One effort that does feel fully integrated is Mark-Anthony Turnage's Scorched with John Scofield, Peter Erskine and John Patitucci. But, like putting a sitar in a pop tune, or adding strings to a rock anthem, they are just arrangements, and it's not really fusion, until a new form emerges from the elemental mixture. There are some great successes: Emerson, Lake & Palmer obviously, Rick Wakeman, and a personal favourite, Caravan who used the New Symphonia superbly to stratify the climax to "For Richard." I'd add Deep Purple's unsophisticated, but quite endearingly beautiful, early efforts on their 1969 Concerto for Group and Orchestra, which in parts used the rock group to augment the orchestra, rather than the more typical other way round. Bringing together modern and classical, amplified and acoustic instrumentation, must be the hardest fusion to accomplish where you don't just end up with band with orchestra, or Rondò Veneziano. That said, if you already have the 2009 Sony release, then you already have this music, and if you don't, are you mad? This is only awesome made audible, more so by the great feat of marrying disparate musics. Set the music free, their vibrations to find new ears in augmented reality. If they're doing nothing with it, then it would be very nice indeed if they would please share the original track recordings with people who will, and NOT JUST THE FINAL MASTER TAPE, which is like asking a brain surgeon to operate on a brick. There are very skilled experts queuing up to do it, but it would help music labels like Talking Elephant, who (re)produced this version, and are genuinely passionate about the music and its legacy, if Sony would be so kind to slightly remove their talons from the flesh of some of the greatest music ever made. So, a remastering it isn't, but that doesn't mean it's off the agenda. Wanting to check them from another angle, I spun them through 90 degrees, as you do, to stand abreast, next to one another, and suddenly it was as if twin sister phoenixes had burst forth, vertiginously souring into the Nethersphere, screeching their eldritch caw, drawn from the infernal lungs of Tartarus. A bit-by-bit comparison confirmed it, these two were of the same spawn. Frilly twin horizons, spread out against the sky, like a patient etherized upon a table, to coin an expression. So what is this CD? Answer: it's the exact same, level-for-level digital copy as Sony (né Columbia)'s previous releaseslapping the audio files into your favourite audio comparison remastering detection software, and positioning the track profiles in parallel, it's immediately obvious: they are identical. Well, not as much as many Mahavishnu fans had hoped rumours of a long awaited and much needed remastering of this legendary album, making the rounds of the mailing lists were alas, premature. Well, there's not much to say about the new release of Apocalypse.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |