Excerpt from an interview with Steven Wilson (
http://www.digitaltrends.com/features/interview-steven-wilson-on-high-res-hand-cannot-erase/):
I know you’ve worked on the surround sound and 96/24 mixes for Yes’ Fragile, which is coming out on Blu-ray in a few months. Many people, including me, were disappointed with the surround mix that came out on DVD-Audio in 2002. What can you say about your version of it in 5.1?
Um, I think mine’s better. (both laugh) I did listen to the original mix. It’s one of those things where you listen to someone else’s work — and obviously I’m a bit snobby about other people’s surround work because I’ve done so much of it of my own — but I listened to it and I went, “What were they thinking? I just don’t understand.”
Let’s just say my mix is — well, you know how I mix now. It’s a properly immersive surround-sound mix, and it’s very, very faithful to the original in terms of using the right takes and the right drum parts, which they didn’t do on the last one. It’s very faithful, and it’s very immersive. That’s how I’ve tried to be with pretty much all of my mixes, yeah.
Since Roundabout is such an iconic track on that album, can you pinpoint the differences between the old mix and your mix? That’s the first song many people are going to gravitate toward.
My thing is trying to create something that feels like it’s all glued together. Let me explain what I mean by that. Lots of surround mixes that I haven’t liked have most things happening in the stereo, flat at the front, and then occasionally, sounds will come out of the back, but they sound very disconnected from the sounds in the front. So my approach — which is something I learned from the beginning, watching Elliot [Scheiner] work — has always been to try and create a surround picture that feels cohesive. For example, I always bring the drums and the bass a little bit out into the room. And there is a little bit coming out of the back speakers too, so it doesn’t feel like you’ve got two completely disconnected bands — one playing in the front and one playing in the back.
I think with the mix I’ve done, there’s more coming out of the back at the start, but it doesn’t feel disconnected from the band — I hope. At the end of the day, doing a surround mix, by definition, requires you to an extent to pull things slightly apart, otherwise you end up without any surround element at all. The trick for me is always trying to keep that balance between keeping the cohesion but at the same time, create a three-dimensional soundfield.
and yes this news deserves another :banana:?
