beatles, Chicago, Elton John, Paul Simon, Weather Report, Bill Evans, Dave Brubeck, and more. You can hear them all in his writing. (For what it’s worth, his “Top 5 Albums of All Time” are, in order: Aja, Pirates, Hejira, Innervisions, and Rain Dogs.) But the main thing is that Monkey House is legitimately its own thing: the core quartet is a tight unit of virtuosos who have been playing and honing their sound together for over twenty years now.

Production-wise, that sound owes a whole lot to the band’s sonic secret weapon: Grammy- and Juno-winning producer John “Beetle” Bailey, who has made each of the last four Monkey House albums pure audiophile joy—slick but not soulless, pristine but not prissy. And as Jonathan emphasized: this dude totally gets immersive. He’s Breithaupt’s Roger Nichols and Elliot Scheiner all rolled into one. (An alternate-world Elliot who embraces Atmos, luckily.)

In its press materials, the band's label pitches Monkey House as a band that “makes pop for people who aren’t afraid of jazz, and vice-versa.” Then it backs off a bit with a classic hedge: “Breithaupt himself eschews any such labels: ... ‘In the end, Monkey House is just us being sincerely influenced by the records that knocked us off our feet when we were kids. Isn’t that what a band is?’” Sure. And if I can be allowed to generalize about present company: I think the “us” invoked there includes a significant number of the denizens of QQ. Remember the Audio is an overt shout-out to the Boomers, Gen-Xers, and Generation Joneses who recall that sweet moment when AM radio was still eclectic and FM was wildly adventurous. When Thomas Splett of the West Coast Soul blog asked Breithaupt what, for him, characterized the music of that period—more specifically, of late 70s/early 80s L.A.—Breithaupt replied: “Well, as Mark Ronson recently observed, it doesn’t get better than that era, when multitrack recording was at its peak. ‘Pure solid-gold crispness,’ I think he said. There were real budgets, everybody could read and play and sing their asses off, and nobody was scared of big, fat chords. Those records just don’t age!”

Preaching to the QQ Choir, right? Amen. Brothers and sisters, I’m here to testify that Monkey House brings that era back. In glorious Atmos yet. Now get out your credit cards!


Bonus verses:
  • Kurt Vonnegut fans have already guessed where the band’s name comes from. (Yep: Breithaupt is another goddam English major. Man after my own heart.)
  • The cover for MH's previous album, Friday (2019), uses a photo (“Times Square, 1958”) by the late Pete Turner, who designed iconic album covers for Steely Dan, Bill Evans, Weather Report, George Benson, and dozens of other artists on Verve, A&M, and CTI. Ballsy move, but it's earned.
Independent bible study:
 
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Wow. Simply wow. I had never heard of this band until seeing @haikubass mention it on the 2022 Surround Releases thread today. (Thank you.)

Figured I’d take a listen now as I was doing some home office clean-up. I’m only six songs in but this album has my full attention and no clean-up is happening. I agree with @humprof... you get the Steely Dan vibe, but it doesn’t feel like a knockoff. And I do like Gino Vannelli and I can hear a bit of that in there, too.

Another album where “if you release it on disc, I’ll buy it.” (I have not yet figured out how to get downloaded surround files to play on my stereo system, although I haven’t spent a ton of time on it. If someone knows of a good thread on that here, feel free to point me to it.)
 
Blackwood said:
Another album where “if you release it on disc, I’ll buy it.” (I have not yet figured out how to get downloaded surround files to play on my stereo system, although I haven’t spent a ton of time on it. If someone knows of a good thread on that here, feel free to point me to it.)
Click to expand...
Have you tried loading files on a USB stick and plugging it into your Blu-Ray player? Multichannel FLAC support and MKV pass-through are fairly common features, though not guaranteed. In any case, I wouldn't count on a physical release for this one.
 
Blackwood said:
Another album where “if you release it on disc, I’ll buy it.” (I have not yet figured out how to get downloaded surround files to play on my stereo system, although I haven’t spent a ton of time on it. If someone knows of a good thread on that here, feel free to point me to it.)
Click to expand...
As @sjcorne says: your Blu-Ray player may support playing Atmos MKV files (as "movies" rather than audio)--I know my Oppo does. On a Windows computer, you can also configure Kodi, VLC, Windows Movies & TV, and one or two other media players (not foobar2000, sadly) to pass through Atmos files to your AVR via HDMI.

Windows 10 & 11 can play Atmos natively with "Dolby Atmos for Home Theater," which is free. (For playback on an AVR, you want that, not "Dolby Atmos for Headphones," which costs money and isn't suited for soundbar or full-room playback. Perversely, however, both the Home Theater and Headphones versions are installed via the same Dolby Access app.)
https://pureinfotech.com/setup-spatial-sound-dolby-atmos-windows-10/
 
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Thanks everyone. I’m on a Mac. It never dawned on me that my Bluray player may be the key to doing this. I’ve looked into AirPlaying from my Mac to my Denon, or even plugging a USB into the Denon. But apparently Denon only allows 2 channels via either of those methods.

I’ll give the Bluray player option a try this weekend.

And back on topic... finished the whole album and my opinion didn’t change. I’ll probably continue to say this from time to time, but this is the joy of having a streaming service... discoveries like this.
 
Oh my gosh... it worked. Just downloaded a test file and ran it through my Sony Bluray.

Sorry for the thread derail but just wanted to say I appreciate the input and helping me discover not only a new album, but a way to play multichannel files... that was apparently under my nose the whole time.
 
Blackwood said:
Another album where “if you release it on disc, I’ll buy it.” (I have not yet figured out how to get downloaded surround files to play on my stereo system, although I haven’t spent a ton of time on it. If someone knows of a good thread on that here, feel free to point me to it.)
Click to expand...
5.1 FLACs are much easier to play. Those you can play from a network server or a USB. I've got my whole library on a server plus I carry 4TB USB hard drives around all the time. But the Atmos files from IAA are in a video format, so you can't just dump them into your music library. I converted the MKVs to MKAs, which I can play with an Intel NUC I hooked USB I can play them with Kodi. But I would recommend starting 5.1 FLACs first. IAA really should provide those as an alternative for people who don't have the hardware or software to play Atmos files.
 
riskylogic said:
5.1 FLACs are much easier to play. Those you can play from a network server or a USB. I've got my whole library on a server plus I carry 4TB USB hard drives around all the time. But the Atmos files from IAA are in a video format, so you can't just dump them into your music library. I converted the MKVs to MKAs, which I can play with an Intel NUC I hooked USB I can play them with Kodi. But I would recommend starting 5.1 FLACs first. IAA really should provide those as an alternative for people who don't have the hardware or software to play Atmos files.
Click to expand...
I found that MKVs are compatible with the widest range of hardware/software - they'll play correctly through Windows' built-in "Movies & TV" app, VLC Media Player, and some (most?) Blu-Ray players. I don't believe MKAs are compatible with any of the above - and for the saavy folks who prefer playback in MKA or M4A formats, it's very easy to make those conversions with apps like Music Media Helper or MKVToolNix.

As for your point about offering 5.1 FLACs in addition to MKVs, in this case the label only provided an Atmos mix.
 
sjcorne said:
As for your point about offering 5.1 FLACs in addition to MKVs, in this case the label only provided an Atmos mix.
Click to expand...
I'm thinking the label should be advised that there a larger market if a 5.1 FLAC is included as well. MMH can be used to produce a 5.1 FLAC from the MKV too of course. But making it easier for the buyer has to be worth something.
 
I found demo files in the MKV and M2TS formats and both worked on my player. I wanted to specifically try an MKV because that’s an option I saw for the purchase of the Monkey House album.

When I have time off after Christmas, I may buy that album as a first try of a full product and not just a short demo file.

This new bit of knowledge is going to be expensive. It opens up a world of albums just on the IAA shop alone.
 
sjcorne said:
I had hoped to make this announcement yesterday afternoon, but some unfortunate 'technical difficulties' got in the way.

Given that hundreds if not thousands of new Atmos mixes have hit Apple Music and Tidal over these past two years, I’m guessing this is one title that may have flown under the radar for a lot of people here.

https://music.apple.com/us/album/remember-the-audio/1622910747
I’d never heard of the band before, but it turns out they’ve been around since the early-90s and even managed to crack the Billboard Jazz charts with their 2019 album Friday (hopefully coming soon in Atmos!). The Steely Dan influence is undeniable - SD alums Michael Leonhart and Jay Graydon appeared on their last two albums - and given Elliot Scheiner’s unfortunate stance on the format, this may be as close as we get to experiencing the Dan's music in Atmos.

This release marks the beginning of a partnership between IAA and Alma Records, an independent Canadian label focused primarily on Jazz and World music. I’m told that Alma is committed to remixing much of their back-catalog in Atmos, with several more albums such as The Florian Hoefner Trio’s Desert Bloom and Hilario Durán’s Front Street Duets already streaming on Apple Music.

Multiple-time Grammy & Juno award nominee John ‘Beetle’ Bailey is doing all the mixing and rest assured, he really gets surround music. The Atmos mix of Remember The Audio is, in a word, phenomenal. For me, this honestly ranks up there with any and all of the Steely Dan/Donald Fagen 5.1 remixes. It’s got all the clarity and clever use of the expanded soundstage that you’d associate with one of Elliot Scheiner’s surround mixes, but extended even further via judicious deployment of the side and height channels.

Of course I’m biased, but I’d actually rate this higher than SDE’s last few Blu-ray releases (Gilbert O’Sullivan, Shakespears Sister, Eno) for music, mix, and sound quality.

With recent releases such as this, Lori Lieberman’s Truly, and the Jacob Mann Big Band’s Greatest Hits Vol. 3, IAA is beginning to establish itself as another audiophile-friendly alternative to immersive streaming. SDE’s Blu-Ray series is unlikely to cover every worthwhile streaming-exclusive Atmos mix - there’s simply too many good ones out there, just look at all the recommendations in our SDE thread - and should sales and influence continue to grow, we may be able to gradually ‘unlock’ more popular titles from bigger labels.

Assuming this music is up your alley, I’d urge everyone here to support this. You won’t be disappointed!

https://immersiveaudioalbum.com/product/remember-the-audio-monkey-house-atmos-mkv-mp4/https://immersiveaudioalbum.com/remember-the-audio-monkey-house-dolby-atmos/
Click to expand...
Can’t wait to hear it, thanks. Can’t wait to experience Atmos. You know most of us guitar players think Jay Graydons Peg the best guitar solo in rock. But he does not get credit because it was done in 5 second bits amounting to 212 takes. But it is a thing of wonder, my fav guitar solo.
 
PrinceProspero said:
You know most of us guitar players think Jay Graydons Peg the best guitar solo in rock. But he does not get credit because it was done in 5 second bits amounting to 212 takes.
Click to expand...
Really? In the Classic Albums documentary, Becker and Fagen make it sound like he did it in one take, but only after they had just about every other studio guitarist give it a whirl. Graydon's solo came totally out of left field and, apparently, delivered exactly what the pair wanted:



And Jay plays it here:

 
Finally listening to this purchase with the height speakers enabled. (Only two at the moment. Full Atmos coming for Christmas.)

After exploring Mac options, I decided the best option was to buy a cheap PC which could serve some other purposes I occasionally have.

Despite having to relearn Windows after two decades, I managed to get it working with a few bits of my sanity remaining.

This was the first album to try out the setup as it was the first digital Atmos album I bought. Sounds even better with some heights available.
 
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