Street/ Marr remastering Smiths LPs

[Tingle3]

Don't know whether everyone knew ages ago, but I see Stephen Street (age 48 3/4 s wrote in his diary in December that he's been remastering Smiths records with Johnny Marr. Maybe this now means I'll be able to buy them with a clear conscience?

http://www.stephenstreet.net/diary.asp?change=yes&m=12

 

[Tingle3]

Blimey! And if they hadn't had the tapes "baked" the masters could've been lost for ever, and EVER. God. Imagine having the job of "baking" Smiths master tapes. You'd have to be very confident you were doing the right thing.

 

[Oso Blanco]

I hope that they have remastered not only the album tracks, but also every single b-side and unreleased track ... and that they will release them in the near future!

I'm normally not a friend of remastered music, because it often falls victim to the loudness war and sounds worse than the original. Not to mention that sometimes there serious editing errors (the latest Cure remasters are missing bits and pieces on certain songs, which ruins it completely for me).

But seeing Marr and Street doing the remastering themselves, I'm very confident that they will do a great job. I hope we won't have to wait too long for the remasteres to be released.

 

[Kewpie]

Remastering Smiths albums are already confirmed by Johnny Marr when The Sound of The Smiths was out.
In his official website he mentioned about it.

The Sound of The Smiths proved that we'll be rewarded by their effort.

 

[Oso Blanco]

Yes, we knew that Johnny Marr had supervised the remastering for The Sound Of The Smiths, but that he and Stephen Street did actually do the work themselves is news to me.

I think we are talking about two different processes here, as Stephen Street's diary entry is from December 2008, when The Sound Of The Smiths was already about to be released. I still don't have it, do the credits on that compilation say anything about who remastered the track?

 

[Tingle3]

Yes, two projects (not sure about different processes?). The Sound of The Smiths was released on 10th November. In Johnny's interview he says about further releases "I don't know, there's a Singles Box coming out...I'd like for all the regular albums to sound right. It's well overdue. I think the Albums are coming out but there's not a whole load of unreleased old material or anything". He also said that he worked with Frank Arkwright on the Sound of The Smiths.....no mention of Street.

Streets' diary entry was after Sound of the Smiths was released, if that's anything to go by, and it at least appears to suggest that remastering the albums was after the release of SoTS. It seems to me a bit odd to go remastering all the singles and b-sides separately from the albums though.

I don't know much about the technicalities of what went on, but what Marr and Street have said seem strangely at odds:

Street: "The other good thing was that the tapes sounded great and did not need major EQ-ing at all."

Marr: "Frank and I actually took a load of crappy EQ off it and tried to get it to sound like it did in the studio, which we've succeeded in doing"

 

[Oso Blanco]

Very strange, indeed.

 

[modrevolve]

On December 8th, he is saying that he just spent a few days remastering the recordings with Johnny..The Sound of the Smiths was prolly worked on sometime in the summertime so this must be a whole new project.

 

[Dothatagain?]

Oh, great news! Maybe the box-set is alive after all.

Thinking back,, TOTP2 showed a Smiths performance over Christmas, and that hinted that the entire back-catalogue would get a re-release at some point in 2009.

 

[Slip-In]

I think Warner UK made a very wise decision getting The Smiths involved in this remastering process, these reissues stand a very good chance with Johnny involved, I only hope they include many extras,