SpacedX

He's the guaranteed eternal sanctuary man.

Get 'em out by Friday!

The 2026 remix of the pivot album then - Rubber Soul. It occupies a very special place in the pantheon of Beatles greats for me. It was not only the first album by the Beatles that I bought, it was the first album I ever owned. Actually, that's not true. I used a Boots token that I got for Christmas to buy 'Oldies But Goldies' because 'A Hard Day's Night' had just been on the TV, (the BBC used to show all the Beatles films at Christmas). First studio album then - and after that I received a Beatles album every birthday and Christmas...I still recall the first Christmastime I heard Revolver. But Rubber Soul was dear to my heart. I used to charge home from school as a nine year old and play it..and play it again, invite friends round to listen to it, I knew every number inside out, every note, every nuance. Sadly, Christmas 2025 brought some very grave news health wise. Basically, it looked as though it may be my last. I went to my local country pub on Christmas Eve with my daughter who was seven months pregnant believing that I wouldn't see her experience the joy of parenthood or my granddaughter grow up . It was heaving so we went into the rarely opened back room with the owners and some close regulars and someone put Rubber Soul on the turntable. Listening to 'The Word' I felt this overwhelming wave of love for her and the unborn child and everyone around me - nothing to do with alcohol, I'd recently given that up. This seminal music of my childhood was reaching out again and telling me that everything was going to turn out fine, and miraculously, it did. The transformative album indeed. So what's it like? Well it's Rubber Soul ffs,. No one needs me to tell them how brilliant it is though I've previously voiced frustration on this thread about how, as great as they are, but even greater Beatles albums could have been were it not for the omission of tracks designated for single releases caving in to constant corporate pressure by EMI for single product/a chart topping hit. Think 'Day Tripper' and 'We Can Work it Out' in place of 'What Goes On' and 'Run For Your Life'. Regardless we can take the era as a body of work at the time and like I said, this was the artistic turning point where the band evolved from a pop sensation into mature studio artists, blending folk-rock and more introspective, observational lyricism although you could sense the emergence of the latter as early as 'Beatles for Sale'. Rubber Soul is the pivot point for the Beatles then, the bridge between Beatlemania and the descent into psychedelia. Help!, their previous album, ends with “Dizzy Miss Lizzy.” Revolver, the next one, ends with tape loops, backwards guitar, and chanted meditations on ego death. Together with Dylan’s contemporaneous forays into electric music, Rubber Soul also represents a significant pivot for the popular music genre in general. Not renowned for eloquence, Brian Wilson summed up Rubber Soul’s impact very simply: “The first time in my life I remember hearing a rock album on which every song was really good.” This ‘special edition’ release has clearly been constructed for the most devoted of Beatles fans, comprising an exhaustive 68-track release, including new stereo mixes, Dolby Atmos mixes, the original mono mixes, and a selection of studio outtakes, demos, and off-cuts whilst from what I've read, Kevin Howlett's liner notes are indispensable. But what's the new mix like in the hands of Giles Martin's (and Sam Okel's) new stereo and dolby atmos vision? I expected the usual sharp clarity and separation, but apprehensive about his previous excessive creative liberties, changing the original balance, boosting the low-end (bass and drums) heavily, or lowering or altering the presence of certain elements compared to the original mixes by his father. My foreboding was justified in part. Though originally utilising just four tracks at Abbey Road, the group and Sir George, hand-in-hand with engineer Norman Smith and second engineer Ken Scott, were at the vanguard of sonic experimentation. But all of that experimentation was in clear service of the songs - and what songs they were. Of course, as ever, it's a bold reinterpretation, that is inevitably going to divide opinion. On first listen, the drums and vocals are definitely crisper and more prominent and more accessible for modern headphone and spatial audio setups by pulling vocals toward the center. I recall discovering that if I changed the balance on my parents Thorens stereo to the right, I could listen to the vocals practically in isolation, which fascinated me as a kid. They've applied the "MAL" de-mixing technology (pioneered during Peter Jackson’s Get Back production), so this extreme hard-panning of the original 1965 stereo mixes has been rebalanced. When George Martin prepared the album for its first CD release in 1987, he adjusted the placement somewhat by splitting and shifting some of the vocals, but they still leaned heavily to the right side rather than sitting dead center like this. Obviously, if you listen to the original mono version of the album, the sound is centered rather than separated into left and right channels. But actually listening to this again, most of the lead vocals are actually placed left and right, cleverly creating the aural illusion that the vocals are coming from the center. The bass and drum tracks have arguably been pushed too hard, creating a punchy low-end on certain tracks in a bid to capture modern production values. This can be a bit jarring for those accustomed to the vintage mixes. The late Geoff Emerick always said that it was the mono mixes, (that you can also find here), those that the message board guys insist is the purest expression of the band’s artistic intent. As this deluxe box set demonstrates quite clearly, along with my experiences since the age of nine, there is no one real Rubber Soul. We all have our own.

All thanks to the World Intelligence Network...

Flight 14 in orbit, albeit shortened mission. Approaching de-orbit burn.

Starship scheduled for first orbital flight, tomorrow 28th September, @ 12.15 GMT. 75 minute launch window.

The two Steven Bergwijn goals in extra time set a new Premier League feat as Spurs were 2-1 behind at 94 minutes, 52 seconds - the latest time a team has been behind before winning a Premier League match. This was the biggest capitulation/most spectacular collapse under Rodgers and I think the most humiliating result in our recent history.

^ Blimey, the guy that kept coins in one of these... ...a giant Coca Cola bottle to fund Jihad. When I was at uni in the 90s Al Mujahiroun were on campus distributing anti semitic, homophobic and misogynistic literature. I informed the students union and I shit you not, they took my name and course, subsequently reporting me to faculty for racism.

I can't say that I've noticed that?

Ah, the cringeworthy rising inflection - seemed to start gaining prevalence around the time of all those shite imported Australian soaps and peaked about ten years ago.

Speak up a bit.