In an extraordinary project, Nick Davis has just spent nearly three
years remastering the entire Genesis back catalogue in 5.1.
Understandably he employed the very best in classic and modern gear for
the task…
Nick Davis started his career as a humble tape op back in
1983, recording early demos with Tears For Fears for Polygram. He moved
to Air Studios and then Westside where he became chief engineer. After
going freelance he engineered Mike And The Mechanics’ The
Living Years LP, which was the start of a long relationship with the
men from Genesis …
“I’ve just kind of stayed within the
family,” he says. “Once they find people they like
to work with they stick with them. I’ve done some of their
live albums and produced a couple of their later albums. They decided
to remix the catalogue in 5.1 and it’s been a fantastic
project albeit one that’s been almost three years in the
making!”
“Various members have been more or less
involved,” Davis continues. “Tony Banks very much
so. He’s come in and heard every mix and helped me finish
them off. Mike [Rutherford] has heard about 20-30%. Steve Hackett has
been very good on the stuff he’s on and Peter Gabriel has
been very good too. Phil [Collins] has probably been the least involved
and has just let us get on with it. He trusts us not to f*ck it
up!”
Nick’s idea was to keep the new processing in
keeping with the original recordings so he didn’t bring in
too much digital processing, choosing instead a host of analogue gear
including a Focusrite ISA215 EQ…
“It’s fantastic, I really like
it,” says Davis. “I also did an album with Will
Topley from The Blessing and recorded all of his vocals through a
Voicemaster Pro.
It’s very good I was really impressed with
that as well.”
But it wasn’t just classic Focusrite gear that
helped. Towards the end of the mix process, Nick took delivery of a
Liquid Mix which helped
in some of the more unusual areas of the
project…
“I used the Liquid Mix for some rarity stuff and
bootleg material that came in from various sources around the world.
One of them was this interview Genesis did for an American chat show in
the 70s and the sound on it was terrible so I used the Liquid Mix to EQ
and compress that for the DVD. I do like having so many compressors and
EQs on hand to switch between, and I love the fact that the processing
is on board. It is a big selling point that the box doesn’t
drain your computer processing power.”
So how does Nick feel about the project as he listens back to
the masters?
“It is fantastic,” he says. “I
know I would say that as I’m working on it, but
I’ve just been listening back to And Then There Were Three.
It’s not my favourite album but it does sound fantastic. Some
of the big moments are very exciting.”
And what does he have planned for the future?
“Who knows, nothing’s released yet so no
one knows what I’ve done! I’ve always been into
Genesis and Pink Floyd as I grew up with them. If someone asked me to
do Floyd’s Wish You Were Here I think I might take them up on
it!”
Nick’s 5.1 mix philosophy
“A lot of it is finding the tapes, preparing and
copying them. It’s not just about the mixing. And now
we’re into the mastering stages it’s listening to
the masters and checking that there are no errors on them. Once you
take all of that into consideration it’s probably two to
three months work per album.”
“I try and avoid doing anything gimmicky.
It’s great with Genesis because they have these big moments
and you can just get a load of stuff out of all the speakers but I
generally don’t like stuff flying around too much. For
example I would usually have the drums at the front or half way but
never all the way behind you. The other thing with 5.1 is if you spread
it too much you actually lose the power. It’s a bit like
people saying mono sounds more powerful than stereo because with mono
it’s concentrated in one area. So if you start spreading it
too much in 5.1 you sometimes lose the power because it’s the
way that it sticks together that makes it sound as powerful.”