All you need is Live

At the risk of blaspheming the father, the son and the holy ghosts, I was disappointed by the "new" Beatles album, Love. Maybe it's not surprising given that it was built primarily as a Cirque du Soleil backing track rather than a self-standing album, but the mixes are so conservative that, with a few lovely and promising exceptions (like "Sun King" played backward fading into the intro of "Something") there's nothing revelatory or insightful about it, which is what a great remix should be. Love just feels less interesting than it ought to given the interestingness of the elements the Martins had to work with. It's as if they were asked to dj rather than produce. (Admittedly a vanishingly fine line these days.)

But maybe the richness of the elements was actually part of the problem. So many Beatles songs, even individual parts from songs, are so familiar and interesting that you can't help hearing echoes of the original version, and all those echoes mixed together may make a mess in the mind of the listener. At a certain point, interesting + interesting ≠ more interesting, but confusion. (Kind of like what happened to the show Lost.)

But why not try it yourself and see? A demo version of Live, the best music-mixing-mashing-making software in the world, is available here for free. You can spend months digging into its creative possibilities, but you can also start making interesting mixes of your own pretty quickly. Of course, Live won't make you a great composer/producer/arranger/musician like Sirs George, Paul et al., but it can help you to become a more creative dj. And we're all dj's now.

Comments

[Stan Lee]

In the words of well known Beatles enthusiast Mr Noel Gallagher, "It's a pointless exercise."

[Jeffre Jackson]

Paul apparently said that he thought the result was too conservative. I wonder if perhaps he's the only one who might have done something interesting with it because he may be the only one who can still hear other possibilities in the songs.

[Dino]

There are few remix assignments that could be as daunting as fucking with the Beatles. But it can be done. Did you ever hear any of the Blue Note remix projects? Classic, very recognizable music twisted and morphed with new technology to create something fresh, exciting, and interesting.

In this case it's not a question of too conservative or taking too much of a departure; it's either good, or not so good. A version that stays close to the original could still be great as long as there is just that little something that makes it work!

[Ben]

(Putting aside the obvious bit about The Beatles drip feeding their audience to keep the cash flow sweet these days...)

I would have agreed with you 100% had I not heard a documentary about the album on Radio 2 over Christmas. In it Paul, Martin Snr and Martin Jnr went through various songs and picked out new / heightened bits.

For example, on the original Lady Madonna Paul asked his mate Ronnie Scott to play a Sax solo. When the song was released Ronnie complained to Paul that he couldn't hear his solo. It was in the song, it was just "buried" in the mix. If you listen very carefully at the end, you can hear it.

On the Love album they were able to pull that bit out again. If you listen a little less carefully, but still carefully, at the end you can hear it.

I also think you need to listen to the album in one long session on your headphones.

But it could have been better. True.

[Jeffre Jackson]

Oh yes, there certainly are some differences between Love and the original versions. Not the least of which is that you can hear some of the parts more clearly than in the originals because they remastered from the original masters (or something like that.) But as you say, you have to listen closely to catch even those. Listening to Love, I almost never felt I was getting a new perspective on the songs, that they were being put into a new context so that I could hear something new and interesting about them.

[Culture is King]

C'mon guys ... it's not that bad! ;)

I quite like it.

The Octopus's Garden intro (alone) rocks. And I've noticed it gets better with volume - to appreciate the intricate (re)arrangements.