During the course of this project a lot of good discussion about EQ has gone back and forth between this blog and The Power Of Independent Trucking.
With 15 singles down and 5 more to go, there's a total of 69 songs so far in Recycle, and my friend Bruce has done the audio transfer on all but one song - the remix of Paradise, which was done by our friend Mr. Analog Loyalist over at TPOIT. I think Bruce has done a stellar job, but he himself says in hindsight he would approach EQing the tracks differently, matching everything to the warmth of the vinyl tracks as opposed to the muddiness of Substance.
While Bruce has preserved everything as it was originally released, TPOIT has respectfully stepped forward and offered his own fresh take on the two 1987 re-recordings included with Touched By The Hand Of God, along with two possible explanations for why the originals sound so off:
Idle, restless speculation #1: They were in a rush to prepare Substance and caught [Anthony H. Wilson] off-guard when going into the studio in May 1987 to re-record these, so the resulting tracks were never properly mastered in the first place. They sound flat, lifeless enough that this could be a very real possibility.
Idle, restless speculation #2: Having just come off the Hague all-digital True Faith/1963 sessions, the band themselves recorded all-digitally as well (proof? None.) and didn't get the EQ dialed in just right. Perhaps the monitors they were using were abnormally brittle-sounding and mixing to those means the resulting product is lifeless everywhere else?
So, for those of you who'd like to hear them, download this [Link removed 20 November 2012] (24 MB).
This version of Temptation and the non-dub '87 re-recording of Confusion will appear in this blog later, in a bundle of tracks from '86-'87 to sit alongside Brotherhood.
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