Paradise: 1982 Remastered

A landmark in corrective mastering. Essential listening for fans of early 80s art-rock. Track down the digital transfer of the Japanese "Ghost Cut" if you can; avoid the 1981 original unless you are a historical preservationist with a tolerance for pain.

In the vast and often shadowy history of recorded music, the term "remaster" is typically associated with digital-era cleanup—the removal of tape hiss, the boosting of bass for car stereos, or the loudness war compression of the late 1990s. But every so often, a remaster emerges not just from a change in format, but from a change in vision . Such is the case with the enigmatic 1982 remaster of the album Paradise . Paradise 1982 Remastered

Pressed at a notoriously inconsistent plant in the American Midwest, the first run of Paradise was plagued with problems. High-frequency distortion marred the delicate acoustic guitar arpeggios of the opening track, "Garden of Earthly Things." More egregiously, a phase issue on the B-side caused the bass guitar to virtually disappear when the record was played in mono—a death sentence for radio play at the time. Reviewers were kind but confused, noting that the songwriting was sharp but the "sonic landscape felt like a photocopy of a photograph." Just six months after the original pressing, the band and their producer, the notoriously meticulous Arthur "Phantom" Drake, convinced the label to authorize a full remaster. This was an expensive and rare move in the pre-CD era. The original master tapes were pulled from the vault, and Drake brought in a secret weapon: mastering engineer Sylvia Kwan, fresh off her acclaimed work on a string of ECM jazz albums. A landmark in corrective mastering