What albums do you wish they'd remaster?

Prince seconded.

anyway, the beatles catalogue, duh. ELO's "Out of the Blue."

Yeah, and someone always mentions Hüsker Dü.

So I'll be that guy this time.

I have no idea if Psychocandy needs a remaster, but it seems to be in the right era for needing one.

Reasonable Doubt for the Illmatic/Ready To Die treatment

-What does re-mastering entail, exactly? Going back to the masters and cleaning up certain hiss and making it sound brighter? Turning shit up?
-To what degree does the person remastering talk to the artist? How would you go about remastering something like Loveless? I mean, it would be hard to know what noise shouldn't be there and what should?

The Sly catalogue is urgent and key. Prince I'd be interested in too - I might be able to listen to him then.

Dreadful mastering on all of them but particularly SOLAH, which I find unbearable to listen to due to the horrible sound quality.

Albums that need to be re-mastered in the worst way

Album You'd Most Like To See Remastered

Oh, and the answer's still Trout Mask Replica btw.

Seconded. "Songs about fucking" is crying out for a remaster. I prefer to listen to my old tape version than the cd.

Misfits-walk among us.

Eric B. & Rakim-all the albums that aren't "paid in full".

Isaac Hayes-hot buttered soul + to be continued.

I'd like to see them go after the rest of The Kinks catalog in the way they did the 3CD Village Green Preservation Society. Though that's just for the packaging, really - I think they sound fine!

These were done by Rhino a couple of years ago, at the same time the Passions Of A Man box was released.

Eric B. & Rakim's Follow The Leader was also recently cleaned up and louderized, and reissued with 1 or 2 bonus tracks.

I would like remasters of the Death albums on Relativity, particularly Human and Individual Thought Patterns.

If you'd been paying a bit more attention over the last few days, you might just have noticed some rather fantastic news Peter!

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B000B5XSK8.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

All of that and more. For example, in the days before the hegemony of the compact disk, recordings were mixed and mastered for vinyl, which handles bass frequencies much less well than CD - the needle would literally jump from the groove of a record if the mix was too bass-heavy. Since the emergence of the CD (and the coterminous improvements in the fidelity of mass-market hi-fi systems), modern listeners have grown to expect much more bass in their music. Recordings are remastered with this in mind.
Another factor is the improvement in analogue-to-digital conversion (ADC) systems. (These are the machines that convert the signals from the analogue master tapes into the digital files that are copied onto CD's.) The converters that were available in the mid-'80s, when the CD initially came to market, can in retrospect be seen to have been quite dreadful. When audiophiles complained at the time that the CD sounded flat and grainy, they weren't imagining it. The problem lay not in the format itself, however, but rather in the limitations of the digitization technology. (The problem was compounded by the equally poor digital-to-analogue conversion of the first generation of consumer CD players.) So, if you have a CD manufactured in, say, 1987, and a remastered edition from, say, 2002, much of the improvement in sound quality will be attributable to advances in ADC technology.

putting it in the bin would be a start.

They weren't badly done for 1987, at least "Sgt. Pepper" onwards weren't. But times have changed and technology has improved as well.
Doctor Casino is also completely OTM about bonus tracks and the Past Masters CDs.

It would also be about time Kate Bush's back catalogue gets the treatment.

"Anthology" would still be needed, at least in the case of the first 5-6 albums.

Reason?

It would be natural to expect that at least up to and including 1965, new remasters of Beatles albums should include both the stereo and the mono version of the album and the added bonus tracks.

So, no room for alternative takes then.

http://sickmouthy.com/2011/05/14/how-to-do-a-remaster-rerelease-properly/

There are several obscure-but-great old LPs I fear will never see a good-sounding modern release because the master tapes have been lost, and all that's available are the remaining LPs that are in good condition. Some of these are indeed available on official CD or downloads that have been diditally converted from LPs (a.k.a. a "needle drop"), but too many of these are done by sound engineers obsessed with eliminating the clicks and pops using de-clicking software, which often degrades the overall sound quality. I'd rather have a straight conversion made from an excellent-condition LP played on a audiophile-grade turntable and cartridge, with no digital processing trying to eliminate every bit of surface noise.

Saying that, 5-10 seconds of silence followed by some choice, well sequenced b-sides, isn’t going to upset me.

the single-disc twofer of the Magnetic Fields' Wayward Bus and Distant Plastic Trees neatly separates the albums with an extra track of silence. I wish that happened more often, although I could see it being a matter of confusion for Gracenote and websites that reproduce tracklistings.

I'd rather have an excess of middling b-sides and outtakes than none at all, and sometimes I appreciate bonus material being on the same disc as the album so I can play revisionist and program them into the album's running order to "make it better". but I prefer the power of revisionism to lie in my hands, not the producer's, so it irks me when an album is reissued with a non-original running order. A&M botched their Dillard & Clark reissue a decade ago by inserting two non-album single tracks right in the middle of the album. they aren't listed as bonus tracks anywhere in the booklet, and one of them appears in muffled mono (no-noised and mastered from vinyl?) whereas the album itself is in stereo.

but least you can skip over poorly-placed bonus tracks. there's not much you can do when original album tracks are omitted, other than just grumble and download them somewhere else. the abovementioned Mag Fields album failed to include Distant Plastic Trees's final track ("Plant White Roses"), so so much for preserving the integrity of the album form.

if the point of a reissue is to supersede previous (re-)releases of an album, it's wise not only to research the original issue, but to locate past reissues, figure out what relevant bonus material they included, and do your best to fit that material onto your own release.

I wonder why so few album reissues — even well-thought-out, historically minded ones — reproduce the album's original liner notes. I just got Polydor's reissue of Tim Hardin's first two albums, and while the modern liner notes quote/reference things Tim wrote about in the albums' original liner notes, his notes aren't reprinted in full. I've seen that kind of thing a lot, and it makes me suspect (probably wrongly) that it has something to do with copyright laws.

the best reissues reproduce the layout of the original notes, which is most effective when the booklet folds out map-style (otherwise you end up cramming a photocopy of a 12" by 12" sheet into a little CD-sized square, making the text hard to read without a magnifying glass). but it's at least adequate to include the notes in a new layout so long as the information is all there.

seeing your photo with the picture of the 'the the' spine reminds me that jim thirlwell recently said that matt j is lining up a series of new set of remasters with extra discs etc coming out via his own lazarus label.
given that i have the complete set of the recent(ish) remasters which sound rather ace, i doubt i'll be rushing for more ..

What liner notes did the original Tim Hardin LPs have? I bought both of those LPs in the late 70s and other than the poem on the back cover of 2, recall blank or generic innersleeves and a fairly plain back cover.

quoting the booklet here:

Tim published a poem on impending fatherhood in the liner notes for Tim Hardin 2. He Hadn't like Jacobsen's liner notes for 1, so he had decided to write his own meditation on the irreversibility of what he and Susan had undertaken. It Was almost a prayer for the strength he knew he might lack.

even if it's totally awful and self-indulgent, it sound like an interesting document. I doubt the notes were left out to protect Tim's reputation, seeing as much of the reissue essay is dedicated to proving what a screw-up Tim was in life.

looks like (thanks google image search!) Tim Hardin 1 just has a blurb that goes, "Tim had grown up in Oregon, been a marine..." on the back cover, so yeah, generic. the poem on the back cover of 2 resurfaced a year later as the spoken word piece "A Question of Birth" on his Suite for Susan Moore album, which I hadn't realized.

My impression is that reissues of 60s albums tend to include the liner notes, either as a photocopy of the original back cover or included as liner notes.

However, my impression of 60s liner notes is also that they were largely very interesting. It is much more interesting to write about a classic album in retrospect than to write about it as an "ad" before it is even released.

I wonder why so few album reissues — even well-thought-out, historically minded ones — reproduce the album's original liner notes.

This is particularly annoying when the new liner notes reference the old ones, as in the reissue (from the early 90s) of Charles Mingus' Let My Children Hear Music: "In Mingus' original liner notes, he states that yadda yadda yadda." Great, thanks for the illumination. Any chance we can check those out?

reprinting the original liners is pretty standard with jazz stuff, right? all the blue note CDs have both old and new.

disagree with Lee626, I thought the last round of the the remasters sounded bad, so maybe the new ones will be improvements.

What is the worst remaster ever?

"Raw Power" with the exaggerated compression and digital clipping?

"Low-Life" with all the left channel partly falling out on several of the tracks?

Others?

reprinting the original liners is pretty standard with jazz stuff, right? all the blue note CDs have both old and new.

― tylerw, Monday, May 16, 2011 3:24 PM (8 hours ago) Bookmark

It definitely is, but for some reason with that Mingus disc, only new liners were included.

The Blue Note RVG series has been particularly good with original and new liner notes, mainly because the new ones are by Bob Blumenthal, who knows a thing or two.

Columbia/Sony's The OKeh Ellington needs remastering in the worst way. Still sounds like midrangey ass.

yeah blumenthal is gd - or, cld be a lot worse - but he's not v sympatico w the really out stuff and he gets on my nerves w his constant 'cecil taylor is best in short doses oh look just like on these BLUE NOTE albs' bs

haven't read every note on this thread, but i'm STILL waiting for decent remasters of Astral Weeks, Moondance and His Band and Street Choir, pref w decent liner notes and extras etc

I thought if there ever was an album that should be maximim reprocessed/distorted/etc, it was "Raw Power"..

It's called "Raw Power" ffs!

Having said that, I have the original CD, the IggyRemix, and the new 2CDset, and the best one is...

dunno. Probably the new one.

Runner up: the Iggremix.

yeah i too have gone through this process.
i bought the raw power refix a few years ago and recoiled at the sonic excess.
then a few weeks ago picked up the remastered bowie mix, and realised that actually, i think i do prefer the full on excess.

I wonder what a good remastering job could do for Daniel Johnston's Retired Boxer cassette. as it is it sounds like a mold-eaten wax cylinder, but I'll bet Song of Pain and his other early work sounded similarly murky before they got cleaned up and EQ'd for re-release.

there are lots of shitty remasters, hard for me to pick just one. the genesis remixes from 76-80 aren't very good at all, particularly duke and trick of the tail (w&w on the other hand is alright because it never sounded good); I like the gabriel era ones fine enough though.

is the low life remaster still like this or was that the first issue of remasters that were all fucked up that they allegedly then corrected? i never bought any of them.

Soundgarden - Badmotorfinger

Columbia/Sony's The OKeh Ellington needs remastering in the worst way. Still sounds like midrangey ass.
yeah, goddamn, i don't have the whole set, but the recent mosaic ellington late 30s stuff sounds amaaaaaazing. (not exactly the same period as the okeh set, but still...)

Oh man, really want to check that out.

Husker fucking do post Zen Arcade zzzz

yeah, i've been so close to buying it like a hundred times. having trouble justifying the $$$ though.

xp

i believe the guy who did the ellington mosaic set is the same guy who did the new robert johnson remaster....so he's doing good work with old recordings!