Surrounded On Sundays - 5.1/quad reviews and summaries

Wow. Gerry Mulligan is music I would never call smooth jazz.

 

Me too either!

Yeah, what she said.

So much for my eloquent response.

Vespertine really is the one most often mentioned as her best, for good reason. I'm a Biophilia man m'self, but that one doesn't come in surround (well, ok, live, yeah) and Vespertine does. And it is a reference-grade production to boot.

As Pagan Poetry winds down, a chorale (Björk overdubs) shows up for the repeated refrain "she loves him, she loves him," In surround it sounds like a dozen tiny 6" tall Björks encircling the room.

One of the very best combinations of content and production out there.

 

Remember there are no guilty pleasures when it comes to music...only pleasures...

 

I'm sorry to report that while I bought the album for “Songbird” I don't actually remember any pleasures being associated with that album. Which is not to knock Kenny G (it's hard enough to make money in the music industry and clearly he found an audience) but sometimes a listener voyages outside their comfort zone only to discover that they've entered their discomfort zone.

 

interestingly, there was a CD + DVD release of Gerry Mulligan's 1971 recording "The Age Of Steam", released back in 2004 with a cool surround mix (5.1 Dolby Digital), i recommend it

 

Catching up with Vespertine:-

Björk is an artist who really suits surround due to the almost pedestrian feel of her vocal style combined with her adventurous, and sonically thrilling, soundfields. For me, Vespertine is her first great album (the other one, which I listen to more frequently, is Medulla) and in my own mind I've heard it a lot over the years. Returning to it now, however, I realise that I've shortchanged it: I really knew it far less than I expected. In a way that's a good thing because the effects of the harps & choirs sounded fresh once again. I won't go into detail on this one because I feel that its overall magic is rather undermined by too much analysis, but the surround mix enhances that magic rather (as in too many other cases) tearing the mix apart. This is one of the better 5.1 mixes for me, though arguably not flashy enough to be the best of the best.

Catching up with Phaedra:-

Tangerine Dream are a band that haven't really meant much to me in the past, so buying In Search of Hades was by no means an obvious step. Certainly I have no reverence for Phaedra but (as with one of my multichannel reference discs, Kraftwerk's 3D) surround really suits it, really immersing the listener fully. Steven Wilson, experienced with ambient music thanks to his work under the Bass Communion name, is quite cautious with the mix, leaving quite a lot on the threshold of audibility. Also, with the comparatively small number of tracks, he doesn't have much room to channel instruments separately, favouring instead a mix where there is a miasma of sound that washes around the listening position.

 

Thanks, Mark, and I hope you enjoy a well-deserved vacation, if that’s where you’re going. I’ll try to carry on in your tradition.

A good percentage of my surround titles have already been reviewed here, but one title that hasn’t is The Allman Brothers Eat A Peach on SACD. So for Sunday, 9/22, I’ll be tackling that one.

And for the following Sunday, 9/29, I’ll be reviewing the Pixies Doolittle album in surround. There’s an active and lively Pixies thread here concerning their new album, so I don’t expect a shortage of opinions on them.

 

No worries mate. Be you, do and say what you would do mate. Don't worry about the way I approach it. You are quite welcome to do something similar to what I do, but you certainly don't have to.

 

The 5.1 surround mix for Dream Theater's 2019 album Distance Over Time has just been made available outside the rather expensive boxed set in which it launched. Until the end of the summer it was a strong candidate to be my album of the year and all the songs have their accompanying visualisation, so it may be worth the while of some visitors to this thread to pick up while it's still available at a reasonable price.

 

Thanks for the heads up mate

 

There's a four disc set listed on Amazon for $55, but I've also seen two disc sets for $18. The official InsideOut website doesn't list either one. Which one did you get - or do you have the box?

Also, what album beat it out at the end of summer? Fear Inoculum, perhaps? If so, I agree.

 

It's a new two-disc set ... available from Burning Shed in the UK. (Could be well be the one you've already seen but this album was released in a lot of different formats, so you'd need to double-check.)

I was impressed by Fear Inoculum (actually the first Tool album that I heard!) but my current frontrunners are Norman F*cking Rockwell by Lana Del Rey plus a couple by John Zorn (The Hierophant & Nove Cantici Per Francesco D’Assisi). I hope that they can yet be beaten but I don't hold out a lot of hope ...

 

I just ordered the d/t bluray from Importcds for$13 and change, which is less than I paid HDTracks for a compressed stereo version. Well, a little more with shipping. Maybe all the complaining I'm doing on this thread is working. They did get me to buy the album twice in the same year, clever devils.

I like NFR too, but I listened to all 80 minutes of FI every day for two weeks straight.

 

The Bruford 5.1s are getting unboxed:

Bruford: One Of A Kind, Expanded & Remixed CD/DVD Edition - Cherry Red Records
Bruford: Feels Good To Me - Remixed Edition, CD/DVD - Cherry Red Records

 

Ordered.

 

So in Mark's absence, I'll be tackling a couple of albums for the next 2 Sundays (9/22 and 9/29), and I know at least one more person will be doing the same.

Today will be the Allman Brothers' Eat A Peach album, and I know the landmark 'Live at the Fillmore' has already been discussed.

Here's what Wiki says about Peach, for those that might not be familiar with it:

Eat a Peach is the third studio album by American rock band the Allman Brothers Band. Produced by Tom Dowd, the album was released on February 12, 1972, in the United States by Capricorn Records. Following their artistic and commercial breakthrough with the release of the live album At Fillmore East (1971), the Allman Brothers Band got to work on their third studio album. Many in the band were struggling, however, with heroin addictions, and checked into rehab to confront these problems. Shortly after leaving rehab, group leader and founder Duane Allman was killed in a motorcycle accident in the band's home of Macon, Georgia, making it the final album to feature the guitarist.

Eat a Peach was a mix of studio recordings—both with and without Duane Allman—and recordings from the band's famed 1971 Fillmore East performances. The album contains the extended half-hour-long "Mountain Jam," which was long enough to take up two full sides of the original double-LP. Other highlights include vocalist Gregg Allman's performance of his brother's favorite song, "Melissa," plus Dickey Betts' "Blue Sky", which went on to become a classic rock radio staple.

Eat a Peach

Studio album / Live album by
The Allman Brothers Band
Released February 12, 1972
Recorded Live material:
March 12–13, June 27, 1971
Fillmore East
(New York City)
Studio material:
September–December 1971
Criteria Studios
(Miami)
Genre

• Southern rock
• blues
• blues rock
• jam rock

Length 69:24
Label Capricorn
Producer Tom Dowd
The Allman Brothers Band chronology
At Fillmore East
(1971) Eat a Peach
(1972) Beginnings
(1973)
Singles from Eat a Peach

1. "Ain't Wastin' Time No More / Melissa"
   Released: April 1972
2. "Melissa / Blue Sky"
   Released: August 1972
3. "One Way Out / Standback"
   Released: November 1972

That's just an overview, and anybody can go to Wiki and read more if they're interested. Wiki tends to give the 'meat and potatoes' of a topic, but not too often does it offer the flair or flavor, IMO.

For those of us that are over 50, and think back to when this album was released, it was way before the days of the internet. Back then, rumor was all word-of-mouth, often at the town's record store. And many of you might remember the prevailing rumor about this album was that Duane was hit by a peach truck, hence the 'dark humor' title. That rumor was out there, and very persistent. I know I heard it more than once.

And, like many rumors of its day, it wasn't true. Here's another shocker: Alice Cooper was not Eddie Haskel. But I digress.

My copy of Peach is the hybrid SACD from around 2004. I know there are other formats out there, such as DVD-A, but for better or worse, I'm not going to chase them all down. I have the same hybrid SACD for 'Live at the Fillmore,' and both sound quite good to me. System is a modern Marantz AVR, Sony universal BD player, Wharfedale towers in the front, Wharfedale center channel, and Wharfedale bookshelf speakers in the back.

Ain't Wasting Time No More opens the album, and some would swear that's Duane on slide guitar on the left channel, but it's Dickey Betts. Greg allegedly wrote the song about his brother's death, and Betts worked very hard to get the slide guitar down pat. I would say he did a very good job, as a listener could easily mistake that slide for Duane, without knowing better. Oddly on this mix, the center channel is only very lightly used for Greg's vocals.

The instrumental Les Brers in A Minor has a nice dispersion of sound, with one drummer on the left channels, and the other on the right. There's a nice, but short, dual drumming part, and it's a bit of a tease for what's coming in the extended Mountain Jam. Les Brers is an opportunity for the mix to really open up, and it does just that. And it wakes up the sub, too, which was slightly snoozing on the opening track.

Melissa was almost not included, as Greg thought it was too 'soft' for an ABB album, and considered it for a solo LP one day. But it was one of his brother Duane's favorite songs, so was included as somewhat of a tribute. It's a fantastic acoustic song, at home either on an ABB album, or as a Greg solo project. Acoustic guitar just shimmers all around the listener. Again, though, not much use of the center channel. I see a pattern developing.

The Mountain Jam on the SACD is reportedly the full jam, as the original vinyl LP had it split into two sides, as it's over 33 min long. And on the original vinyl LP, it was supposedly truncated. This track, like the other live songs on Peach, came from the '71 Fillmore East shows. So Duane can still be heard. There are deluxe, expanded Live at the Fillmore issues where all the live tracks are included, for those interested.

Mountain Jam is one of those songs where you just sit back and marvel at the musicianship going on during it. You get Dickey on one channel, and Duane on the other. Does it get much better than that? Plus, the drummers really propel the whole thing along at an unbelievable pace. Some people complain about drum solos in concerts ( a staple during the 70's), but when the drummers are this good, I'll take them all day. Especially when you consider that they keep up the pace for over 33 min. The guitarists back off a bit and take a break.....but not the drummers. At roughly the 13 min mark, they put on an absolute drumming clinic.

I got to see the ABB several times during the 70's - 2000's, but never with Duane, sadly. Not once did I get to see them do Mountain Jam, but them's the breaks, right?

One Way Out is another live track left over from the Fillmore run, and if you guys were around back then, this one got a lot of FM airplay on the better rock stations. If it sounds a bit on the bluesy side, it is -- it was written by Elmore James. But if there was one band that can be said to have played the blues with love and reverence, I really think it was the ABB. They knew exactly what their local musical heritage was, and it was always handled with care. This again features Dickey on one channel, and Duane on the other.

Pretty much the same things can be said for Trouble No More, except this time it's a Muddy Waters tune.

Stand Back is a studio track, written by Greg as a blues lament that is timeless. The slide guitar work is again so good, that I can't tell if it's Dickey or Duane. Maybe one of you knows for sure?

Blue Sky is completely written and sung by Dickey, and was also another song from this album that (deservedly) got a ton of airplay in its day. It has some of the smoothest slide work on the album, and it's another one that I don't know if Duane plays on this or not. If he was gone by the time this got recorded, then I would say Dickey was a very capable and apt student of the slide. This song is almost tailor-made for a laid-back Sunday on a fine day.

Little Martha finishes the album, and it's the only song credited to Duane. For a long time, I considered it to just be an acoustic filler, but on the SACD it is finely mixed. If you turn it up, you can hear Duane's fingers slide on the frets. A master at his trade, and this is not filler at all. Matter of fact, I wish there was a longer version of it. It reminds me a bit of some of Page's acoustic work on LZ, but in a more laid-back, Southern style way (duh).

As far as availability goes, I see there's a grand total of ONE on Discogs for sale:

The Allman Brothers Band - Eat A Peach

Per usual, these great titles often go out of print too quickly, and we're forced to go on a treasure / scavenger hunt. C'est la vie, eh?

Your comments, feedback and corrections are welcome, as I don't profess to be an expert, or to know all the minutia of a particular recording.

Happy Sunday listening!

 

There was never a DVD-A for this album.

 

My bad. I’ve seen the blu ray for the Fillmore run out there, so probably assumed there was something similar for Peach.

 

A blu ray and a DVD-A are not the same thing.

 

Thanks, chief, I kind of know that.

 

Unfortunately for Eat A Peach I have only the Deluxe Edition from 2006: no surround mix there. That series of Deluxe Editions was very hit & miss on multichannel material.

 

I'm going to throw one up today too. But just one, not two. Too much work.

I sent Marc a list of a dozen or so I thought he might not have, and tried to get him to pick one, but he apparently doesn't like voting anymore than I do. However, he did verify that he only has two on that list, so I've got a bunch to choose from. I'm definitely more of a metal head than he is.

 

Thanks for the excellent review of Eat a Peach and subbing in for Mark. The long guitar solo on Blue Sky starts with Duane and ends with Dickie. For many years I thought it was the opposite but I learned that here on the forum. In my opinion the only time Dickie outshines Duane. But it’s kind a like which is prettier Mars or Venus?

 

We’re Here Because We’re Here


Studio album by Anathema
Released 4 June 2010
Studio Angel Studios, London, England, Propagation House, Cornwall, England
Genre Alternative rock progressive rock
Length 58:10
Label Kscope
Producer Vincent Cavanagh and Daniel Cavanagh

We're Here Because We're Here is the eighth album by the British rock band Anathema. It was released on 31 May 2010. The working title of the album was Horizons. The album was mixed by Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree.
Response from the critics was universally positive. The album was awarded "Prog Album of the Year" by Classic Rock magazine, who described it as "a flawless, life-affirming comeback and a gold-plated contender for album of the year".

Album Reviews
Allmusic
Angry Metal Guy
Prog Archives

Personnel

• Vincent Cavanagh — vocals, guitar
• Daniel Cavanagh — guitar, piano, keyboards, vocals
• Jamie Cavanagh — bass guitar
• John Douglas — percussion, drums, keyboards, guitars
• Lee Douglas — vocals
• Les Smith — keyboards

Other Contributors

• London Session Orchestra — Strings
• Jackie Shave — Orchestra Leader
• Dave Stewart — Orchestration, String Arrangements

Track listing
All songs written by Daniel Cavanagh, except where noted.
1. "Thin Air" D. Cavanagh, Vincent Cavanagh, John Douglas 5:59
2. "Summernight Horizon" 4:12
3. "Dreaming Light" 5:47
4. "Everything" 5:05
5. "Angels Walk Among Us (featuring Ville Valo)" 5:17
6. "Presence (featuring Stan Ambrose)" 2:58
7. "A Simple Mistake" 8:14
8. "Get Off Get Out" J. Douglas 5:01
9. "Universal" J. Douglas 7:19
10. "Hindsight" 8:10

------------------------------------------------------
Anathema were formed in Liverpool in 1990. Although they are often labeled as belonging to the doom metal genre, that moniker only applies to their growly voiced first album Serenades. By the time their seventh album A Natural Disaster was released in 2004 they had become a Floydesque progressive rock band and the vocals were much better. But then they lost their record label and didn’t make another studio album until after signing with Kscope. A six-year hiatus was broken in 2010 with the release of We’re Here Because We’re Here.

WHBYH commenced a new era for Anathema in two respects. First, their musical style had evolved still further into what might be called mope-prog-ambient-rock (just taking a stab at it). Besides bringing the piano in as a main instrument and female vocalist Lee Douglas as a permanent band member, there is also a string orchestra hanging about. Secondly, it was their first album to be released with a surround mix. Better still, they got labelmate Steven Wilson to do it.

The surround version is on a DVDA with both LPCM and DTS. It’s still in print, but it seems you’ll have to order from the UK:

Burning Shed
Amazon UK

Surround Mix by Steven Wilson
Thin Air
Starts with solo guitar in center channel, then Vincent’s vocals and the band kicks in with stereo mixing. Vocals echo from front to back. Back speakers are heavy with synth and background vocals. Swirling reverb at the end.

Summernight Horizon
Starts with piano solo in stereo, the Vincent enters in center channel, then band with Lee’s vocals in stereo. Rear speakers have band largely without vocals

Dreaming Light
Starts with piano a synth in stereo, the Vincent enters in center channel, then strings in surround. Bass and drums are then added in front, guitar with reverb in surround.

Everything
Starts with piano a synth in stereo, the Vincent enters in center channel, then Lee in stereo. In the stereo version, Danny and Lee are co-lead vocalists singing in unison. The surround mix makes it sound like Lee is backing Danny in a spatial sense. Then band arrives with mostly stereo imaging, but the back being a little guitar heavy.

Angels Walk Among Us
Starts with strings and guitar in surround. Then Vincent and Lee as coleads in the center. Guest vocalist Ville Valoj chimes a bit to the right as rest of the band starts in as well, with his vocals echoing front to back. The back becomes once again heavy on strings and guitar.

Presence
This short song is a continuation of Angels. Starts with organ in surround, guitar in stereo, and narrative from Stan Ambrose in center channel. Then Lee sings the Angels chorus.

A Simple Mistake
Starts with guitar and stereo and synth (or maybe slide guitar) is in surround. Vincent, bass, and drums come in on the center channel. Half way through, the guitar gets the center focus and the band moves into stereo, with keyboards heavy in back. Finishes with swirling surround.

Get Off Get Out
The song begins with a guitar solo that starts in the back and then moves forward. The band starts in stereo with reverbing guitar in the back. Vincent is in the center but with diminished volume. More swirling at end.

Universal
Starts with strings and bass drum in stereo, then Vincent in the middle. The back is silent until the strings are moved back about a minute in. Lee, bass, and more drums then come in stereo. Half way through a piano concerto takes over with piano in front and strings in surround. The band then comes back with drums in the center.

Hindsight
A swirling synthesizer starts with narrative from Karen Svenning in center channel. Band plays in stereo, with backing vocals and reverbing guitar in the back. More narrative finishes with the swirling synthesizer that never really stops. Very ethereal in surround.


One of my favorite albums. I had a couple Anathema albums before WHBWH, but I wasn’t a big fan before this album. I quickly acquired the rest of back catalog after that. Serenades I could do without, but the rest is all good to great. Anathema have released three other albums since WHBWH, all of which are available in surround.

WHBYH was my favorite album of 2010 and I liked it so much that I bought 10 CDs from burning shed and gave them away at Christmas. The Mediabook has the CD and the DVDA with hires stereo and the surround mix, and it's going for less than I bought those CDs for. It's a steal for 10 quid.

 

I'm not a massive fan of Anathema and don't know this album or mix (Weather Systems is the album I know), but bonus points for choosing a disc that is readily available at a regular price. I'll check back once my copy has arrived.