Monday, November 22, 2010

Pink Floyd: Montreux 1970 (Ex Aud) FLAC

DONE - The newest release from Harvested!
Too Late Cover
PINK FLOYD
The Montreux 40th Anniversary Series
Too Late For Mind Expanding (HRV CDR 036)

Montreux Casino, 21Nov70

Mastertape by Victor
Remastering by MOB
Quality Control by EdP
Artwork by RonToon
Produced by Harvested Records

Disc One
1. Astronomy Domine
2. Fat Old Sun
3. Cymbaline
4. Atom Heart Mother
5. Embryo

Disc Two
1. Green Is The Colour
2. Careful With That Axe, Eugene
3. Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun
4. A Saucerful Of Secrets
5. Just Another Twelve Bar
6. More Blues

Sources:
Victor's 2009 transfer: 2 x Sennheiser MD-421 > Uher 4200 reel recorded at 19 ips > Audio CD > EAC > FLAC
"The Good" recorder: unknown gen > Scotch Reel > DAT(0) > WAV@48Khz > Speed & Pitch Correction > FLAC@48Khz

It was 40 years ago today !
This new Harvested release provides the first of the two Montreux 1970 concerts in the most complete form and with the best possible quality. The main source was Victor's raw master transfer already shared last year. The ending part of Green Is The Colour and the following track Careful With That Axe Eugene, not present on Victor's master, were taken from "The Good" recorder that surfaced some years ago on "The Good... The Bad" RoIO ref. FA033.

Victor's raw transfer shared in November 2009 was first thought to be from the second concert, mainly because it matched "The Good... The Bad" RoIO that was labelled from 22Nov70. However, based on Victor's recollections of the two shows and some pictures from his reels, it now appears that the present show with the two "blues" encores is actually from 21Nov70 (this show ended late, forcing the band to finish with a quiet blues). The second concert was added at the last minute for the next afternoon at 2.30pm (Roger sarcastically said "good morning" to the audience) and at this second show the encore was Interstellar Overdrive. But that's for our next release... ;-)

Victor's master is a superb audience recording and a compilation cassette he did in the past from both concerts was copied by someone and ended up on the 1995 "Smoking Blues" bootleg ("Smoking Blues" is therefore at least 1st or 2nd gen, and even with that lineage some people thought it was from soundboard or from some EMI acetates that are most probably pure legend). Embryo, Just Another Twelve Bar and More Blues from "Smoking Blues" are from 21Nov70, but the versions presented here are upgrades, coming directly from the master and with an uncut More Blues (fading out on "Smoking Blues").

Despite its fantastic quality, Victor's master had some flaws that needed to be corrected. The speed was not consistent throughout the show: for some tracks, speed was absolutely perfect, while for others speed gradually slowed down (probably an "end of reel" effect during the play-back). Fat Old Sun, Atom Heart Mother and A Saucerful Of Secrets suffered from that slowing-down phenomenon and speed was corrected for these three songs. There were some channel loss and levels fluctuations, the most obvious being during the first verse of Fat Old Sun. These were repaired. There were also drop-outs here and there, especially during the first 2 minutes of Cymbaline (one drop-out every 862ms, thus 140 drop-outs were manually corrected one by one in order to fully restore these first minutes of Cymbaline). The right channel became slightly weaker during Set The Controls and A Saucerful Of Secrets, where more drop-outs were present on that channel. These flaws were attenuated as much as possible. Last but not least, there were several cuts on the master: the very first chord of Fat old Sun was missing and has been restored, a short cut during Mother Fore (AHM) was carefully patched, and the central part of Celestial Voices (ASOS) that was missing due to a tape flip, was restored from another show in order to save the continuity and progression to the climax of the song.

The end of Green Is The Colour, Careful With That Axe Eugene and the first 30 seconds of Set The Controls were taken from "The Good" source. A lot of work was needed in order to restore that part, because of abrupt speed fluctuations during Careful, and also because "The Good... The Bad" RoIO comes from a "tweaked" tape: the original audio capture is pure mono (there is absolutely no stereo separation between the instruments), but someone found funny to play with the faders during the analog transfer, introducing artificial panning in order to fake stereo effects (these tricks were clearly done during an analog mixing of the recording, not in the digital world). Speed was corrected segment by segment, and levels were carefully adjusted in order to restore the original music as it was on the master, i.e. in the centre of the stereo image, before the artificial panning ruining most parts of "The Good... The Bad".

So there you are. The 21Nov70 Montreux concert in all its glory !
This is a rare case where all the stars were aligned: we have the best audience recording from that era, and at the same time the Floyd performance was really magic that night. All five songs of CD1 were delivered with fire and passion (including the most powerful rendition of Funky Dung ever recorded). And on CD2, the first part of A Saucerful Of Secrets (Something Else) shows the Floyd sounding like King Crimson would sound three years later. Another highlight of CD2 is Just Another Twelve Bar: even if not too interesting from a musical point of view, this song is a true rarity in Pink Floyd live repertoire (even if it's mainly based on the bass riff from Biding My Time).
Enjoy !
MOB (November 21, 2010)
Harvested Records

rar files packed with a (winrar) recovery record -
links require copy and paste to browser
fileserve.com:
http://www.fileserve.com/file/G94BDJP
http://www.fileserve.com/file/XJ2Vuck
http://www.fileserve.com/file/SPRukUF
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http://www.fileserve.com/file/FWbqx8k
http://www.fileserve.com/file/gaequRW
http://www.fileserve.com/file/6TTw9bN
http://www.fileserve.com/file/69cuksu

please use the referral link BELOW if you wish to become a Fileserve premium user
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Comments welcome.

28 comments:

Anonymous said...

very cool. looking forward to this MOB remaster. Thanks in advance! =D

Anonymous said...

... and I thought you were going to take it easy for a while?

Thank you.

Anything put out by the Harvested team is always top notch.

Anonymous said...

... great, I'm waiting ...

Olaf

Anonymous said...

excited just to have read this, it seems there is just no end to the pink floyd saga and to the ends you lovely collectors will go to create a complete new work of art with your efforts thank you

Anonymous said...

Hi Dave

Though I own all the Montreux shows in a great variety I'm curious to find out if that release keeps its promise. Knowing Harvested and you I'm very confident. Thanks a lot.
Thomas

Anonymous said...

for me, megaup file #6 downloads partially and quits. all other files downloaded flawlessly. anyone else?

Anonymous said...

superb sound quality!
thanks Dave!

Anonymous said...

Rapidshare file #6 downloaded really quick. =D
Solved my mega #6 issue. Thanks Dave!

Anonymous said...

Hi Dave,

Sounds heavenly!

I'm starting my N-th Floyd Maniac Period thanks to you!

Best,

Lino

Anonymous said...

Hi Dave,

thank you, thank you, thank you!

This release sounds fantastic, it's a pleasure to listen to.

Thanks for your efforts,
Olaf
(Germany)

Unknown said...

It was Megauploads #5 that I got stuck on. I also got it from Rapidshare. What I've heard so far is truly amazing.

Anonymous said...

Another Quality posting from QualityBootz. Thanks for the Pink Floyd.

Maurotikus said...

I have just discovered your blog, man, you're my new HERO!

Thank you very much for your effort sharing all this music.

Anonymous said...

Every time I paste one of the Megaupload links in and try to download, it sends me to the free user page (even though I got a premium account yesterday), and it wants me to type in the four characters and then wait 45 seconds. I can use other blogsite's MU links and they go straight to download. But not these. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Anonymous said...

incredible sounding show - better than some soundboards!

thank you

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much, Dave. Sounds really great!

kike said...

It sounds really great. 40 years ago, dude, sounds fuckin' great.
so thank you Dave for the Floyd.
best, K.

Stadium Studios said...

NO PROBLEMS with Fileserve!!!

Great post!

Just sorry I never got to see Floyd man. Maybe I will check out the Australian Floyd sometime. They are supposed to be pretty good.

I have seen Strutter (Kiss cover band)and Atomic Punks (DLR ear VH cover band) when I was living in LA. Both really really cool.

Of course... I have seen Kiss and DLR VH for real.

Anonymous said...

This is outstanding, the best quality ever of this fantastic concert. Thank you so much, Dave.

Regards
Thomas

Anonymous said...

Amazing quality! I've not come across a Harvested release that isn't the definitive version.

Drachentoter

Anonymous said...

please, the 5th lnk on megaupload and protector is wrong, does not works, is boken, buet thanks for this one, is excelent, one of the best i ´ve heard ever, great, thnaks Dave

Anonymous said...

try Rapidshare... even if you don't have an account. Worked for me! Worked for Beth! Worked for Randy! And it worked FAST too! Hope it works for you! =D

Mr Y said...

Utterly amazing, thank you very much.

Anonymous said...

holy sound quality!
thanks for this and everything else
clicks for you!

Anonymous said...

there is a mistake... Syd Barrett was no more on the band by 1970...

Anonymous said...

The mistake you can see ("Sid" Barrett listed) comes from the advertising poster at the time of the festival. This poster is simply reproduced on the HRV artwork.

Anonymous said...

cant thank you and the tapers of concerts enough. keep up the great work.

Unknown said...

Wow! 1970 was the best period for Floyd live, and this performance is superb! I had no problems downloading it or reassembling it. I've always thought the BBC live boots (AKA Rhapsody in Pink, Libest Spacement Monitor etc) were the best document of the band at this time - but this is a better performance, and I MUCH prefer Atom Heart Mother as it is here, shorter and with no brass band and choir. It's a shame that the version of Axe is not such good quality, but there are plenty of other versions of it out there to choose from.
Thankyou, Thankyou, Thankyou!