Don't expect any miracles with Rimini, not much can be done with bad audience recordings from the 70s.
Allow me to rephrase. I was just curious as if it had been announced whether they used the master tapes or not, or if they were still based off audience recordings.
Remember what happened with the Gentle Giant box, they had to take another print when the first one was sold out
It should be barely possible to improve the Rimini stuff much. It is an audience recording, which is generally one of the better ones form the 75/76 concerts, but unfortunately suffers from some big problems. And actually if they were able to improve the problems they could have released the whole concert. There is a clearly listenable hum on the tape, which is annoying, especially in the calmer parts, but all the calmer parts have another problem as in these the loudness drops disproportionately. Now you can raise the loudness in the calmer part, but apart from more hiss the hum becomes now very annoying. This makes the Rimini stuff a more unpleasant listen, and apart form that I don't like the performance very much. Interestingly the same goes for Gog from Bangor, it is for me one of the lesser Gog recordings of 1975. Maybe I just have a different taste, but if they wanted to use lo fi audience recordings they could have found better performances and even better recordings for the audio quality. So for me the the re-release of the Rimini stuff is rather pointless. Actually I think they could have used the space on the Blus to release some of the better audience tapes, so that every fan has them, and can at least check how the band sounded live, and live many songs were considerably different from their studio counterparts. In the King Crimson box sets a lot of concerts were only put on the Blus. Actually I'm looking forward the most to the 1967 Paris concert, which will be fantastic as I assume they found the original tapes from the radio station. 2 of the songs are already available from an older off-air recording in pretty good quality (some background hiss though), and these 2 performance of When she Comes and Still Life are excellent.
And this is what they should have done, but maybe again didn't. Cause there is some more officially released stuff which should be, or at least could be, on the box to make it complete. But I assume it is now too late, or they were left off on purpose. 1. The 2nd single version of Refugees, a different mix which was released on CD so far only on the I Phrophesy Disaster compilation. 2. A slightly longer version of the Lighthouse Keepers part The Clot Thickens, only released on the cassette version of Repeat Performance, a compilation which also featured the aforementioned Refugees version. Really slightly, and of not much interest to me, but a real rarity. 3. Theme 1/The Dambuster's March which is the last track from the 23.9.71 BBC in Concert, which is meanwhile also available in similar quality as the other 3 tracks. And that one I really miss. 4. If the 2 yet unreleased tracks of the BBC session from 12.10.70 are not better than what we fans already have (which is good, but not great), then they should have added the excellent but edited Killer version, which was unofficially released on a BBC bootleg CD. 5. The Shel Talmy mix of The Least We Can Do, but I can understand that this could be something the band does not want. Well yes, and I would like to know why Time Vaults is not included, such a box is a perfect place for these tracks of mostly poorer audio quality.
He he, yes, too late to change it ... But btw I really had hoped they would release on this box stuff like the 1968 demos recorded by PH and Judge Smith. That would be amazing, and very, very interesting, as we still know so little about these early days of the band.
I love what little has come out from this era (only the couple tunes on the Aerosol 50th and a few on Judge's Democrazy as far as I know), very fun stuff. I really like the version of Viking with Judge's dramatic vocal. Would love to hear more.
I bit the bullet on this one, and ordered from Burning Shed, even with the high shipping charge. The package well, they ship well, and their customer service is second to none.
Stephen, apart from the remixes, did you do also the remastering of the 8 albums? And if so, was everything in the box remastered? I mean also the BBC and the live stuff?
I don't do mastering for these releases, but they have all been mastered by Ben Wiseman, who is wonderful. He doesn't ever do more than is necessary with the new mixes, and I imagine he has done the same with the original masters. All the original tapes, multitrack and mixes, were beautifully and correctly digitised at a very high resolution. I haven't actually heard the final masters yet, but I understand they are great. No idea about the BBC and live recordings, but so much care has been taken at every stage I am sure they will be as good as possible. SWT
Not me. At the time I was desperately trying to evade my toothless haggard wife, and her interminable attempts to convince me to couple with her withered body. I did however find myself idly wondering whatever Robert might have said.
Robert said to sell her body to science . You made enough on the transaction to buy yourself the boxset but only because of your location. Damn shipping prices. She didn't bring much due to the withering.
Good news! The set is now listed on Amazon.ca and showing "Currently Not Available". From experience, it takes about a week before the pricing shows up and pre-orders opened.
Care to tell us how much the total or at least shipping was to the USA from Burning Shed? I see it’s available from Wayside Music in the US for $213.50 (including shipping...I think) 10 min later...according to my (hopefully accurate) calculations, Wayfair will save you $11.41 compared to Burning Shed shipped to the USA
Shipping was 40pounds - which is almost $55.00, but total cost including shipping for me was $207.99 which I was already charged for on my credit card and paid for in full.
