There's been a few views expressed about the recent 40th anniversary editions of ITWOP and Islands on the guestbook. Despite being busy on tour, Steven Wilson has found time to address some of the points raised in the some of the comments.
Hello folks,
Regarding some of the concerns about the finer details of the remixes not matching the originals:
The tape for Islands had badly decomposed in some places and the original trumpet solo had tape drop outs - luckily switching to an alternate take for a few bars allowed us to retain the overall concept of the piece. We battled these kind of issues throughout the early album recordings, and I'm grateful that in the end this was an exception and we kept changes by necessity for technical reasons to an absolute minimum.
Which brings us to the changes that were made by choice:
About the missing count in at the start of Indoor Games, the removal of some of the mellotron parts from Prince Rupert Awakes, and any other revisions along those lines, Robert did take the opportunity to revise a few aspects that he'd not been happy about first time around. If I felt strongly against a suggested revision he would usually defer to me as the "fan", but in most of these cases I could appreciate his reasons (for example the mellotron parts rather swamped Jon Anderson's vocals on Prince Rupert). Of course I can't speak for Robert but I believe that these new mixes are far from missing the point, but in fact closer to how they might have been in the first place had he not be struggling with the technical limitations, internal band politics and time pressures of the day.
While it's possible that some nuances of the original mixes may have been lost, I hope that what has been gained far outweighs what has been lost. In the meantime for those for whom the original versions have become almost sacred in their familiarity, DGM/Panagyric have been generous enough to include both the old and new mixes alongside each other in high definition on the DVDAs, such that one does not replace the other. So if you do feel that the end of Islands has lost its magic from old to new mix (and needless to say I feel the opposite!) then at least you have both versions in the same package.
Finally, I can confirm that Bill Bruford's "Could I do one more immediately?" is restored to the end of Larks Tongues Part 2 on the new stereo and 5.1 mixes.
Hello folks,
Regarding some of the concerns about the finer details of the remixes not matching the originals:
The tape for Islands had badly decomposed in some places and the original trumpet solo had tape drop outs - luckily switching to an alternate take for a few bars allowed us to retain the overall concept of the piece. We battled these kind of issues throughout the early album recordings, and I'm grateful that in the end this was an exception and we kept changes by necessity for technical reasons to an absolute minimum.
Which brings us to the changes that were made by choice:
About the missing count in at the start of Indoor Games, the removal of some of the mellotron parts from Prince Rupert Awakes, and any other revisions along those lines, Robert did take the opportunity to revise a few aspects that he'd not been happy about first time around. If I felt strongly against a suggested revision he would usually defer to me as the "fan", but in most of these cases I could appreciate his reasons (for example the mellotron parts rather swamped Jon Anderson's vocals on Prince Rupert). Of course I can't speak for Robert but I believe that these new mixes are far from missing the point, but in fact closer to how they might have been in the first place had he not be struggling with the technical limitations, internal band politics and time pressures of the day.
While it's possible that some nuances of the original mixes may have been lost, I hope that what has been gained far outweighs what has been lost. In the meantime for those for whom the original versions have become almost sacred in their familiarity, DGM/Panagyric have been generous enough to include both the old and new mixes alongside each other in high definition on the DVDAs, such that one does not replace the other. So if you do feel that the end of Islands has lost its magic from old to new mix (and needless to say I feel the opposite!) then at least you have both versions in the same package.
Finally, I can confirm that Bill Bruford's "Could I do one more immediately?" is restored to the end of Larks Tongues Part 2 on the new stereo and 5.1 mixes.
