The Beatles Catalogue Gets Full Remaster/Reissue
...maybe you've heard of The Beatles. For us, it's the reason we do any of this. Well, thanks to Joe over at Each Note Secure we got some long-awaited news today that has us absolutely overjoyed. For the first time in the digital age, the entire Beatles catalog has been given the remastering job they deserve. Here's the lowdown:
The albums have been re-mastered by a dedicated team of engineers at EMI's Abbey Road Studios in London over a four year period utilising state of the art recording technology alongside vintage studio equipment, carefully maintaining the authenticity and integrity of the original analogue recordings. The result of this painstaking process is the highest fidelity the catalogue has seen since its original release...
A second boxed set has been created with the collector in mind. 'The Beatles in Mono' gathers together, in one place, all of the Beatles recordings that were mixed for a mono release. It will contain 10 of the albums with their original mono mixes, plus two further discs of mono masters (covering similar ground to the stereo tracks on 'Past Masters'). As an added bonus, the mono "Help!" and "Rubber Soul" discs also include the original 1965 stereo mixes, which have not been previously released on CD. These albums will be packaged in mini-vinyl CD replicas of the original sleeves with all original inserts and label designs retained.
...don't these look nice???
all images copyright Apple Corps 2009
The entire catalog is set to hit the streets on September 9. You can get all the juicy details here. Needless to say, we cannot wait...
Labels: The Beatles
posted by meltones @ 9:56 AM
4 Comments:
Fuck, those look delicious. I'd give anything if they'd do 180 gram vinyls too.
Pretty cool, but the timing is obnoxious since it's an obvious attempt to cash in on the beatles' product before the copyright expires. Who knows what other kinds of expensive packages/boxsets we'll see before 2013. Seriously, you'll be able to find a decently packaged Rubber Soul CD for a buck in five years. Crazy!
The Beatles copyrights don't expire in 2013, at least definitely not in the US. Even if they did, the existing CD versions (which are themselves "digitally remastered") would likely fall under a new copyright dating from the late 80's when they came out. These new releases will constitute yet another version and will be copyright 2009, most likely, so I guess you could say that they're preemptively extending the copyright, but considering that the rights would probably still have been valid long after the current owners are dead, it seems a bit unlikely.
In any case, I think that these box sets are in response to the notoriously terrible mastering job on the original CD releases. I remember there was recently a set of "fan made" re-masters that some anonymous audio wiz had done in his basement from the original vinyl, which was apparently good enough to spark an article in Rolling Stone.
It might even be, given the general push towards all digital distribution, that they are trying to cash in on the collector types who still very much value the physical packaging, before the CD factories all go out of business!
That last post has good info. Thanks for that.
Yeah, the standard discs aren't really mastered all that fantastic. If these new versions sound half as good as the remixed/remastered versions of the songs that showed up on the Yellow Submarine release a few years back, they're going to sound incredibly good. I look forward to hearing these new ones even if I probably won't pony up all the $ to get them all. I still prefer vinyl for my money.
As far as all digital distribution, I personally don't think it'll ever completely go that route. There's no solid digital format that (without refreshment of some kind) has been proven to stand the test of time. To hell with CD's, and to hell with iTunes. It is entirely likely that neither will be around in 50 years. I don't think physical formats (this side of harddrives) are ever going to disappear. That's beyond stupid.
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