Peter Gabriel’s first four (plus two) albums have been released in half-speed remastered versions and have been cut to lacquers at 45RPM, across two 180gm LPs, to offer maximum dynamic sound range.
We are told that they have never sounded so good, and Prog are delighted to say that on listening, they truly never have. The vinyl was cut by Matt Colton at Alchemy Mastering, mastered by Tony Cousins at Metropolis and overseen by Gabriel’s long-serving engineer Dickie Chappell.
You can almost hear the love for these records in their handling, assembled by the best-in-their-field: “My relationship with Tony goes back years, and he was very welcoming when I started as an engineer,” Chappell notes. “Matt is very similar, approachable. He’s a workhorse. They are definitely analogue and vinyl nutcases at Alchemy.”
The masters come from the 96K archive that was assembled in 2002. “That was when we revisited everything,” Chappell notes. “It was a good way of readdressing the catalogue and making sure our archive was up to scratch. Peter listened to everything through and spent a lot of time with Tony at Metropolis. When Peter works on a song, he doesn’t really hear it again unless he plays it live; he doesn’t go back to his catalogue unless he had to review.”
“We sat down with Peter and said we needed to do the vinyl again, as I knew we could get better out now,” Chappell notes. “Peter definitely stamped the 96K stuff, so that was a good place to go back to.”
