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THE BEATLES Yellow Submarine Songtrack (EMI) When I listen to Nirvana, The Smashing Pumpkins or even The Pixies I hear the influence of The Beatles, a group who constantly experimented, and reinvented themselves with each passing album they made. Over a period of eight short years they'd changed the sound of popular music. Using studio innovations; like experimentation with varying speeds on tape machines; splicing different tempo takes of the same song into one cohesive whole, and utilizing multi-track recording techniques to build up songs, adding new tracks of instrumentation in a way few had done before, The Beatles revolutionized the recording studio. It seems only fitting for studio technicians to now revolutionize The Beatles! With a complete remix of their 1968 Yellow Submarine movie soundtrack, or songdtrack as it's being called, you can now hear the classic songs on this record in a way they've never been heard before, with digitally remixed and remastered recordings. The overall sound is louder and crisper than the original Yellow Submarine LP. There is better separation of instruments and vocals and the stereo picture is more "natural". Instead of having the instruments hard, on say, the right channel and vocals hard on the left channel. The instruments and vocals are instead spread out across the stereo picture. Panning the music across both channels with vocals in the center, in most cases. Sound effects on the song 'Yellow Submarine' are more easily defined and Ringo's voice rings out in such a way it sends a shiver down your spine. The drum tracks on 'Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds' have been tweaked a bit, giving the song a more percussive nature. While Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band has had only minor, well not very noticeable remixes made. All the songs on this album appear in the Yellow Submarine movie and have been remixed primarily for the restored DVD and VHS releases of the film. At the time of making the movie soundtrack, The Beatles supplied four new songs 'All Together Now', 'All Too Much', 'Only A Northern Song' and 'Hey Bulldog'. The rest of the material comes from the group's back catalogue of records they'd made prior to Yellow Submarine. The original LP featured only the four new songs plus the previously released title track and 'All You Need Is Love'. The flip side of the record featured George Martin's music score. Martin's work does not appear on this version of the soundtrack. Yellow Submarine was produced by (Sir.) George Martin and the remixes have been made at Abbey Road studios. Remix engineers are; Peter Cobbin who is assisted by Paul Hicks and Mirek Stiles. Other remixes on the CD that send a shiver include; 'All Too Much', 'Only A Northern Song', 'Nowhere Man', 'Eleanor Rigby' (which sounds utterly gorgeous, hearing both the string section and vocals in stereo for the first time) and finally 'Think For Yourself'. Yellow Submarine comes as a nicely packaged picture disc with a colourful fold out sleeve. The only complaint I have actually is the lack of liner notes; there aren't any. I would have liked some details on how this amazing album was put together. This is a must collect CD, also available on vinyl. A splendid time is guaranteed for all! Micheil Reid mrgalaxy@free.net.nz Click on album image to see larger album cover 
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