Neil Palfreyman
1K Club - QQ Shooting Star
@neil - I would appreciate to hear what your input on the mix was. Was Bruce’s surround vision always on the mark or did he need some persuasion?
That's a great question! Let me have a think about this one before I answer!
What I will say now is this:
I've worked with Bruce right from the start of his surround mixing, and in fact, even before that as a photographer and fan of the band in their early days. The point being that we have a great rapport and, even more importantly, a very high level of mutual trust.
I often have quite a lot of input into his mixes and had even more on this one than any previous mix. That was more down to realising just how good the material is and how perfect it was for surround really early on and having the time to do it. But it's not about "persuasion" - Bruce is always fully committed to both surround as a medium and also to having excellent dynamics. The limiting factor often tends to be time, as he's usually up against external deadlines! I got the V1 of this album in lock-down and well before the deadline, so we had time to do a lot of tweaking on it, and some of it was pretty major!
I think it's (easily) his best mix to date, but that's certainly helped by the quality of the material and Gavin's input into the "alternate versions" and it's a pleasure to read the comments on here and find that a lot of people agree with that sentiment.
Thank you (all) for the kind words.