Welcome back to A-Sides, B-Sides and Seasides.
I pulled this album out during a time when I was learning to master my own tracks. I made the mistake of listening to it through Beats Audio headphones. The headphones are intentionally bass heavy. It was a disastrous and muddy listen. This is in no way commentary on the production or mix of this genius work. When it was released in May of 1992, I doubt that anyone could have known that the loudness war was about to begin; arguably, only a month later with Faith No More's 'Angeldust', another great album that had some unfortunate unintentional consequences. Faith No More couldn't have predicted it would result in bands like Linkin Park and a whole slew of what became the sub-par version of Faith No More's sound that became known as Nu-Metal.
Another byproduct of the release was the subsequent "Loudness War". If you'd like to know more about this, go to the Googles and read until you're blue. I'm not going to write a dissertation here. Let's just skip all of the preaching and going through the five steps of mourning and arrive at the acceptance... It's how we listen to music, now.
Back to the problem, at hand...
About four songs in, I had had enough of listening to the album on my Beats Audios. As a comparison, I plunked on my open back Shure SRH1840's, a nice and incredibly clean set of studio monitoring headphones. I noticed that there was still too much bass. Not having the source tapes, I simply adjusted some levels. I reduced the bass and ran several of the lower bands through some parallel compression. I rolled off the low end at about 38hz. I boosted the mid and widened the stereo a bit. I also brought up the high end and killed some of the highest signal. It resulted in pulling out some of the guitar nuances. Here is a quick video showing a side by side of the first song, 'Against Nature'. I really love the Bickers' guitar and Francolini's drums, especially on the high end. Franco's tom, snare, and intricate cymbal work get a great boost, and the harmonics and intricacies of the guitar really come to the fore.
Let me know what you think. I know there is a bit of white noise here and there. A curse of some of the boosts without the masters. I chucked on a huge chunk of related b-sides with some tweaking, as well.
Here you are; Levitation's 'Need For Not'. The Mock Remaster.
| Against Nature (Remastered) |
| World Around (Remastered) |
| Hangnail (Remastered) |
| Resist (Remastered) |
| Arcs of Light and Dew (Remastered) |
| Pieces of Mary (Remastered) |
| Smile (Remastered) |
| Embedded (Remastered) |
| Coterie (Remastered) |
| Nadine (Remastered) |
| Smile (Coppelia Version Remastered) |
| Paid In Kind (Remastered) |
| Rosemary Jones (Remastered) |
| Firefly (Remastered) |
| Attached (Remastered) |
| Bedlam (Remastered) |
| It's Time (Remastered) |
| Squirrel (Remastered) |
| Jay (Remastered) |
| Usher (Remastered) |
| Cloud Shine (Remastered) |
| Mantra (Remastered) |
Link available in comments High Quality VBR mp3 |
