16 June 2017
This last week Steve Vantsis and I have been digging in the tape cupboards, the attic and various other hidey holes for tapes that hold some sonic nuggets. We’ve been putting together the material for the next 2 planned remasters and in fact got quite ahead of ourselves.
Not only have we completed the 2 CD’s for ‘Suits’ to go with the intended remixed original CD but also the second CD for ‘Songs From the Mirror’ with the original remaster being CD1 and CD3 the SAS live recordings and the 5-6 new studio recordings scheduled for October.
While I was rooting around in boxes I came across a whole trove of other material I never knew I had including the ancient Akai MK20 12 track tapes from the ‘Vigil’ and ‘Internal’ writing sessions and a rack of ‘Suits’ demos as well as early run throughs of ‘Songs from the Mirror’ material.
I also opened up the live DAT cases for the first time since I moved into The Studio in 2001 and discovered hours of material from across the years.
Most of the tours and the line ups are pretty well covered but some of the quality is dubious. A lot of the 90-91 period was covered by the first of the Official Live Bootleg’ series that funded the start up of the Dick Bros label in 94 and those titles contain most of the best versions of the material I’m looking at.
However we have found alternative diamonds in the rough and have built up a great selection of material particularly from ‘Vigil’ and ‘Internal’ as they offered the most choices being the oldest albums.
The 12 Track tapes head South on Monday for transfer to WAV formats so we should be able to discover what we have and can work with by the end of this month.
One downer is that I cannot find one of the master reels for ‘Suits’ that James Cassidy wants. And it had to be the one with the ‘Lady Let it Lie’ and ‘Mr 1470’ multi tracks!
I’m still hopeful and my head gets twisted every night trying to figure out where it could be as there’s no way it could have been thrown out.
Apart from the extra ‘Songs From the Mirror’ material that won’t be together until the end of October and the potential remix of ‘the ‘Suits’ album Steve and I should have all the other content for the 4 remasters ready by the end of next month.
Dave Barras is starting the interview sessions for the ‘Vigil’ album documentary in the next weeks but that particular title ( with ‘Internal Exile’) is not intended for release until next February/March to support the ‘Weltschmerz’ album recording.
I have a lot of work at hand with 4 sets of sleeve notes to write in that time and another wade through the photo archives to get material for Mark Wilkinson to work with.
My cloth is cut.