New York: Sunday 8th October saw David Bowie Producer Tony Visconti share Esquire magazine’s online review of ‘A New Career In A New Town’, the recently released retrospective box set of Bowie album’s.
Tony wrote on his Facebook timeline… ‘A very balanced article by Jeff Slate about the new Bowie boxset, although I disagree with someone’s fanciful opinion that Low was a ‘happy accident.’ Far from it. It was meticulously crafted from a number of risky experiments, some of which ended up on the ‘cutting room floor’ as they say in the film biz. My friend Carlos Alomar says some great things here. Have an nice Sunday read’
Link to Esquire article here
Some purchasers of the box set believe the remix of Low is a bit bass heavy, others love the modernising of the sound. Meanwhile a glitch in the original master of album track ‘Heroes’ has seen the record label describing the repair work required to cover the drop in volume (at about 2:50 in the track). Many think it’s unacceptable and have asked for their money back. Other fans have gone on record to say they have received a a discount from Amazon because of the issue. Others wonder if the master tape is showing signs of deterioration as previous releases didn’t contain the anomaly.
Parlophone issued this statement:
Concerning ‘Heroes’ what fans are hearing is not a level drop. This is, through mastering, an attempt to resolve an issue that exists on the original master tape.
On the flat unmastered transfer, there was a temporary loss of energy on the track just before 2.50. During the album mastering some high-frequency automation (in the region of +- 6dB) has been added in order to compensate for this. So to clarify, there is not a drop in volume, there is a high frequency boost for a couple of seconds at the loss of energy which then returns to normal and the track continues to the end at a level consistent to the start.
As the co-producer of ‘Heroes’ Tony Visconti, was both fully involved and approved the remastering of this and all original albums within the set
The full statement and further discussion at ‘Super Deluxe Edition’ is reported here
As well as the original the set also contain’s a complete remix of ‘Lodger’, the third album in the ‘Berlin Trilogy’ (Originally recorded and mixed in Switzerland/New York). It’s common knowledge that Bowie and Visconti weren’t satisfied with the original mix. David heard and approved some of Tony’s remix before his passing