My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields Discussing Analog vs Digital for an hour on NPR

Great, great interview by a good interviewer and great artist. I could listen to that conversation go on for hours and hours more.

 

I really don't understand what you mean by this. Are you saying he should have bought his own pressing machines and done it himself? He went with what most people on here think is the best plant in Europe. Yet, you are blaming pressing defects completely out of his control on the fact that he spent a lot of time working on an all analog reissue?

Again I don't understand your point. Why do you care so much that an artist wanted to make an all analog master? The fact that it seems unwanted or impractical to you is fine, but acting like that should matter in any way to Kevin Shields is bizarre. Why do you seem to have such a hard time accepting that he wanted to do it all analog with no half measures?

 

Please reread my post #41.

What IS bizarre is that nobody on the thread discussing this new version really noticed his number 1 objective. Nobody said 'I noticed that the transitions used to sound digital, and now they sound analog'. So it seems like, in the end, all of that work was for his benefit only.

 

In the interview, the transitions weren't his focus initially, the goal for an all analog version was that he truly felt it would be a superior sounding version. If you listen to the interview he makes it pretty clear. However, in order to produce an all analog version, those pesky song transitions took an extreme amount of time, but he was still clearly committed to the project because he believes it would provide the best sound.

 

Truly, by an artist themselves, I can't think of a comparable album where so much time has been invested in mixing and production - to this very day, it seems. Alan McGee of Creation must laugh/ cry when he hears of such contemporary work being carried out. What's more, should you want to hear Loveless live (I did), it's blasted at you at silly volume. Sure, it's a physically, viscerally emboldening sensation, but it wears tired quick as you can imagine. To whit, nobody seems particularly bothered by the quality of the transitions. Even via the ear protection handed out prior.

As an aside, I have copy of the Plain Recordings Loveless that Kevin had umbrage with some years ago - I recall it sounding more than satisfactory.

I think Loveless is a sacred cow for Kevin, to be milked periodically. To speculate, I don't really have any truck with that from the standpoint of his own financial well-being. I'm probably silly enough to buy this imprint.

 

I think you misunderstand what he had to do to make an all-analog master of these albums, which was the goal. They were recorded to tape but mixed down to DAT. Creating an all-analog version meant going back to the session reels and remixing it to tape. That meant trying to recreate effects that were intitially done digitally. To get that to sound like the album we all know and love took tremendous effort. The whole point is that we shouldn’t notice that the mix is different. Why are you wanting or expecting people to notice that?

People HAVE said that the new releases sound better as all-analog releases than the original CDs. That’s down to the mastering, source tape, and factors other than Shields’ recreation of the original digital mix, this time as an analog mix.

 

Also, y’know, listen to the interview. It’s fascinating, and for me the best part was hearing how he had to cut the tape to recreate the cross fades in the analog domain.

 

edit. messed up that quote, but you get the picture!

edit 2: the second copy is flawless

 

Never thought to do that. Will give it a shot. Thanks for the idea!

 

I don't think any of the 'golden ears' on this forum recognized that it wasn't all analog.

 

Thought I would post this here rather than start a new thread.

Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine - Part 1: Obsession | Jazzmaster 60th Anniversary | Fender

 

Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine - Part 2: Expression | Jazzmaster 60th Anniversary | Fender

 

Count me in the 2% for being a MBV fan, but I'm also the only one here without any Beatles, Dylan, Led, Steely Dan Etc.... in my music collection

 

While tape splicing is an art it’s is not rocket science and the rudiments of it are what used to be recording 101. Find your transient, a good kick drum hit or other sonic event that masks a lot of the other content at that 1 split second in time. Manually scrub to dead center of said event make an angled cut. It used to be done all the time and was no big deal. Digital editing takes all the pain out and does a better job in my opinion. As for cross fades that’s a mixers job. A tape splice isn’t the optimal way to achieve a cross fade. And again digital takes all the pain out of this and gives the potential to achieve all these things with no loss.

 

I finally got my new all analog copy of Loveless yesterday. Gave it a listen this morning, my creation pressing that is not all analog is still better.