Giles Martin

I was correct.

Over the first chunk of this episode, we break down the Rubber Soul box, the new Giles Martin-Sam Ockel mix, the all-analog masters of the mono mix and the original US stereo version, and the two-record collection of sessions, demos, and studio chatter.

And Gotti and I grew up listening to the American version of Rubber Soul, with I've Just Seen a Face and It's Only Love, carried over from the British Help album, to kick off each side.

Does he prefer that sequence or the standard British one that includes Drive My Car, Nowhere Man, What Goes On, and If I Needed Someone? Is one of those one of the worst Beatles songs ever recorded? Where does Phil stand on Run For Your Life? Which Rubber Soul song is Phil's favorite Beatles song of all? We also sift through the outtakes, including a cool early version of Norwegian Wood, and weigh the merit of the previously unreleased John Lennon demo, Little Girl.

Yes, I did.

Three of the five are basically just straight ahead versions of rubber salt.

So you have the new Giles Martin remix of it where, you know, it's like they've they've separated everything using the Peter Jackson digital technology and remixed it with sort of a modern stereo.

you know sensibilities so you don't have everything on one side which they did in the 87 george martin did that in 87 for the these also so that's like in a way the main attraction because like here's your bright sounding rubber soul and then there's like the two analog Dicks on there are the mono, which was already already came out in the mono box and was released separately in mono, though those things are very expensive to get now.

And also, you know, I think we've also become accustomed to getting these like impeccable audio quality reissues from the Beatles.

And they've got Giles Martin, the son of George Martin at the helm, like basically taking his father's work and elevating it with today's technology.

Yes.

Yeah, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

Because you kind of have to create it.

Almost the way I heard Giles Martin, who's the son of George Martin, the Beatles' legendary producer, talk about the recent reissue of Rubber Soul.

Giles Martin's remastering of a lot of the Beatles' catalog is, of course, like anything in this day and age, this hot-button point of contention where purists say one thing, people just enjoying it say nothing, they're just enjoying it.

But there's a really great podcast that I'll link to in the podcast notes where he talks about the process of how he does what he does.

And a lot of it is simply taking, they're not rerecording instruments, not rerecording new vocals or tracks.

Um, so, uh, this is, it's like a thing, you know, they put out to like get people to like, you know, uh, buy or stream a Beatles album again and have something to talk about.

Uh, it is a very bold remix from, uh, uh, Giles Martin, George Martin's son, uh, who's kind of a polarizing figure in the world of the Beatles because some people love his mixes and some people hate him.

Um, and, uh, this is an album that means a lot to me because, uh, Our mother once handed me this LP when I was a kid and said, basically, listen to this.

It's good music.

Yeah, this is going straight on.

In fact, I got Rubber Soul, the box set, because Giles Martin was in a couple of weeks ago.

I

saw he was in.

Yes.

I'm friends with Giles Martin, son of George, and he showed me some sets, images the other day, where they'd recreated Studio 2.

So Studio 2 at Abbey Road is where I think 192 Beatles songs were recorded, something like that.

Yeah.

But

remember this happened with Giles Martin when he did the Beatles remixes for that Vegas run of love.

there were people that were that said it was heresy i mean there's always going to be that but you touched on something really important which i think is it's a spectrum you know you've got the text prompt that generates a little funny song that's never going to get up on spotify it's just something i'm sending to you for your birthday as you mentioned something like that but then you know we've got the ai generated and the ai assisted and something bobby's pointed out many times is Where is that spectrum? Like if I used it for mastering or stem separation or Adobe Atmos mix, or I corrected something, maybe I added a horn section, whatever it is, there's so many levels across that spectrum of AI.

It's not just a blanket thing that AI is good or bad.

The Yellow Submarine song track mixes are more modern sounding, and they stand up very well.

To my ears, they're just as enjoyable as the later remixes by Giles Martin.

The Giles Martin remix came out on the Super Deluxe edition of Sgt Pepper in 2017.

I enjoy both of these remixes with a little help from my friends.

Relative to the original stereo mix, the main differences with the Yellow Submarine song track mix are that all the vocals are centred, the bass is centred, and the piano and rhythm guitar are placed left and right rather than centred.

I say she wanted me

And another nice thing Giles does here is it starts with separation.

You hear the guitar intro on only one side, but then John's vocal comes in in the middle, and that's what's so neat.

It's a nod to his dad's original mix.

Isn't it good, Norwegian wood?

It's almost like a discordant note, like it's a seventh or some kind of a weird note.

I do have a criticism with Giles.

This is the one, this is my one criticism of these new mixes.