Final Impressions

I suppose I should finish up on the impressions for the Beatles remasters. I’m just going to do it all briefly. (I don’t think I’ll be doing Past Masters, but let’s just say that that’s excellent.)

We start, of course, with that most famous of albums. Sgt. Pepper’s clearly benefits from the remaster. I think both versions sound fine though I’m partial to the Mono version. What’s also interesting is the use of different tracks, which is most noticeable on this album than others, I think. Good Morning Good Morning proceeds with different effects, at different pitches and also different tempos when you compare the Stereo and Mono versions.

All that said, my opinion is that the Stereo edition sounds a fair bit closer to a modern recording, and to that end, I actually prefer the Stereo version of A Day In The Life.

The same things could be said about Magical Mystery Tour, except that I want to add that this tends to be one of the most underrated albums in the Beatles catalogue, and certainly the remasters are a good excuse to dive into it with great attention. The clarity here is fairly amazing, though I would say that the Mono version sounds the richer perhaps because of its balance; the Stereo version appears to be somewhat “over-remastered”, if you catch my drift. That’s not as serious as it might sound, but the impression definitely lingered.

The White Album is spectacular in the remaster. Surely the difference isn’t night and day, but it’s definitely a noticeable cleaning-up. I prefer the Stereo one, primarily because the Mono sounds slightly as if it were being played through a wall. While the same could be said about many of the remasters, the Stereo version here doesn’t seem to suffer so much from the same sharpness/thinness/lack-of-warmth that the respective versions of the other albums seem to. It sounds pretty much like a contemporary album, actually.

To me, the biggest improvements on Yellow Submarine are to be found on the orchestral tracks. Admittedly, though, Hey Bulldog has a lot more punch, and that’s definitely welcome. No Mono version, of course.

On the other hand, the improvements for Let It Be are probably the least noticeable for me. It might in part have to do with the release of Let It Be… Naked all those years ago. I’m not sure.

Abbey Road sounds fantastic. That may be bias on my part because it is after all my favourite Beatles album. It might also have to do with the complexity of the arrangements and instrumentation (arguably anyway, compared to maybe Let It Be). Or it might have to do with how this is after all the most recent of the Beatles albums and is more in line with modern recording techniques. It sounds rich, full, and is basically the perfect way to end your Beatles listening marathon.

Admittedly, I cheated and listened to Abbey Road first, and when I got to The End, I said to myself, “This is the reason they did these remasters.” I’d never noticed the bass before on that, but it was so outstanding in the remaster and was compelling enough to give the track new life. And that’s precisely the reason these remasters are so important. The Beatles have always been compelling and vital, but these remasters enriches the experience, restores voices you didn’t know the lads possessed. The remasters preserve the Beatles at their finest by allowing the enormous character of their music to transcend the technological limits of their time.

Most of all, the remasters remind us that the Beatles catalogue has been with us for some four decades before this immense project, and that it continues to stay relevant, continues to stay alive, is a testament that technicalities in art are simply technicalities. There is permanence in this music because the boys had such enormous hearts, and, well, those were really some damn good songs.

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More Beatles

Here are some more impressions. We’re going to do Beatles For Sale and Help! today. I know I’m very late, but better than never, as they say.

I have strangely opposite reactions to the remasters with respect to these two albums. I prefer the stereo remaster of Beatles For Sale. It sounds more in line with what we’re used to hearing in modern music. Certainly, both can be easily distinguished from the original records and the ’87 remasters. Just listen to the resonant guitar opening in I’ll Follow The Sun. It’s gorgeous.

To my mind, the stereo version has a nicer balance. The mono version also seems more distant to me, like on Rock And Roll Music, where John’s voice seems a little far away from the rest of the band. The separations are irritating as usual on the stereo edition, but not enough to frustrate me. I also find, as with most of the other remasters, that I can hear the individual voices more distinctly in the stereo version, and I think that’s a matter of taste.

To me, the songs here seem more alive. As expected, there’s a little bit more depth, more clarity and better balance with these songs, but as a whole, Beatles For Sale seems to glow. It’s like hearing an album proper for the first time after listening to it from behind a wall your entire life.

On the other hand, I like Help!‘s mono version better. The stereo version sounds noticeably harsh in areas. This was especially clear to me in You Like Me Too Much. That said, it also has more punch, so it may be a matter of preference. I find that it takes a little acclimitisation before I actually start enjoying the mono version (it’s like it takes place in a different kind of space altogether), though, all things considered, it has a warmer, fuller, and less disjointed sound that I prefer.

Help! is far from my favourite Beatles album, but it has some songs that I’ve lived with and will continue to live with for a long, long time. It’s nice to rediscover them in this new package, with just that little bit more definition and detail, and know that they’re songs that I’ll be able to count on for a long, long time to come.

I think the same can be said about the rest of the Beatles remasters, and I promise I’ll get to them with some sense of urgency.

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Stuffing Stockers

2009 is practically over, but before it’s done with, we’ve got Christmas to take care of! I thought to list down some books and music that I’ve enjoyed in the past year just as a quick sort of summary, but also as a source of last-minute gift suggestions. Five each (plus bonuses), and I tried to keep them to recent releases, which is much easier for music than it is for books, considering my reading patterns.

This is also by no means a best-of list, especially considering how my tastes can sometimes be rather esoteric. It’s more of a review of things that I’ve enjoyed in the past year. I hope that you and yours can too.

So, if you’re running short of ideas and running short on time, consider giving these a shot. Alternatively, give yourself a little Christmas treat after a long year.

Books

2666
Roberto Bolaño

For a period of time after reading 2666, I couldn’t read anything else without feeling underwhelmed. Bolaño’s opus is a towering achievement, at turns absurdly funny and hopelessly dark, at once irreverent, unabashed, sprawling and intense. While it is true that one’s mileage may vary with regards to certain portions of the text, the quality of Bolaño’s prose never slips, which ought to be a remarkable achievement except for how it is overshadowed by the book’s immense ambition and spectacular beauty. It is works like these that inspire the very sort of hope that we should have in art, where imagination is vested with powers incomparable and the written word has the ability to intone, inspire, crush and create. It is works like these that remind you the importance of art, as well as its limitless nature.

[You can get this in a couple of humongous hardcover editions, a new one-volume paperback, or the box set that split it up into three books. I liked the one I have the best, which is the three-book edition.]

All-Star Superman
Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely with Jamie Grant

Grant Morrison is my favourite comic book writer, and sometimes one of my favourite living writers. I say sometimes because in the multitude of his ambitions, he quite frequently (if I dare say) falls somewhat short. But on the good days, when it all comes together, Morrison is able to take the comic book medium to quite incredible heights. All-Star Superman sees Morrison in some of his best form, reimagining the Superman story in a manner both bold and brilliant. It all comes together (with Quitely’s art and Grant’s inks) in a package that makes you realise the things that all things are possible in the comic medium.

[You can get the collected edition in two volumes, which are available in hardcover and (I think) paperback. I'm not sure if you'll have too much luck hunting down the individual issues.]

Death At Intervals
José Saramago

Of Saramago’s many otherworldly talents, one of them appears to be the ability to make the most absurd plots function. In Death At Intervals, he tells the fable of a country in which everyone, one day, just stops dying. At the hands of a lesser writer, this would probably have drowned in some unspectacular, but Saramago somehow manages to pull it off. What emerges is (as one would expect from a Saramago novel) a bleak exploration of human nature. Every celebration is simply a secret waiting to reveal its cost.

What I didn’t expect, however, was just how humorous the whole thing was. In these pages, Saramago finds the perfect balance between the more piercing perspectives into human beahaviour and the somewhat irreverent and unexpected jokes. It’s a brilliant thing to see. (He wryly lampoons everything from the government, the mob, and even the editors.)

The second half of the novel takes an even more unexpected turn and I am well aware that this will probably not succeed as well as the first half of it. Within it, Saramago decides to personify death, and his characterisation of her is arguably less likely to be as convincing as the remarkable first half of the novel. Nevertheless, I liked it, because it surprised me how it had a certain type of sweetness that I wouldn’t have expected to see outside of the very best children’s fiction.

[This is available in paperback in a variety of covers. There was a black hardcover a while back, but if you ask me, the purple Vintage edition with the cute comic art cover is probably the best representation of its contents.]

Pandora In The Congo
Albert Sánchez Piñol

At the heart of Pandora In The Congo is a writer who writes the tale of a certain Marcus Garvey. It begins by caricaturising the adventure novel, and then bursts into one of its own in the tradition of Conrad and Rider Haggard.

Piñol seizes you from the get-go with his startling imagination and boundless energy, and leads you through a novel like the architect of a good rollercoaster ride. It has thrills, spills, blood, wit, candour, altruism, hearts of darkness, romance and discourses on human nature. It asks difficult questions! It enthralls and excites! It has murder! It has villains! It has ugly humans doing ugly things! It has frightening underground humanoids! It has romance in the trees! What’s not to like?

[I've only ever seen a paperback edition of this.]

The Way Through Doors
Jesse Ball

Jesse Ball’s book is in essence a variation of The Arabian Nights. It is a scheme of things that appeals to us, I think, because of our inherent desire to believe in the power of stories. In order to prevent Mora Klein from slipping into slumber (and thus causing her dreadful harm), Selah Morse, our wonderfully unreliable narrator, has to tell her stories. It is a celebration of the artform in a manner both earnest and sweet, albeit slightly challenging because of its charming oddness and unusual form.

This was a happy accident for me. I picked it up not knowing what I was getting into. I ended up delighted and rather mesmerised. There is a purity and beauty to this that reminds us that perhaps the best parts of our lives are reserved for those unafraid to dream.

[I got this on paperback. I don't know if it comes in any other form, but that Vintage edition was put together in the most lovely fashion.]

Bonus Mention

Your Inner Fish
Neil Shubin

Here’s one additional book I thought I ought to mention. Unlike the rest of the books here, it’s a non-fiction book that essentially deals with the theory that we’ve all evolved from fish. It’s written with great clarity and much enthusiasm, and I’m sure this will win Natural History more than a few new students.

Music

Abbey Road [2009 Remaster]
The Beatles

The Beatles return with their entire catalogue remastered, and I am of the opinion that they are quite remarkable. Nowhere is this more welcome (well, to me, anyway) than with Abbey Road. The differences between the remaster and the original will probably not be as pronounced on Abbey Road as compared to some of the other albums, but it’s these differences that reinvigorate the album and give it a new dimension. The percussion pulsates in She Came In Through The Bathroom Window. The bass drives The End forwards in a way I could never have dreamed. Like I said, it’s not that the differences are night and day, but what differences they are.

Funny feeling, this. It’s 2009, and the Beatles rock again.

[This is available as a single album release and, if it's a special someone who happens to be a Beatles nut, as part of The Beatles Stereo Box.]

The Hazards Of Love
The Decemberists

The Decemberists returned this year with a gigantic rock suite telling the story of a pair of star-crossed lovers, an evil child-killing fellow, a jealous mother, a forest and a river. I suppose if there was anything characteristically Decemberist, it would be something like this.

The band has probably not sounded better (so far), with top-notch production (just listen to the opener) and some of the best musicianship they’ve yet exhibited (all around, though Chris Funk’s electric guitar and Jenny Conlee’s organ will be the most immediately impressive). And really, who wouldn’t want to see the grand, operatic ambition of telling a story like that with excellent music? The album’s massive ambition is a thing to admire, although it sometimes does end up being the album’s greatest fault. It feels every now and then as if they haven’t got enough material to sustain the suite; and sometimes slips into a sort of Disney phase (the romantic sides of the album, in particular). Nevertheless, there’s plenty of good music here, and it’s a spectacle that you really shouldn’t miss.

[The album is available at the Decemberists store, among other places, but I wanted to note that if you get it there now, you will also get a DVD of the animated feature that they put together to accompany the album.]

Humbug
Arctic Monkeys

Humbug is a carnival with a dark twist, a biting poison and the occasional moment of sweetness. Unlike the first two endeavours of the Arctic Monkeys, it is a quite successful attempt at making an album as a cohesive whole. It definitely feels as if they don’t feel the need to impress so immediately anymore (most notably in the very controlled and cheekily vulgar opener, My Propeller), and that shows in the care that has been taken in crafting some of this music. There are fewer hooks, fewer catchy singles, fewer overt displays of showmanship, but definitely a marked maturity to their musicianship. It’s an excellent album by an excellent band that’s showing signs of moving in the right direction.

[All major record stores, and probably most minor ones too.]

Middle Cyclone
Neko Case

Nature and the need for love frame Neko Case’s latest album, and in this balance we find something pleasant, bittersweet, and ultimately sweeping. There is a cinematic quality to this album as it moves from country to noir to rock and even to the spiritual. The range of it alone is impressive, and is made even more impressive by her incredible voice. And while it is one of the very best voices in the business, demanding your attention at every turn, credit should go too to the band for managing to produce a Walden-esque aesthetic within the confines of the album.

Resembling a midsummer night’s dream of forests and fireflies, of rain on the fields and creaking cicadas in the dark nights, tinged with more than a hint of heartbreak, the album turns out to be a thoughtful endeavour that I found thoroughly enjoyable.

[It's really not anything like the cover.]

Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Phoenix

Early Phoenix stuff has always somehow struck me as promising and yet lacking in some way. That wasn’t at all the case with this cleverly titled album. It’s an album that tries to deal with the grandiose themes of love and angst and disappointments and living in frame of their now-mature sense for pop-rock. In doing so, Phoenix abandons their sophisticated and excessive arrangements for something more urgent, something that breathes. It understands loneliness. It understands hurt. It asks that you pull your socks up. It asks that you step on the gas and ride into the sunset. By somehow drawing upon Mozart, Liszt, Brain Eno and Daft Punk, Phoenix has produced a work of youth and hope that burns as brighter than anything I’ve heard this year (and many others).

Bonus Mentions

It’s Blitz!
Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Together Through Life
Bob Dylan

Two more albums that I didn’t have space for. I wanted to say that even not being the biggest fan of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, I really enjoyed It’s Blitz!. Together Through Life, on the other hand, sees Dylan put out music that’s perhaps more… ‘grounded’? I don’t know if that’s the word for it. I have a terrible vocabulary. It certainly has a far less epic feel than the preceding albums in his discography, and doesn’t carry the same sense of importance about it, but it features Dylan in a somewhat more relaxed mood, delivering some very clever lyrics and supported by impeccable performances. Excellent stuff.

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Further Impressions

Some brief impressions as I continue to rediscover the Beatles. I know I’m a bit slow in all of this, but I’m doing what I can. Today, I’ll talk about With The Beatles and A Hard Day’s Night.

With The Beatles was always, to me, the worst-sounding Beatles album of the lot. The quality of the recordings was probably the worst of the lot. Instruments bleeding into one another, cracking vocals, and a certain degree of noise that made the recordings really hard to listen to. And yet some of my favourite Beatles songs are on this album, so I was really glad to find that they had somehow managed to rescue With The Beatles.

It’s not obvious right off the bat. At least, it wasn’t to me. Something seemed different, but it wasn’t a night-and-day difference for sure. It was less noisy and more well-balanced, for one thing. The differences were clearer a bit more into the album. The clarity of the guitar in Till There Was You, for instance, was a joy to behold. The drums sounded more full-bodied in Please Mister Postman, and were accompanied with a much cleaner bassline. Most of all, it didn’t sound like I was trying to imagine things out of a 50-year old bootleg. I could actually hear things clearly.

I think the most slap-in-the-face obvious thing for me was on Money, where there were guitar notes in it that up to that point I didn’t know existed. (And I still can’t find it on the mono remaster.)

A Hard Day’s Night works out pretty much the same way, with everything sounding just that bit cleaner. If I Fell, for instance, starts out with more than John’s voice. I hadn’t realised that, but it’s very obvious in the stereo remaster. It doesn’t always work for the best, though. Much has been said about the warmth of the mono versions and it’s true, and of the three albums I’ve written about so far, this is the one that I most prefer the mono version of. Nothing to worry about, though. Both versions are astounding bits of remastering, and in the end, I think it’s simply a matter of preference. Both versions are still excellent, though more different than I thought they’d be.

In all, it’s been a joy reliving all of this music. Some days, I want the excitingly creative Beatles, the risk-taking Beatles, the whimsical Beatles, the Beatles driven by the need to invent. And some days, I want the simpler, sweeter ballads, so bright, so positive and so breathtakingly youthful. So it’s no exaggeration when I say that I’m mightily pleased that the remasters turned out this good. Particularly With The Beatles, the rescue of which seems almost miraculous to me.

And as the song goes, I’ll be back.

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On Please Please Me

Please Please Me was never my favourite Beatles album. I think that if you checked my jukebox, you’ll probably find that this is the album that has the fewest number of average listens per song. I don’t know why that’s the case. I like most of the songs on the album, and there’s nothing quite like the music on this album to be found on all of the other Beatles albums.

I may be compelled to rectify that right now, however. The remaster is quite excellent and particularly revealing. It’s generally said that Please Please Me is an album that exhibits a brilliant raw side to the Beatles’ music, but it’s something that a rawness took on a new dimension for me in the remaster. The visceral intensity that perhaps set them apart from their peers of that era stings on this record. It’s pretty amazing to find myself going through all this again with a new sense of wonder and an appreciation for the clarity of the sound.

And what clarity it is. Unless you have aluminum foil for ears, the difference should be pretty obvious. It’s not as astounding as I would want to believe, I think, but there’s a definite sense of depth can’t be found in the ’87 remasters. The drums sound more fleshed out, the separate tracks don’t seem to muddy each other as much and there’s a three-dimensionality to it all. The voices are certainly much clearer. I could hear separate voices where I used to hear just one. The guitars have more definition and the drums don’t sound so harsh. Things just generally have more oomph to them. From the more nicely-balanced I Saw Her Standing There to the crackling vocals of Twist And Shout, it’s pretty clear that the remasters did a lot of good work. Speaking of which, you can even hear John’s voice cracking in Twist And Shout.

I think the mono version definitely sounds better. I don’t like the stereo separations, a complaint that I imagine I will be making a lot, and the mono version just seems to blend the separate tracks together so much better. Sometimes, the drums just sound removed from the other parts in the stereo version, for instance. It just doesn’t seem to come together in stretches.

That said, I think both versions sound excellent, and it’s a great start to what I’m pretty sure will be a lovely collection.

Wow, I should really think of better ways to round of my impressions.

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The Beatles Stereo Box I

So the Beatles have landed. I got my set on Wednesday, in a giant cardboard box that made me so happy. Taking out the sticky tape, I gleefully hacked at the CAUTION tape with a pen knife and removed the big black box from the cardboard. It looked great. I was happy. Then I opened it with much joy and happily counted my albums. They were all there. I realised, however, that a corner of my big black box was damaged, which was quite disappointing.

I was soon to find more defects, and my copy of A Hard Day’s Night was not properly pressed, so it couldn’t be played. Not knowing quite what to do with it, I squished it between two heavy books and hoped for the best.

So, first impressions, not too great. (I’ll take some pictures later.)

Still, nothing can quite match the sheer happiness of being reunited with the Fab Four. I tore of the shrink wrap very carefully and marvelled at the package for a bit. Then I proceeded to listen to a few selected tracks. Having heard most of the tracks on The Beatles In Mono, I came into this with some kind of a preconceived idea of what to expect, but I must say that I was quite surprised. The stereo remasters have so far sounded better in a number of tracks.

Case in point, I listened to Money and heard some guitar details that I’d never heard before. Then I listened to some tracks on A Hard Day’s Night (I borrowed my friend’s copy for the time being, but I suppose I’ll have to have it replaced eventually), and it felt as if the stereo was particularly revealing. The voices in If I Fell were much more clearly separated, for instance. And Magical Mystery Tour showed me why sometimes it’s no point sticking to mono. Hello Goodbye certainly sounded more alive to me in stereo than in mono, with a lot more volume (that is, dimensional volume and not loudness volume) to it.

That’s not to say that everything’s great in stereo, of course. I’m pretty sure I’ll complain about the left-right vocal separations when I get to them, and I’m pretty convinced that some songs will be better in mono still (my bet is on Sgt. Pepper’s). For now though, I’m very impressed.

And without comparing the two versions, Abbey Road rocks.

So, in the weeks to come, I think I’ll be going through them and writing some impressions. And they’ll be put up here, for whatever they’re worth. In the meantime, I should get the defective CD replaced…

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Some random things.

Now Listening

I got my hands on Muse’s The Resistance. I’ve listened to it about five times. Nothing spectacular, and in fact, far more average than one might expect. I think it’s a bit scattershot, and there’s too much mantra-dropping (“We will be victorious…”) that’ll never be a substitute for good lyrics. There’s also none of the energy or precision of one or two of their earlier albums, so it all seems a little… meh.

That said, Exogenesis, the three part suite at the end of the album is great, and it might be worth the price of admission, though don’t quote me on that.

Mono

Someone with the Beatles Mono Box Set let me listen to Sgt. Pepper’s and I realise the difference with this set of remasters is more significant than I imagined (though less than what would’ve made me go :O ). My own Stereo Box Set is supposed to be on its way (though Amazon is taking longer to process it than I would’ve expected), and I’m looking forward to it more than ever now.

Writers Festival

The Singapore Writers Festival is here again, as Jolie kindly reminded me. I missed out on all the events the last time round, so I’m quite determined to attend two or three things this year. I haven’t made up my mind on what to attend yet, but it’s still a whiles away anyway. Besides, I also need to trick someone to go along with me so that it isn’t all that lonely.

And if you’re interested, here’s the festival calendar detailing the events. [via Singapore Writers Festival]

Hartblei

I saw this yesterday and I more or less have no idea what it really is.

“So we decided to build a camera by ourselves. The camera should be completely open for all MF backs on the market and should use a 35mm lens mount as an interface to support all lenses, no matter whether 35 mm or MF. The plan was to give access to extreme wideangles down to fisheyes or superteles and while maintaining a reasonable price offering (i.e. below 5000 € with TTL spot finder plus electric Film-/D-Backslider).”

I think it allows DSLR on the front and medium on the back, but that’s all I got. What do you really do with it? What happens when I combine this with that, et cetera? It’s not all so clear.

Not that I’m buying it, but it’s fairly interesting.

Midterm Plans

Sure, I’ve got a lot to do for the week, but I’m trying not to let them get in the way of meeting up with my friends. I’m sure I need to eat a meal with a group of them, go out and take photos with one of them, go to some interesting place like a museum with another, and watch a movie with one more. That’s at least. Hmm, we can work it out.

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