First things first, all hail Steven Wilson for his acoustic alchemy. Every time he gets his hands on a set of master tapes, he brings each instrument and voice further into the room and separated without losing a coherent soundstage.
Overall there is no way I can give this mix of A Farewell to Kings anything but a 10. I love this record so much I’d listen to it on vinyl dragging a rock on a stick across it amplified through a traffic cone if that was all I had. But this mix is the absolute opposite of that. This is true fidelity.
The first thing I always notice in a surround mix is where did they put us. In this case it is perched on Neil Peart’s shoulder in the middle of his drum kit with Geddy and Alex out in front of it facing us. When Steven Wilson discussed this mix he noted that even though Rush creates an incredibly lush musical tapestry, there really is not a huge number of separate tracks or instruments involved. They are just that brilliant as a trio and the additional parts are well-designed to complement the initial three plus voice. That didn’t give him a ton of options for using the surrounds.
So he decided to pull Neil’s drum kit around us putting some of the outer toms and cymbals and cool percussion toys in the rears.
Thank you for that. Even if you don’t love Rush you can still be stunned at Neil’s virtuosity, he is THE percussionist, all others compete for second. If you do love Rush, you will grasp how fully he can be the steady engine of the band, while still managing fills and thrills that boggle the mind. He seems to be everywhere and so precise at the same time.
Now you can sit with him and when he takes a spin around his kit hitting several dozen different targets in stunningly rapid succession, the sound flows around the room to match his run. There are other examples of moving his fills across multiple speakers, like Tom Sawyer. But no one else has managed to plop us right in his lap while the percussive fireworks go off all around us.
But it’s not just drums in the rears, there are obviously a lot of fun effects in AFTK and Xanadu and Cygnus that allow some discrete action and they are nicely tied in with the LCR so the overall immersion level is very high. There is never really a second where you are not well aware you are listening in surround, but also never a moment where you’re thinking cute trick. You just climb on board the Rocinante and go wheeling through the galaxies.
There are also visits from Alex on acoustic guitar or an additional electric track in the surrounds and it feels like he just wandered over while playing to stand to Neil’s back left or right and just jam a bit with him. Same with the occasional Moog or pedals from Geddy. I was either off floating in the world they created or sitting in the studio with them as they made the record and both were equally enjoyable.
The second thing I notice is the bass. Nothing ruins a record like crap bass either boomy or missing. My system and room is well-fitted with acoustic treatments and room-correction magic to let good bass fill up the proper amount of space and punch you in the chest when it should. This mix lets Geddy’s Rickenbacker growl just like you want. He and Chris Squire use that to perfection and it allows the bass be a lead instrument not a rhythm back up. You get all you want of that and more. It comes at you from out front and pile-drives right at you. Even when all three of them are playing more or less in unison on a riff, you still have separation for all the instruments. Plus when the LFE effects come into play in Cygnus and elsewhere, the room quakes like it should.
Alex’s guitars are wonderfully varied and either clean or dirty as needed. Plus they fill a large area in the mix when Geddy is playing a lead riff. Again it’s not a question of having a half dozen guitar tracks doing that. It’s one or two most of the time, but well played and placed to create that full feel but never turning to mush in any way. His leads are right out front where you want them but like the rest, never at the expense of all the other fun going on at the same time.
One of the things that left me short on the previous mix was Closer to the Heart. I had just expected more. Now I got it. Again, there is not a ton of stuff there. But it all got embiggened. The acoustic intro was just taller, wider and closer and as each verse brought more parts and power, the soundstage grew with it. I just wish the song was longer, I never want it to end. But that is also part of its appeal, how do you get that much thoughtful philosophy and wonderful music into 3 min? Don’t know, but they sure did.
Highlights for me have always been the title track as both a great song and brilliant commentary on the mess we make of our world and then Closer to the Heart as the solution we can’t seem to grasp but always still sits there for us to aspire to. That didn’t change, they just got fantastically better to listen to. Jaw-droppingly so.
Close to the Edge & DSOTM have always vied with AFTK for the record I most want to drop into to drop out of this world for a while. AFTK just solidly hit the top for me.
But, I do have one quibble. That’s why we’re here, right? Because we listen so hard and pay so much attention and we finally have people who ”get it”. This doesn’t take even a fraction of enjoyment away, just something I noticed.
Since SW put us on Neil’s drum stool as our listening position I wondered how closely the fills moving around me matched the actual setup of Neil’s kit. While listening it didn’t matter I was there and happy, it was just a thought. But they also included the promo videos for AFTK, Xanadu and Closer to the Heart, thankfully all in 5.1. So when I watched the video it feels like SW mixed the drums as if you were standing in front of Neil looking at him. The temple blocks are the real giveaway. They are on his right side as he sits, and as we do in the mix, but they are in the left rear. OMG can you believe this massive failure, Heh.
This record is a massive victory for why any good record deserves a good surround mix and the great ones deserve, well Steven Wilson. It also proves that the new trick of hiding the Bluray we desperately want in a box full of big frisbees and little ones that I will never use is dastardly but effective. Even though I already owned the previous Blu-ray version, I plonked down a Buck Thirty for the Super Duper Double Deluxe Magic Box Set, just to get this SW mix. I hated it, but couldn’t be happier with the result. We need to push the bean counters in the right direction, so they keep unlocking more of the gold they have for us to hear.
That was a lot of words, the simple take…Buy This & Blast Off!