Ruined by Steven Wilson

[Rune Blackwings]

Phil Collins has nothing on this asshole. Listening to his remastering (aka fucking up) of Hawkwind's "Magnu"-he took out the really cool reverse echo effect (which I think was done with several vocal tracks?)! There's something else lost-it does not sound as sinister or biting


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[zravkapt]

You DO NOT speak of Our Lord in such a manner.

[davis]

Steven Wilson is the God of remastering (even if he doesn't believe in God). Thus, Jen, you must be wroooong about this. Blasfemy!!!

[Scrotum Scissor]

I don't want to hear this version of the song. One of the great Hawk pieces, sporting rumbling groove underneath a sci-fi motorbike two-chord theme - and those harrowing, haunting voxes, yeah.

Of course he ruined it. Sure. He should stick to his own tunes from now. Or produce someone a bit unknown like, y'know, The Mopwigs or whatever.

[JJ88]

Again, it's on threads like this that I miss Bob.

You DO NOT speak of Our Lord in such a manner.

I've (very!) briefly met him (a record store signing) and he was nothing but pleasant. But with these remixes, I sometimes get the idea that he thinks he's 'improving' the originals, which I'm uneasy with. Read these comments here from this interview: http://soundbard.com/total-5-1-mass-...surround-sound

Mettler: Producer Eddie Offord sure gave you one helluva template to work with.

Wilson: What I think a lot of people love about Eddie Offord’s original mix is the sense of energy and thrust the music has, which is partly the musicians and the way they play. But it’s also partly the fact he was mixing it to the red the whole time. He heavily saturated and compressed his mixes. He drove the tapes so hard that you get this sense of compression — not like mastering compression, but more like analog tape-mixing compression. I’ve always shied away from that because I like the dynamics of the music to breathe, and I don’t like that congested quality you get when you push things very hard.

So my new mix has taken a new tack, a more relaxed approach to the amount of compression. I tried to preserve more of the dynamics. There’s a lot more air, space, and depth that wasn’t present in the original mix.

Personally I find his CTTE a little too clean. I get that they are just alternates, though, and I'd no doubt have found his work more listenable than Nick Davis', had he done Genesis remixes. (Now expecting a tirade from someone here RE; Davis....)

[Scrotum Scissor]

^ I dunno; I mean, I followed the guy's evolution from early PT through his various endeavours in pseudo-experimentalism (I.E.M., Bass Communion etc.) and the lot - and he's undoubtedly somewhat of a capacity as studio wizard (more so, I'd say, than as songwriter). At least potentially. And as such I'm sure he could make folks see things in different perspective by stressing other timbres and dimensions of the given sound.

But this is not the point. "Creativity" is a withered creed in modern popular music, the reason primarily being people's general lack of real interest in adopting anew. The current function of audio art appears to be about confirming and consolidating what already exists - in listener identity, in cultural commodity. It's no longer about either evolution or revolution, so why seek the future? Contemporary eyes are imagined blind as they fear for it. "Give us more of what we already have and know, and if it's new then renew what we already have and know. Give us another rendition - don't present us with anything we can't relate to. We're old and soon to die. We haven't got the time! Thus more Steve Nelson remixes."

[GuitarGeek]

Phil Collins has nothing on this asshole. Listening to his remastering (aka fucking up) of Hawkwind's "Magnu"-he took out the really cool reverse echo effect (which I think was done with several vocal tracks?)!

Backwards reverb, it's a simple trick. You flip the tape over and run it backwards, you then patch whichever sound (usually a vocal, but it can be anything that you've arleady recorded), you want through the reverb, and record that onto a blank track. Then when you play the tape back normally, you hear the reverb fading from nothing into the original sounds. Certainly with vocals, you have to blend the original track in, otherwise all you get is this ghostly vocal sound, with the words being unintelligible (of course, half the time the words are unintelligible on Hawkwind records anyway, unless you have the lyric sheet in front of you).

I went through ap hase where I was playing around with backwards reverb in Audacity, for my podcast. I would record announcements for everything I wanted to say on the air, pitch shift it down a minor third, and then do the backwards reverb. Half the time I had to take about three or four stabs at the reverb, because I'd mix in too much reverb, or have the decay time set in correctly, so you'd just hear this big reverb sound, with nothing being easily understood. Sometimes I'd get a subtler effect than I wanted. Other times the words be completely audible, and you'd have to this continuous reverb wash behind my voice, which was kind of a cool effect.

The problem was, it mandated me picking out all the music for a given show ahead of time, because I needed to record the announcements ahead of time. So there was no spontaneity in terms of picking stuff out on the fly (and sometimes I had real trouble trying to think of what I wanted to play ahead of time), and I also tended to drive myself crazy trying to get every word that I said to sound right. It would sometimes take me a profanity laced half hour (think Casey Kasem, but worse) to record a 90 second announcement. No joke. SO I finally abandoned the idea, which was a shame because it sounded much cooler than just hearing my regular voice, doing these half assed live announcements.

[Oreb]

I'd no doubt have found his work more listenable than Nick Davis', had he done Genesis remixes. (Now expecting a tirade from someone here RE; Davis....)

Not to defend Davis, but I think those of us disatisfied with his work have to resign ourselves to the fact that this is the way B, R and C want their music heard.

They could afford anyone to do it but chose Davis - presumably because they were happy with his approach;

They seem to care about their legacy (witness the vast amount of studio doctoring on their live albums).

It's not easy to accept this because I put ATOTT & WaW at the pinnacle of prog and they deserve gold-standard treatment, but there it is. In contrast I don't give a shit about Hawkwind: AFAIAC they could get Melania Trump to remix it. No silk purses from sows ears.

[Rune Blackwings]

How hard is it to do in Audacity?

Also, Steven Wilson is "improving" them like the guy who puked up colored vomit on a Modrian was improving it. It's bad enough Hawkwind screws up their own songs (probably to keep Nik from getting money), but it is THEIR music. Wilson did not make it sound "better"-he made it sound castrated


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[Facelift]

Steve Wilson the sound engineer... never has so much time been expended on so many albums, to produce so little in the way of improvement, in the history of rock. (IMVHO).

Not all that I've heard is bad - much of it is just 'meh,' - but it's changing the sonic landscape of music that millions knew and loved, and it needs to stop.

If he wants to make sterilized, castrated (as someone else said) music, he should stick to making solo albums.

[zombywoof]

Was just listening to his version of Minstrel in the Gallery and it's an incredible improvement over the original. Can't wait for Skylarking.

[Rune Blackwings]

Steve Wilson the sound engineer... never has so much time been expended on so many albums, to produce so little in the way of improvement, in the history of rock. (IMVHO).

Not all that I've heard is bad - much of it is just 'meh,' - but it's changing the sonic landscape of music that millions knew and loved, and it needs to stop.

If he wants to make sterilized, castrated (as someone else said) music, he should stick to making solo albums.

Oh snap!


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[Rune Blackwings]

Was just listening to his version of Minstrel in the Gallery and it's an incredible improvement over the original. Can't wait for Skylarking.

The thing is-part of Hawkwind's charm is their lack of sounding polished. "Fixing" their sound is not making them sound "better". It makes them sound like Steven "My music tastes are beyond reproach"Wilson masturbated his ego all over the freakin' album.


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[Reid]

Was just listening to his version of Minstrel in the Gallery and it's an incredible improvement over the original.

That album needed some breathing room, and it does sound much better now. Maybe he could do something with Industry Standard by The Dregs? An Eddie Offord job that sounds suffocated to my ears.

[MudShark22]

Wait....he's doing Skylarking? better get another copy of the original pressing before they disappear....

[Facelift]

Wait....he's doing Skylarking? better get another copy of the original pressing before they disappear....

Seriously - the original sounds *great*. One can only wonder what awful things Steve Wilson will do to it.

[Magic Mountain]

I love how everyone jumps to the conclusion that Steven Wilson has carte blanche to change other people's music. How do you know that the band didn't request the change? At least, the band has to approve the final mixes. C'Mon, Steven has done the remastering for some very Type A people (i.e. Robert Fripp, Ian Anderson, etc.). Do you really think he could change something the artist doesn't want changing? In the end, he may have gone rogue, but without any evidence (i.e. band members flogging him for his choices), then one has to assume that he had approval from the band.

[spellbound]

When I want to know what "Magnu" is supposed to sound like, I get out my old LP and play it. Who needs Wilson when you have a record player?

[zravkapt]

I love how everyone jumps to the conclusion that Steven Wilson has carte blanche to change other people's music. How do you know that the band didn't request the change? At least, the band has to approve the final mixes. C'Mon, Steven has done the remastering for some very Type A people (i.e. Robert Fripp, Ian Anderson, etc.). Do you really think he could change something the artist doesn't want changing? In the end, he may have gone rogue, but without any evidence (i.e. band members flogging him for his choices), then one has to assume that he had approval from the band.

This is a good point (along with the Genesis/Davis one). We really need to be blaming those old fuckers for destroying their own legacy.

[MudShark22]

Let me rephrase.... Remixing to produce a 5.1 mix...totally understandable as it never likely existed before.

And using Fripp as an example is silly as Chuckles has been revisiting/editing/doctoring his catalogue long before Wilson got involved. He just passed the buck/responsibility to Wilson to reclaim his free time, IMO.

And I enjoy *some* of the work Wilson has done (e.g. Gates of Delirium).

I can only wait for the time when the ZFT hires him to remix the remixes that Frank already remixed twice...coz you know...art is never static or finished.

[GuitarGeek]

They seem to care about their legacy (witness the vast amount of studio doctoring on their live albums).

That's got nothing to do about "caring about their legacy" and more to do, most of the time, with the inability of certain musicians to let imperceptible cock-ups make it onto an official release. Unless there's something like a snare drum mic that stopped working (because, as we all know, thanks to Herr Fripp, drummers will hit anything with striking distance of their enthusiasm) or a burst of feedback at a given point in a given song or the singer had a cold during the week the live shows were recorded, it's really just about being antsy about not letting anything but absolute perfection get released on a live release.

[Facelift]

I love how everyone jumps to the conclusion that Steven Wilson has carte blanche to change other people's music. How do you know that the band didn't request the change? At least, the band has to approve the final mixes. C'Mon, Steven has done the remastering for some very Type A people (i.e. Robert Fripp, Ian Anderson, etc.). Do you really think he could change something the artist doesn't want changing? In the end, he may have gone rogue, but without any evidence (i.e. band members flogging him for his choices), then one has to assume that he had approval from the band.

It's not that simple - Fripp and Anderson already have an existing track record of never passing up a chance to grab more dollars, and they already have milked their back catalogs with reissues and special editions. If Steve Wilson can give those two a profitable reason to release a title yet again, I'm sure both of them are more than happy to give plenty of lip service about how he was "just the man for the job!"

[rcarlberg]

How hard is it to do in Audacity?

Dead simple. The technique GuitarGeek described was how it was originally done, a million years ago, but since the introduction of digital editing tools it's much easier.

[rcarlberg]

One can only wonder what awful things Steve Wilson will do to it.

Simple solution: don't buy any SW remixes. Works every time!

[zombywoof]

Seriously - the original sounds *great*. One can only wonder what awful things Steve Wilson will do to it.

It's one of the worst produced albums of all time, IMO. Thin and lifeless. I've never liked the way that record sounds. I hope he's gone and completely reinvented it; that would be killer!