Monthly Archives: July 2018

How David Bowie’s Biggest ‘Disappointment’ Became a Posthumous, Reworked Album

Born from David Bowie’s desire to re-record the 1987 LP that he called “a bitter disappointment,” the seeds of this new reimagining were first sown in 2008 when Bowie asked producer/engineer @mariojmcnulty to remix the track ‘Time Will Crawl’ and record new drums with longtime drummer Sterling Campbell along with strings at Electric Lady Studios. The track was issued on the iSelect compilation to much acclaim and, in the notes for that record, David remarked ‘Oh, to redo the rest of that album.’ ⚡️ In early January of this year, McNulty and musicians again entered New York’s Electric Lady Studios to fulfill Bowie’s wish to remake “Never Let Me Down,” which now features a guest appearance by Laurie Anderson on “Shining Star (Makin’ My Love).” The 2018 reworking also boasts “newly ‘remixed’ artwork reflecting the album’s subject matter and features unseen images from the original cover photographic session from the archive of Greg Gorman. ⚡️ We love and miss you, David ⚡️

Read more about it on Rolling Stone here.

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Stevie Wonder and TONTO: The Synth Orchestra and Production Duo Behind His Pivotal Albums

“The most undersold part of Stevie’s legacy may be the collaboration with two producers, Robert Margouleff and Malcolm Cecil, and the pair’s massive synthesizer, TONTO (The Original New Timbral Orchestra).”

“With an instrument like TONTO you can’t write a line ahead of time, because until you get the sound up, you don’t know how it’s going to react with the other sounds. Everything was done sort of jazz fashion, it was all head arrangements… sometimes some of the lines would be suggested. That horn line [from “Superstition] I was singing it… and then Stevie started playing it. That was how we worked.”

Read the full article here.

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