EMI, Matt & their Release Quality.

[hodgo]

Hi Richard

I'll start by saying that most recocrd companies especially the major's are a disgrace, they put out shoddy product at inflated prices, with more often than not terrible mastering that is too loud, compressed & with excessive noise reduction, this is long held view of mine.

On reading about the making of the "Singles Collection", along with comments from Michelle regarding the upcoming "The Greatest" CD, you both mentioned EMI's practice of using needle drops from existing albums on their EMI releases in the past, with Michelle inferring if it had been up to them (EMI) the new "Greatest" compilation would have been compiled this way. Needle drops should only ever be used as a last resort if no masters exist in the vaults, so this is really sickening to hear that it seems to be standard practice from EMI.

From your comments to me in the "Singles Collection" thread, it appears to me that you remaster with care only tinkering where needed unlike many modern day remasters, you also go back to the original master tapes and really seem to care about doing the best for Matt's legacy & giving us the fan's the best possible quality.

So my question is, How hard is it for Michelle & yourself to achieve this end, is it a constant battle with EMI against their shoddy practices and disregard of an artists catalogue, it is as you state in your singles collection comments, well known that EMI's vaults are well looked after and catalogued, so why do they insist on putting out needle drops, this practice really horrifies me and makes my opinion of Record companies already at an all time low go down even further.

[Rmoore]

Dear Graham,

I totally agree. The majors in general show very little pride in their work. Sony have been excellent in the past in particular areas like their Legacy series (put together in part by Jeff Jones who now runs the beatles Apple Corp) but the rest are patchy at best.

Don't get me wrong, some releases are well researched and sound great, but these are often outweighed by careless releases.

As for needle drops - I cannot understand why they are used either. Matt suffers more than most with these. For The Present/The Other Side Of The Stars for instance - this comes mainly from vinyl but i don't understand why, as the Masters are easy to find.

Others that have come from vinyl include:
Diana
All of a Sudden
weardly the last 15 seconds of Try to Remember
to name just a few all of which have perfectly good masters

And worse still 'The Impossible Dream' which has been from a vinyl dub since 1974! (Not any more!!!)

Be My Lady and Memory are also needledrops but the masters for these are in the Philippines somewhere and I haven't been able to trace them - even a recent EMI compilation in the Philippines has the songs from the same disc dubs! I don't even know where the dubs came from as Michele doesn't own a copy of the original compilation they appeared on. But even if I do eventually find them, the chances of EMI paying to get dubs are very low!

The reason for all of problems as far as masters are concerned is shear lazyness where people can't be bothered to put in any effort and just use the nearest source to hand.

It is standard practice at EMI (I can't comment on other labels) for tracks on a compilation to be pulled from existing CDs and whilst this is OK if the recordings are recent and good remasters, some tracks have not been transfered from original tapes since the early 80's - this is certainly true in the case of most of the songs that appeared on Heartbreakers which until I pulled the tapes recently had not been remastered since then.

How hard is it to achive getting master tapes? Well it certainly helps to have Michele in your corner, but I have to give a lot of credit to Steve Woof at EMI Gold for believing in what we want to do - It also helps of course that I am not a mega expensive engineer.

What many people don't understand is that putting these sets together is not cheap. Studio time is expensive so new transfers are avoided where possible and remixing VERY expensive. Put it this way I have mixed several unreleased recordings by Matt for future release which would never have been attempted had I not done them 'cheap' - Mixing a song at Abbey Road will cost around £1000 - £1500 PER TRACK - sometimes that's more than the whole budget of the disc! However Abbey Road will transfer the multitracks to digital for a fraction of the cost which makes it more cost effective for me to do it.

It has however taken me three years to get to the stage that EMI will let me loose on a whole project from their own masters, but who knows, if these discs are well received they might consider me for other projects. But i'm working from the outside so it's not an easy task.

My feeling is that EMI's archive is woefully underused considering it's heritage - If I can find as much unissued material for Matt that I
have, I suspect many other artists may well have similar amounts and there is still a lot of good material than has never been issued on CD either.