Peter Gabriel - So 25th anniversary box set preorder

QuadraphonicQuad

Help Support QuadraphonicQuad:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Haha, I'm clearly not communicating or receiving very well today! I'm open to some surprises in a surround mix, perhaps moreso outside of an album presentation. Outside of surround sound I quite enjoy finding and hearing alternate mixes.
 
What is the situation with Tango in the Night and So? Multis missing, stuff destroyed, lots of bounce downs, etc?

For Tango they couldn't be bothered with remixing to 5.1 because of the totally anarchic quality of the recording/mixing process. Basically it was Lindsey Buckingham sitting around with hundreds of bits of tape on the floor. You'd have one bit of one track on one reel, then another bit on another reel, you would have to listen and sort out dozens of hours of recording and matching them to the original mix by ear... they wouldn't know where to start. Apparently nothing was neatly copied on one single final reel apart from the stereo master mixes.
Or at least that's what they said.
 
The way this album was recorded, it would prove very difficult, if not near-impossible to remix; it seems like a kind of Fleetwood Mac Tango In The Night situation, unfortunately...
I'd prefer Shock The Monkey or Games Without Frontiers in 5.1 anyway. Frontiers (German language vers.) in 5.1 is a no brainer really. I have a the feeling Peter does not exactly "get" surround mixing. And that he can release a deluxe version of one of his key albums, not include 5.1, and then say "we just ran out of time", or "we passed on that option for now, sorry." When Crimson, Tull, ELP, Floyd, Moodies, and Genesis have their works in 5.1, he is surrounded by elephants in the room.

And this might not be everyone else's opinion, but to me the Security album was re-written twice after the fact, once with the "Birdy" score, and another with the "Christ" score. It sounds like it to me. This was a clue that whatever came next, hit or miss would be the last time he scaled major heights commercially or artistically. I found him or his work artistically "spent" by 1999. It's not sad because he developed a label for other artists, and his background includes all those genesis albums plus the solo stuff, and that's a lot of fine work right there. There is 30 years of work there, and running out of steam at the end of the 90s is not considered failure imo.
 
The way this album was recorded, it would prove very difficult, if not near-impossible to remix; it seems like a kind of Fleetwood Mac Tango In The Night situation, unfortunately...
That's what I was told by someone who used to work for him when I enquired. From what I gathered most of the early PG was recorded this 'way of working', so although they took ages, bits were very spontaneous, and then tracks 'hacked about', revisited, overdubbed directly, direct effects added, tracks bounced etc. Some tracks may be possible but not whole albums - I did hear they had played around and unofficially done a few tracks in surround themselves. So sadly I would say no chance for the albums pre-Up. However, there is the Play DVD of video singles with surround which I thought I had but now can't find!
 
I'd prefer Shock The Monkey or Games Without Frontiers in 5.1 anyway. Frontiers (German language vers.) in 5.1 is a no brainer really. I have a the feeling Peter does not exactly "get" surround mixing. And that he can release a deluxe version of one of his key albums, not include 5.1, and then say "we just ran out of time", or "we passed on that option for now, sorry." When Crimson, Tull, ELP, Floyd, Moodies, and Genesis have their works in 5.1, he is surrounded by elephants in the room.

And this might not be everyone else's opinion, but to me the Security album was re-written twice after the fact, once with the "Birdy" score, and another with the "Christ" score. It sounds like it to me. This was a clue that whatever came next, hit or miss would be the last time he scaled major heights commercially or artistically. I found him or his work artistically "spent" by 1999. It's not sad because he developed a label for other artists, and his background includes all those genesis albums plus the solo stuff, and that's a lot of fine work right there. There is 30 years of work there, and running out of steam at the end of the 90s is not considered failure imo.
With ya on most of that. I'd like to hear the first 4 albums remixed by Steve Wilson. I think we'd hear a transformation the likes of Tull's first album. The timing on these was unfortunate. Going from the grandiose mixes and sounds on those Genesis albums straight to the later '70s period of low budget studio mixes and falling vinyl quality did NOT serve those albums well originally. Being able to listen to the HD masters finally after all these years at least lets us finally enjoy them at a higher level after the fact.

Still not sure about #2 (Scratches) even with that said though. For the masterpiece that Fripp's Exposure was (the original mix, not the remix), this production collaboration really fell flat IMHO.
"So" was his foray into MTV music. That one could go happily out of print. I thought Passion was a return to psychedelic form with some genuinely interesting stuff and a hunger to do something different (with no traditional lead vocals from him for example). (I thought the movie was an absolute disaster though! Typically childish story line around the religion cult and I think they used only two excerpts from two songs - one looped endlessly.) And then that was it. Nothing had any hunger anymore.
 
That's what I was told by someone who used to work for him when I enquired. From what I gathered most of the early PG was recorded this 'way of working', so although they took ages, bits were very spontaneous, and then tracks 'hacked about', revisited, overdubbed directly, direct effects added, tracks bounced etc. Some tracks may be possible but not whole albums - I did hear they had played around and unofficially done a few tracks in surround themselves. So sadly I would say no chance for the albums pre-Up. However, there is the Play DVD of video singles with surround which I thought I had but now can't find!

Seems I read about the original PLAY DVD having -30db error in the dts; recommend the Live Athens twofer with supposedly corrected levels on the PLAY-DVD :unsure:
 
That's what I was told by someone who used to work for him when I enquired. From what I gathered most of the early PG was recorded this 'way of working', so although they took ages, bits were very spontaneous, and then tracks 'hacked about', revisited, overdubbed directly, direct effects added, tracks bounced etc. Some tracks may be possible but not whole albums - I did hear they had played around and unofficially done a few tracks in surround themselves. So sadly I would say no chance for the albums pre-Up. However, there is the Play DVD of video singles with surround which I thought I had but now can't find!
Did Bob Ezrin produce the first album, I think so. Bob would not put up with odd ways of tracking an important album. You don’t get a producer like that and run the production off the tracks with lost reels. So no, that a 5.1 is not possible is not a possibility here.

Games was remixed in German - so don’t tell me that one can’t be remixed either. We’ve seen it done.

12” remixes yep, seen that work out just fine too.

So maybe Peter does not have the funds on hand for an undertaking of major proportions like 5.1?
 
Last edited:
In brief: PGs three and four were remixed for the German language versions. Solsbury Hill is an upmix on Play. So is my favourite PG album. It always frustrates/annoys me when Wilson is mentioned as some kind of default miracle worker for surround mixing.
 
Yep Wilson certainly is the default miracle worker for surround mixes. Without whom we would not have seen some of them by anyone. He works on these albums because he loves them and knows them well.
 
I dunno, it comes across to me as blind enthusiast worship and I find it tedious.
 
Seems I read about the original PLAY DVD having -30db error in the dts; recommend the Live Athens twofer with supposedly corrected levels on the PLAY-DVD :unsure:
I've read that too... a -30dB drop in the DTS level but not in the Dolby level. But after ripping my version, I found no such problem with the DTS tracks. I wonder if it wasn't corrected on a later pressing. The biggest issue I have with the PLAY disk is the alteration of several of the tracks, especially Big Time.
 
I've read that too... a -30dB drop in the DTS level but not in the Dolby level. But after ripping my version, I found no such problem with the DTS tracks. I wonder if it wasn't corrected on a later pressing. The biggest issue I have with the PLAY disk is the alteration of several of the tracks, especially Big Time.
I’m really not that familiar with his music to know there was anything amiss with particular songs; so could you be more specific about BIG TIME, and I’ll listen for it, THANKS!
 
I've read that too... a -30dB drop in the DTS level but not in the Dolby level. But after ripping my version, I found no such problem with the DTS tracks. I wonder if it wasn't corrected on a later pressing. The biggest issue I have with the PLAY disk is the alteration of several of the tracks, especially Big Time.

It's not actually a baked-in error in the tracks, it's a metadata error in the DTS encoding. Some hardware responds to the erroneous flag and drops the volume, but it's not universal. I assume that's how it escaped--no one in charge heard the problem.

I remember jumping through some kind of hoops to remove (correct?) the flag on mine, but it's been so long that I no longer remember what I had to do.
 
It's not actually a baked-in error in the tracks, it's a metadata error in the DTS encoding. Some hardware responds to the erroneous flag and drops the volume, but it's not universal. I assume that's how it escaped--no one in charge heard the problem.

I remember jumping through some kind of hoops to remove (correct?) the flag on mine, but it's been so long that I no longer remember what I had to do.
That would explain it.
 
The -30 flag only showed up when playing the DTS tracks in 96/24 mode- my original copy of PLAY seemed fine until I upgraded my receiver to one that supported DTS 96/24. Then I was cranking the volume during the songs and diving for the remote when the looping menu music suddenly came back on at +30...
 
Back
Top