@markusreuter has with Pat Mastelotto and friends (including Steve Wilson on vocal chords) made the album FACE (
here in stereo), which Friday 29th January will be releases with 9 different mixes in surround sound on surroundmusic.one; That is
quad, 5.1 & 7.1 plus 2 bonus mixes of each as a Melody Mix (without any percussion) and a Rhythm Mix (with percussion only).
Here's my notes on that album and mixes:
Face Surround Mixes Notes
If I should give 5 Michelin stars for some albums, the most obvious are
Amarok by Mike Oldfield,
Empath by Devin Townsend and
FACE by Pat Mastelotto & Markus Reuter.
They are all like a lot of different gourmet dishes. Fantastic variated, interesting and tasty and made by the finest Chefs. All multi instrumented in a great way that it makes them obvious as surround mixes! Empath also got lots of fantastic vocals where the two other albums are mainly instrumental albums.
Amarok from 1990 was written and performed by Mike Oldfield and produced and engineered by Tom Newman and only released in stereo. Hope a surround mix soon will come but that would be awesome with all that brilliant instruments. (While waiting on that, I’ve made myself a nice extended stereo to 5.1 upmix using my 3 different techniques for that and picking the parts thats sounds best in my ears)
Surround mixes normally sound twice as good as stereo mixes while an extended upmix on albums like that sounds 70% better than the stereo mix.
Empath was written, engineered and mixed by Devin Townsend in stereo in 2019. It’s the most variated album of all time with all kinds of delicious flavors from the sweetest to the most spicy. Was released on Deluxe Box with Blu-ray and 2 CD’s in 2020 in surround sound. CD no 2 contained 10 other demo tracks. Those would be nice to get in a 5.1 mix too!
(If Devin hasn't the time for that, then I could do it in Devin’s spirit!
FACE from 2017 was written by Markus Reuter. Hatsoff for Markus and Pat with Fabio Trentini putting all those instrument tracks down into the 2017 stereo mix! Lots of instruments to fill out the surround mixes. And it's been a great honor to get the chance to do those. For me albums like this makes so much sense also to have in glorious surround sound! The 5.1 mix was first made out of the 178 stereo tracks I got from Markus. Underway the 2 of us have listened to the progress of the surround mix and Markus have helped me telling me which instruments were important for the composition and which should be more part of the soundscape. After a half year it was done. For me it is important to release it in multiple ways meeting the different ways listeners prefer to listen to it. So a quad mix and 7.1 mix was also made as well as the 2 bonus mixes of each.
Bonus mixes:
One with all the drums and percussion only (The Rhythm Mix) and one with all the other tracks (The Melody Mix). That gives the two main components of the Pat Mastelotto & Markus Reuter album. Each of them a fantastic composition in themselves!
I’ll recommend giving those bonus mixes a listen every 10 or 20 times you listen to FACE surround mixes. When I do that with the Melody Mix it works like a more calm edition of the album and sometimes underway it is like the drums playing along in my head. Very intreaking. While making the surround mix I sometimes listens only to the percussion group and sometimes without. That reminded me of a party in my house when I was young with some friends sleeping over. At bedtime there was ask for some nice chilling music and Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here was turned on. A guy took one of my speakers to the room next to mine and closed the door. So there I was listening to that album with one channel only. That was very interesting finding out all the parts that were suddenly missing. It almost gave a new album. Here over 30 years after it showed me that a Melody Mix and a Rhythm Mix of FACE would give very good sense. And if someone can make a 36 minutes album interesting with only drums and percussion it is Pat Mastelotto! Well it helps he got his clones so sometimes 3 drum kits are in use plus maybe some percussion. It is like sitting in the middle of Pat’s studio where the drums were recorded with different drum kits surrounding you and a time and space modification made it possible to listen to all those drums and percussion recorded for the album live with the 3-4 Mastelotto clones: Can you think of something bigger?!
Again if you know the album well then you will remember some of the other instrument melodies while listening to the Rhythm Mix of FACE. I could imagine some friends meeting and use the Rhythm Mix
The bonus mixes can also be used to show how the album would have sounded if made by one of the artists only. It will still be a great album, but the best comes from the phenomenale cowork of these two great artists!
There is a 10th to 12th way to listen to the album surround mixes: If you listen to the 7.1 mix with a 5.1 setup, then a few instruments will be missing. That will still sound fantastic and you have to know the album well to point out all the (few) missing parts.
So all in all you have 12 slightly different ways to listen to FACE surround mixes, where the Rhythm Mixes are quite different
For the nerds:
Listeners who have a laptop/computer connected digital to their surround sound system will have the opportunity to play the two bonus mixes simultanly using two media players like VLC and Foobar2000 and play with the volume knobs (
more help here). All mixes have the same 600 ms lead in. (pause one mix at half a second. Start the other mix and un-pause the first. If you have analog outputs from the computer you could use the free Reaper to play back to two mixes syncron)
This is an interactive way to listen to music. And if some albums deserve this extended multi release it is the five Michelin Star albun FACE!
Hope you also will enjoy the mixes of that lovely album!
Jan Printz, 2021 January 22th
Awesome!
