Rather chuffed with this one.

[James Perrett]

I don't usually post much of what I've been doing on here but I'm proud of this one...

Toyah has just announced the reissue of her gold selling album "Anthem". This was her big breakthrough album featuring some of her biggest hits. Last year I spent a fair bit of time transferring all the tapes for this project including all the two inch 24 track multitrack tapes. As part of the transfer process I usually supply very rough mixes of the contents of the multitrack tapes to show what is actually on them. Sometimes these rough mixes even end up on the finished product.

For this project I was also asked if I could do an instrumental mix of a couple of the songs - they had instrumentals for most of them but not these two. So I set myself the challenge of making these instrumentals sound as close to the original vocal mixes as possible and only using techniques that would have been used at the time. I like to think that I came close to achieving the target.

I went to the album announcement on Toyah's website just now and was amazed that one of these instrumental mixes "Jungles Of Jupiter" was the featured track! This was probably my favourite track on the album so it was a real pleasure to have a chance to play with it. If you want to hear for yourself just scroll halfway down the page at

https://toyahwillcox.com/anthem-reissue-announced/

Hope you enjoy it!

[Folderol]

Congratulations!

[Dave.P]

Sounding good and a fave for my wife - much smiling here after a horrible week!

[Drew Stephenson]

Nice work James!

[Eddy Deegan]

Compared to the versions I've heard elsewhere (and I've revisited a couple to make sure I'm not misremembering), the sample on the linked page sounds cleaner, crisper and somehow 'better'.

Well done that man!

[James Perrett]

Compared to the versions I've heard elsewhere (and I've revisited a couple to make sure I'm not misremembering), the sample on the linked page sounds cleaner, crisper and somehow 'better'.

Thanks for the kind words everyone. The mix came direct from the 30ips multitrack tape with the minimum of processing needed to get the sound that I was looking for. I was using the 30ips stereo master of the vocal version as a reference. I would have to say that there may be a slight improvement in clarity compared to the reference thanks to one less tape generation but the difference is fairly subtle so you may find that the vocal version is better on this release too.

Of course Nick Watson at Fluid Mastering added a little mastering magic although I don't think he massively changed the sound on this one - he just made things gel slightly better.

[Ben Asaro]

Great news, James! Congrats!!

[awjoe]

Yes, good work. That's a lovely piece. (And seriously revises the impression I had of her after seeing a couple 'Sunday Lunch' videos!)

[James Perrett]

Yes, good work. That's a lovely piece. (And seriously revises the impression I had of her after seeing a couple 'Sunday Lunch' videos!)

If you want to hear the original vocal version then this is the best I could find on Youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaYWN0pXcCY

though I'm sure that Nick's remastered version on the new box set will sound vastly better.

[awjoe]

Ah, good - an A/B. I'll listen through monitors. And headphones.

[awjoe]

It's an unfair comparison because of the added vocal and Youtube voodoo on the track, but yours sounds better, more open, fuller.

Not related to the mix, but the repeating segment of the tune that I call the holding pattern could have been a backing for Bowie.

The other interesting thing is that I've listened to it a handful of times now, and I quite like it.

[Drew Stephenson]

I'd never heard of the track before but I also definitely got a 'Bowie' vibe from it.

[James Perrett]

I think she's a bit of a Bowie fan. He was her specialist subject when she did Celebrity Mastermind a few years ago and there are other clues to her love of Bowie on the tapes. She also married one of Bowie's guitarists .

[Martin Walker]

I'm late to this topic, but a belated well done from me too James!

[James Perrett]

I see that Toyah is going to be doing a live video talking about this song on Tuesday at 6pm. Go to

https://fb.me/e/2zbGQks34

for more information.

[RichardT]

I'm late to this topic, but a belated well done from me too James!

Ditto James, great result!

[Tim Gillett]

In the first seconds of the sample track (in the flute intro) the first thing I heard was a steady hum tone around 150 Hz. Once the other instruments come in, it's masked. RX Dehum at 151 Hz tamed it pretty well.

[Arpangel]

I like her, her spirit, but her music has always passed me by, it had a bit too much "Lloyd Webber" musical style to it to me, "consciously" up beat and energetic, not my cup of tea, she’s a very interesting person though, talented, with some interesting ideas.
Your track James, much better mix overall, ignoring vocal comparison, the original sounds all over the place, very odd mix, just not as good to me, yours is much more cohesive.

[James Perrett]

Your track James, much better mix overall, ignoring vocal comparison, the original sounds all over the place, very odd mix, just not as good to me, yours is much more cohesive.

Interesting you say that Tony because my aim was to get as close to the original as I could with the tools I had available. However, the original that I was working towards was the original master tape so I'd guess that a fair bit was lost in translation between the master tape and the versions currently on the streaming services. The new releases all come from my master tape transfers so will certainly be better.

[Arpangel]

Your track James, much better mix overall, ignoring vocal comparison, the original sounds all over the place, very odd mix, just not as good to me, yours is much more cohesive.

Interesting you say that Tony because my aim was to get as close to the original as I could with the tools I had available. However, the original that I was working towards was the original master tape so I'd guess that a fair bit was lost in translation between the master tape and the versions currently on the streaming services. The new releases all come from my master tape transfers so will certainly be better.

The first thing I noticed was the repeating guitar line, it’s so recessed on the original record, it stands out more on yours.