|
|
|
May 25, 2006 May 21, 2006
Those who read this space often probably know of my love for the music of composer Jerry Goldsmith, who scored hundreds of movies before his death in 2004. He is one of the only composers whose scores--for clunkers like Baby, Under Fire, Legend, The Swarm, Capricorn One, The Russia House, and many others--are remembered more than the movies for which they were written. Goldsmith's daughter Carrie has started a biography of her father, a preview of which is now online.
May 10, 2006
Five stars go to the deluxe re-releases of several landmark albums in the Depeche Mode back catalog... I picked up the CD/SACD+DVD sets for Violator and Speak and Spell and have not been able to stop listening to the sparkling 5.1 remixes on the SACD layer of disc 1 of both sets. (Music for the Masses is also available; sadly, these sets are only UK imports sold at nasty import prices.)
Like the best SACD re-releases, the 5.1 mixes actually sound better than the original albums; this is because the individual multi-track elements were extracted at high resolution from the multi-track tapes without ever going through the second generation of mixing and processing that would have led to the first album mix. I'm not disparaging the amazing analog output stage of classic albums, but taking the individual elements from original analog tapes and mixing them digitally gives you the best of both worlds. Furthermore, the additional bit depth allowed by the SACD format (and the DTS 5.1 mixes of the same program on the DVDs) makes the mixes jump out of the speakers with new life. In particular, "Just Can't Get Enough" is something of a revelation, with amazing, swirling, meaty analog synthesizers in all five speakers that sound like they were recorded yesterday. (I've also felt that the previous CD remasters done of this song were fuzzy and missing any dynamic breathing room.) Likewise, the 5.1 version of "Waiting for the Night" on Violator is surround mixing at its absolute finest. May 01, 2006
I've maintained for some time now that The Colbert Report is far superior to The Daily Show in almost every regard ... But the proof has now arrived in the form of Colbert actually having the balls to deliver his faux-O'Reilly routine to the president himself, who was reportedly not amused.
|
