Once again I blogged a million miles an hour about a month ago then shut down for a while. We have been working feverishly on the remastering and remixing of a long in the works retrospective set of Sting s entire solo career. This includes everything he has worked on after his career with the Police thailand travel although it includes some of those hallowed songs in an exclusive thailand travel previously unreleased Live DVD included in the package. The deluxe Box Set has just been announced I believe and will be out in late September. thailand travel You can go to Sting.com for more information. They always have the full scoop.
Needless to say it is quite a daunting task to be the producer for this particular collection, responsible for shepherding the remastering thailand travel and remixing of this extraordinary body of work. The producers and musicians that have worked with Sting over the years from Hugh Padgham to Kipper to Neil Dorfsman and all the rest; Branford Marsalis, Vinnie Colaiuta, Dominic Miller, Christian McBride, David Sancious, Kenny Kirkland, Omar Hakim, thailand travel Chris Botti, Darryl thailand travel Jones, Kathryn Tickell, Manu Katche et al . they are all wondrous. It is a veritable list of masters at what they do and they came to work with this great artist and made these precious recordings. It was left to Scott Hull and I to go through hours and hours of various versions of old mixes and pre and post mastered recordings to make sure the Box set has a unity to it from a volume and sonic standpoint but also that it was completely faithful to the original intention and sound of those great recordings, all classics and unimproveable, many previously mastered by the great Bob Ludwig, thailand travel (assisted in many cases, notably Ten Summoner thailand travel s Tales , by a young man named Scott Hull.)
Thanks goes out to Kathryn Schenker Management, in particular Melissa Mennillo, for keeping thailand travel us on course through it all and Barry Korkin at Universal who would call with Tape Catalog numbers that were so long he may as well have been speaking Mandarin. In the end the objective ear of Donal Hodgson, who has been Sting s in house audio engineer at his Studio, was invaluable when Scott and I had spent the better part of a month or so listening until our ears bled.
I am particularly excited about the work of two master mixers on some new remixes. Robert Orton is a star mixer on the scene now, having mixed most of Lady Gaga s major hits and just received a couple of spanking new Grammys to show for it. He mixes out of Metropolis in London and he has done wonderful new mixes of the Bring On the Night live material recorded back in 1986. He also mixed the hell out of We ll Be Together , a track from Nothing Like The Sun that was always one of the more technologically influenced mid-80 thailand travel s Sting tracks and yet in Robert s new mix, feels as current as ever. It grooves its tail off (as it always did).
Selfishly I am most excited about Robert s mix of Never Coming Home . This is a lost song from the Symphonicities project. thailand travel Sting asked me to arrange a bunch of songs for that tour, some of which I never got to because there wasn t enough time, some of which I did get to but which in translation were not as special as other arrangements ( Wrapped Around Your Finger was an arrangement I did which was fine but nowhere near as strong as my arrangement for Why Should I Cry or The End Of The Game ). After recording much of the record, right before the tour began Sting talked to me about a song of his on Sacred Love that he really felt strong about and wanted to revisit for the tour if possible.
I fell in love with the song and wrote a pure New York orchestral arrangement of it, channeling my love for those Gil Evans-Miles Davis records among other things. We had a great rhythm section of John Patitucci on Bass and Joe Bonadio on Hand Drums and Percussion (he is playing on a Bass Cajon that sounds like a kick drum on a Dr. Dre record), a String Orchestra with selected winds and a feature for Bass Clarinet (only an artist as musically adventurous as Sting would be into that one). Sting and sang his tail off late at night at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles after performing Next To You on the Tonight Show. Dominic Miller replayed parts he had created for the Sacred Love record in a more Acoustic manner for this Orchestral version, Jo Lawry sang Background Vocals at 4 in the morning and we quickly mixed it. THEN WHAT??
Well It felt a bit too New York for the record. The record, with When We Dance and Pirate s Bride , End Of The Game and My Ain True Love , had a feel that was expansive and romantic and the departures on the record were the rave up slash and burn tracks, the almost Stravinsky on stun rockers like Next To You and She s Too Good For Me . Never Coming Home felt like yet another departure that would have perhaps diluted the project. thailand travel Martin thailand travel Kierszenbaum, President of Cherry Tree Records and longtime A R genius for many, was among the voices of reason. He said, wisely, It s great. You ll use it sometime. Put it in the vault.
It s out of the vault now and in a new Robert Orton mix it sounds great. I am very proud of it and Sting is happy which says a lot. He is tough on himself and when he is pleased you know it s good. Joe Bonadio and John Patitucci sound remarkable and though I wrote the notes he played, Aaron Heick swings his tail off on the Bass Clarinet just as he did playing Clarinet on Englishman In New York for the Symphonicities record.
Another thailand travel feature in the box set is five brand new mixes of absolute classics from the first Sting solo record Dream Of The Blue Turtles . Steve Fitzmaurice (Grammy winning engineer thailand travel U2, Adele, Seal, Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys) re-mixed If You Love Somebody Set Them Free , Love Is The Seventh Wave , Consider Me Gone , Moon Over Bourbon Street , and Fortress Around Your Heart . These are really great mixes and it will be fascinating for lovers of this record to put the originals thailand travel on after hearing thailand travel the re-mixes. Sting always wanted to look at the mixes of Turtles again mainly because thailand travel as was somewhat customary in the early CD and digital recording era he and Pete Smith had used a lot of reverb and a high end wash coming from Omar s cymbal work. It sounded good for its time but in retrospect the performances are strong enough to demand a clearer and cleaner mix, one with a great kick in the Low end (Bass) and crisp clarity in the high end. Even on Fields Of Gold Sting s Greatest Hits Fortress was re-mixed by Hugh Padgham for this very reason. The tracks come up smelling like a rose and shine as bright as the noonday sun.
In re-mixing the tracks we uncovered some Branford lines and opened up some of the fades a bit. What a joy it was to hear all those tracks again. All this said, for the many Sting fans who consider the old record a sacred thailand travel artifact, it is not going away. It will always exist as it is and can be bought right now as it always was. I daresay these new mixes are stronger though thailand travel there will be many that will shudder at the thought of any change. It s great to have it all out there actually. The music deserves it.
The Sting-25 Years Box, done by Radical Media from New York City, is a piece of Art in and of itself. Full of rare photos and all the lyrics, thailand travel it is just gorgeous and a true collector s item. There is also a DVD of 10 live performances from the final show of Sting s Broken Music tour with Josh Freese, Dominic Miller, and Shane Fontayne. A great set. Along with that are the 3 CDs with 15 songs a piece covering his entire career and all the singles from those solo records plus some of the iconic album cuts like They Dance Alone and Be Still My Beating Heart , The Soul Cages and A Thousand Years . Amazing music. I am so glad to have been a part of this journey.
Thank you for the insight into what is going on behind the scenes for putting thailand travel together the box set. Though I ve pretty much acquired all that Sting has put out commercially with all of his albums, singles, etc., I m very interested in hearing the remixes you discuss in the blog. I can t wait to get my copy.
I ve been very impressed with what Paul McCartney is currently doing with his Paul McCartney Archive Collection in which he is also remixing all of his older albums and putting them out in both a standard and collector s edition set. The collector s editions come in a book with 2 or 3 CDs and usually a DVD with content from the era around each album s release.
With Sting being so prolific in his solo years where he also had b-sides galore, I would love to see him do something similar with the remixing/remastering of each of his albums thailand travel that would also come with bonus material, b-sides, unreleased trackets, live songs and/or perhaps a DVD with his music videos from each album.
While you re remixing/remastering for the 25th Anniversary box set and you re pulling the hits, is there any chance we might see a remastering of the entire albums? Perhaps thailand travel something like a Dream of the Blue Turtles Deluxe Edition thailand travel with all tracks remastered and bonus offerings?
I love those kind of reissues also. Sting is actually the kind of artist who is very particular about the songs he writes and as the years have gone on there have less B-Sides. He would probably thailand travel not be
into rummaging through all his drawers so to speak though thailand travel I don t think it would be out of the question if something really excited him. We all loved the Irving Plaza concert, much of which is included in the box set on DVD and he always wanted to remix
I m an old Sting fan, but just recently found out that I m a Rob Mathes fan as well :) I was blown away (in two very different ways) from listening to Fatman + I See the Lord. Very authentic and nice; love your stuff!
No comments:
Post a Comment