The pa(s)t bytes

A series of EPs remixing the works of Steven Wilson 

A few days before Christmas 2010, with the house full of family, I got a wonderful email from Steven Wilson. I hardly knew Steven, met him via email last year when I did a few tracks for his No Man project with Tim Bownes (Tim appears on one of my Tuner Cds) asking if I would do a remix / reconstruction of a track from his forthcoming debut solo album.

He sent me a link to the tracks and said pick one—I did—but Steven replied that as it was the only track already remixed if I might choose another. I ended up picking three songs and he sent me his stems (a variety of elements, some sub mixed). For a muso guy like me this really did feel like Christmas!

I wondered if I could enlist some pals but felt I better ask before sharing any unreleased material.
..SW replied "I don't want the vocals removed or just flown over a one note rhythm track with the chord changes removed, which is the usual ‘dance’ mix approach. I'm not looking for that kind of mix at all - more like how you would reinterpret the song if you'd been producing it. And keep it twisted!"
Wow this is getting better with every email!

I decided to really go nuts and try a method that Markus and I had used on some of our Tuner records. . We basically superimpose a new meter. Not a poly-rhythm but a new tempo. . I don’t mean speeding up or slowing down the track, although I’ve done that as well- but our method involves something more like using quintuplets, or septuplet (or anything) to find a new rate of tempo. The basic math we use is to take the 8th note as a common denominators (I think most rock music these days really is in 8/8)- so for instance if the 4/4 song was at 100bpm I would divide that by 8 to determine the 8th note was worth 12.5. . then multiply this back by the new meter, let’s say 6/8 – and get 75. . make sense?

I had a gas doing this and quickly found so many great ideas developing, that I was dumb enough to set my sights on doing three completely different mixes of each of the three songs. . So I could surprise SW with 9 remixes. . As Andy Partridge once explained to me “What’s the use in having a top if you can’t go over it”

So after this long-winded introduction I’ll use the track ‘Salvager’ as an example--- Steven’s version was at 124bpm (although to my ears it travels in half time and is really more like 62bpm). I felt the lyrics were far apart in Steven's version so by slowing down the track I could bring the vocals closer together- I was not planning to move Steven’s vocals (although I moved many of the vocals on other remixes). Back to the math--- dividing 124bpm by 8 (remember the 8th note rules in rock) I found its value to be 15.5. . Then multiple by 5 and use 77.5 as my tempo in 5/4, --and multiply by 7 and get 108.5 . Next was back to sending my pals guides and sub mixes in these new tempos. Big thanks to all the musicians who helped: Markus Reuter, Roine Stolt, Jonas Ringold, Sirene, Pamelia Kurstin, Cenk Erolglu, Bill Munyon, Bart Lams and Deb.

Steven released a few of these mixes in various ways, EP, downloads etc and if you can sniff around you can find them. But now he says it’s OK to place them all here in one place.

And I hope the math might inspire a new way to tackle a track. And I’ll bet the real masters have known this for ages.