“ I wish I had been born twenty years earlier”

ive often said in interviews that, in many ways, I wish I had been born twenty years earlier. Then I could have been making music in the creative crucible of the late 6os and early *7Os, a time when so much ground had yet be be trodden, and new ideas in music could really thri aind surprise the listener, even change perspectives on

16. Although other inventive musical eras followed, this was the period when the post-Beatles elevation of pop and rock musio to the level of true "art" took place, Wis w reaching for the stars and making album statements, hot just three-minute pop singles, was what it was all about. Ambitious and artistic souls who might once have chosen a career as a filmmaker or novelist were instead choosing to be musicians.

Maybe I'm looking back with rose-tinted spectacles, but, from my perspective working in the 21st-century music industry, it seems to have been a golden age when artists were actively encouraged to experiment and to almost overachieve. Meanwhile, the record companies didn't really seem to know what was going on, but supported it as long as people were buying it, which resulted in some almost inconceivably strange records being released by major labels. (Captain Beefheart's cult classic, Trout Mask Replica, springs to mind. New hybrids of music were emerging on a monthly basis, as the musicians adapted and integrated the established traditions of classical, jazz, folk, and blues music into their pop and rock compositions.

Chicago's second album is a perfect example of all of this. It still sounds like nothing else, the sound of a band brimming with the confidence and inspiration of the new era, drawing on everything from orchestral music to heavy rock. So rich was their creative seam at the time that, like their debut (titled Chicago Transit Authority), and the album that followed this one (Chicago III), it was a two-record set. In fact, with unprecedented boldness, the run of double albums was only broken by their fourth, which was a quadruple (live) set! I consider all of these albums to be classics, but perhaps Chicago (aka "Chicago II) is the preeminent masterpiece. It's got everything: moments of tender beauty to power riffs and scorched-earth jazz-rock, catchy melodies, and gorgeous vocal harmonies. When I first heard it as a teenager, I was captivated by the mixture of jazz, blues, pop, classical, progressive, and heavy rock styles, including both improvisational elements and intricate arrangements, and by songs written and sung by several different members, all with their own unique personalities. How could that possibly hang together?! But it does, and brilliantly so.

If Chicago had any flaw at all for the people like me who fell in love with it, it's that the sonics of the record sometimes didn't seem to shine the way the music did. While that never affected the popularity of the album, there was a case to be made that it deserved a remix that could bring out more of the texture, power, and subtleties in the music. Trying to find it has been the goal of the engineers who've mastered and remastered the original 1969 stereo mix over the years. But, ultimately, remastering can only achieve so much - add some bass to the drums, and you might make the bass guitar sound boomy and indistinct; add some crispness to the vocals, and suddenly the drums sound shrill and thin. But now, for the first time, a stereo remix from the original 16-track master tapes has made it possible to get right down amongst the players to bring out elements that were muffled or submerged in the mix without affecting the overall sound picture. Working with high-resolution 96kHz/24-bit digitally transferred files, I had every element from the recording sessions isolated, which meant I was able to rebuild the mix from the drums upwards, recreating as closely as I could the equalization, stereo placement, reverbs, other effects, and volume changes of each individual instrument or vocal - but at the same time looking to gain definition and clarity in the overall sound. It was time-consuming work that involved constantly referring back to the 1969 mix for subtle changes in levels or stereo positioning (for example, a guitar or piano lick momentarily rising out of the mix), listening to see how much reverb or echo was added, picking the right takes, etc. In terms of the equalization and other processing, I primarily used emulations of the vintage equipment that might have been used during the original recording.

The result is a new stereo version of Chicago that I hope has a clarity, punch, and definition that it lacked before.

The caveat to this is that while I might feel the album sounds demonstrably better, others may feel it jars with What they know and fell in love with, in some cases, nearly a half-century ago. But, hey, the original mix is strout there, and this isn't going to replace that; it's a different perspective, and one that is only possible now that high audio resolution and digital mixing tools have come of age. Plus, I like to think that there are many more people (some yet unborn) who are going to discover this extraordinary album in the decades and centuries to come.

With an album as brilliant and timeless as Chicago, that seems assured.

STEVEN WILSON-October 2016