The career of Gentle Giant spanned the whole of the 1970s, and their modest commercial fortunes closely paralleled that of their chosen (or assigned) genre. Beginning with their self-titled debut album in 1970 and running through their eleventh studio album (1980′s Civilian) the group charted a singular musical path. While they went their separate ways not long after the final album, their influence is still felt in a number of groundbreaking modern acts (Porcupine Tree, Dream Theater, and Izz to name but three).

In 2009 the members of Gentle Giant prepared digital versions of seven of their albums for release through the usual outlets (iTunes etc.) and granted a limited number of interviews in connection with that rollout. I spoke at some length with John Waters (drums, vocals) and Derek Shulman (bass, vocals) about the new digital releases and other topics.It’s fair to wonder if the warm analog ambience of the original Gentle Giant LPs will translate to the “lossy” compressed format of mp3. Derek Shulman concedes that “If I’m talking as an audiophile, of course I’d find fault with mp3 files, because they literally make those sound waves square. And therefore some of the nuances — and some of the transients and different frequencies of the pure note — will be lost.” Yet, having listened carefully to the remastered versions, his verdict is that they are “quite close to what it we wanted it to sound like back in the day.”

For audiophiles and/or vinyl fetishists, there’s some more good news. Shulman reveals that we’ll soon have new vinyl versions of many classic Gentle Giant albums. And those, he says, will be mastered “straight from the 24-track to the quarter-inch masters.”

Speaking of those masters, John Weathers adds some additional background. “We know a guy from Sweden who’s a huge fan called Dan Bornemark. He has his own studio. The master tapes that we had, most of them were retained by [keyboardist/vocalist] Kerry Minnear in the loft of his house. And he was approached by Dan who said ‘I want to digitize these, because by now the tape will be degrading. And I want to get it all before the tape “goes west.”‘ And so we let him. And that was the source of the [1998] Under Construction album. We gave him all of the master tapes; everything he wanted we gave to him. So he digitized the masters from the analog tape. So I think Raymond [Shulman - guitar, bass, vocals] actually digitally remastered them for these releases.”

The band’s earliest releases are not part of the current reissue project. “EMI still retains the rights on the first four albums,” explains John Weathers. “The rest were either owned by the band or have come back to the band.” Derek Shulman adds that “we’re currently in the process of speaking with them about getting all of the stuff back into our grubby little mittens. I think we are in the process of talking with both EMI and Universal and the other company that had the band signed, but there are some issues.”

Story continued after the jump…

This entry was posted on Friday, November 20th, 2009 at 8:39 am and is filed under interview. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.