Oasis - Definitely Maybe deluxe reissues announced

As confirmed in the next issue of MOJO magazine (thanks to Alistair on the Supernova Heights forum for the heads up on this):

Definitely Maybe will be reissued by Big Brother Recordings on May 19 on remastered CD, special edition 3CD, vinyl and deluxe boxset.

I look forward to see what treats will be on the deluxe edition, and how the album itself will sound in remastered form (will they go one louder than Owen Morris' original master? The original is already at 11 )

No word on who the mastering engineer is. My guess is Ian Cooper at Metropolis, as he mastered most Oasis releases from Don't Believe the Truth onwards.

Hopefully the mastering is more like the 2009 vinyl reissue, which seemed a bit less compressed than the CD. I still would love to hear an Audio Fidelity reissue of the Oasis catalogue, mastered by SH.

 

I don`t think its even possible to go louder than the original one..

 

Maybe they'll cut the new vinyl edition direct from the half-inch analogue master tapes rather than the brickwalled DAT (pipe dream...)

Looking forward to see what the bonus tracks are. I'd guess maybe the Live Demonstration demos on CD 2 and maybe BBC sessions or a live gig on disc 3.

 

Hopefully we'll hear some of the tracks from the aborted Monnow Valley sessions produced by Dave Batchelor. These are said to include a much slower, bombastic version of Slide Away that sounds more like Pink Floyd's Comfotably Numb than the version that was released.

 

It will be louder

 

Yes! It will be great to get all the b-sides, Sad Song and the Whatever single on the disc. You never know it might buck the trend and not be as loud as the original. Hopefully What's the story gets the same treatment

 

If the remaster is louder, it means that Noel Gallagher is completely out of touch with anything people are saying about the original masterings.

 

The handful of unmastered final mixes from the album that are in circulation (Live Forever, Slide Away) have up to twice the dynamic range of the released versions and are at a much lower average level. The mix of Slide Away, off a CD safety copy of the master, is DR10. So there is at least scope for a more dynamic master if they chose to go that route. Not holding my breath though! It's more likely they will have tried to squeeze a few more decibels out of it.

MOFI or Audio Fidelity should tackle this record someday.

 

Was dreaming that would say "A new edition of Oasis' classic 1994 album, the first in a series of Oasis albums to get the deluxe remix treatment. The deluxe edition will feature a Blu-ray containing new stereo and 5.1 surround sound mixes made from the original multitrack tapes by Steven Wilson"

 

I doubt the mastering will be that much of an improvement over the original release - Owen Morris was quite proud (in the 2004 DVD documentary) of Definitely Maybe being the first real example of the "brickwall limiter" approach to compression, and I suspect it's going to remain as just as much a creative choice as any other on the album. On the other hand, those master safety mixes that were leaked a few years back do prove it's possible for this material to be presented in a very different light, along with the officially released vinyl versions.

In terms of bonus content, I think it's safe to say the Live Demonstration cassette, Whatever single and other period b-sides will make the cut. I'd love to hear the early aborted sessions as well, but what I'm more interested in is whether later Oasis titles will get similar treatments. Morning Glory should feature the CD debut of Bonehead's Bank Holiday, while Be Here Now's anniversary could be the perfect opportunity to release the full-length rehearsal of All Around The World, plus Noel Gallagher's mythical set of demos recorded on the island of Mustique.

As for later period albums, there's Noel's wealth of home demos for Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants, including the still-unreleased Revolution Song and early acoustic version of Let There Be Love with alternate lyrics. Heathen Chemistry was leaked prior to its official street date containing rough mixes of Little By Little and Better Man, not to mention countless worthy outtakes from the Don't Believe The Truth sessions. Many songs put out by Noel Gallagher or Beady Eye (Stop The Clocks, If I Had A Gun, I Wanna Live In A Dream In My Record Machine, The Roller, Standing On The Edge Of The Noise, Flick Of The Finger, etc.) date from as far back as 2001. As for Dig Out Your Soul, there's also at least the potential for a 2CD deluxe edition of that album, too.

Obviously, I'm hoping this announcement is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Count me in!

 

At this point, I'd be happy for an expertly handled flat transfer.

 

I think we all know what we'd like.
I think we all fear what we'll get.

 

Looking forward to this, one of my favorite albums of all time! I have all the bsides so I am not sure what new there is! but vinyl will be great.

 

I bet we'll see tracks from the excellent Live at the Chicago Metro promotional CD that was issued right around the time the album came out.

 

Noel Gallagher doesn't master CDs...just sayin'.

 

Final Say!

 

That would just be a reissue. Hopefully they could find something more interesting for a new deluxe edition.

Anyway, here's hoping they get this right and continue the trend for each album. I wonder if the DM vinyl will come with a bonus third LP, otherwise, I'm not sure it's worth it for me to upgrade.

Who am I kidding, I just counted 14 different copies of DM in my collection, I'm sure that I'll add all four of these to the collection.

 

I'm really excited about this. I have every piece of Oasis vinyl through SOTSOG except for the debut LP, which I somehow never came across. My 12"s are all queued-up and ready for an A/B session.

It's hard to believe that this came out 20 years ago. I'm getting old!

 

I know that! However, he has a say about how it will be remastered. In fact, he has "final say."

 

THIS!!

 

It's interesting that some of the early singles and their b-sides got released without brick walling (Supersonic, Some Might Say etc). I guess they didn't have the right D/A converter and limiter to hand at the time.

It's clear from the DM DVD documentary that Noel's a fan of "the brickwall method", stating on screen that if he could buy the box Owen Morris used, he would. Still, the vinyl releases that came out a few years later were less squashed.

From my layman's understanding of it, mastering engineers are in a slightly awkward position... in that they may feel that the artist is asking them to make it too loud at the expense of sound quality, but if they don't brickwall it, the artist will hire someone else who will. I wonder if any producer or mastering engineer has ever discussed the trade offs from brick walling with Noel? Can't imagine it going down too well ("So you want to turn it down?! F*** off!").

 

Would definitely like to witness that conversation.

 

Here's the closest I could find... not a mastering engineer but Noel's recollection of working with Dave Batchelor.

"Dave Batchelor was really old," says Noel, "and he'd been through all these years in the business, so he had really set ideas about how you should do things. I'd come along to the studio, get pissed, then say, "Tell you what, let's compress this to **** so the speakers blow up." He'd go, "Oh, no, you can't do that, that's not the way we do it, we never have done. " He was trying to be really sensible about everything while I was more interested in just going with this mad, ****ing noise. I wanted it to be louder than any record ever made. And eventually I just thought, hey, this is my ****ing band, not his. So it was obvious he was going to have to go." (From Take Me There, Paul Mathur's book on Oasis, p 50).

Elsewhere Noel mentions he wanted the album to be as loud as the Who's Live at Leeds. I think another way of interpreting that comment is to say that he wanted Definitely Maybe to equal the sonic impact of that album, and he thought increasing the loudness was the best way to do that. Still, the recordings I've heard of Live at Leeds have really good dynamics too, which help to convey the excitement of the performance better than if it had been more compressed.

 

The second disc that came with Dig Out Your Soul in its original deluxe form was frustrating because most of the exclusive tracks were crossfaded together slightly (similar to the singles from Be Here Now), making it difficult to put the best songs after the main album, which I've done with the entire Oasis back catalogue where possible when transferring it to my portable device for convenience.

Apart from a few demos from this period known to exist, I'd also love to have the earlier Death In Vegas produced sessions, plus those pre-debut recordings made with The Real People and Noel's aborted collaborative project with Amorphous Androgynous, though the latter would be issued as a solo title. While a fan-made compilation has recently surfaced, I'm crossing my fingers for an official "Anthology" type package appearing one day.

 

You can find all of those tracks in un-crossfaded form on the various CD singles, except the remix of "The Turning".
This is available on a promo USB drive as an MP3 though.