Remastering Music and Cultural Heritage is, as far as I am aware, the first book-length study of music remastering. Drawing on interviews with mastering and remastering engineers, along with comparative audio analysis, the book provides insight into the processes involved in remastering, and how these have been transformed ‘primarily through technology from a purely technical process to a more creative and artistic activity’ (p. 1). It does so by describing and comparing aspects of the original productions and the remasters, including the sonic differences that arise through remastering.
The book opens with a description of its topic and methodical approach, including a discussion of how remastering – understood as a technical, artistic, and creative process – becomes entangled with issues of cultural heritage. Remastering engineers, Bruel argues, are required to balance concerns regarding cultural preservation against the commercial and/or artistic motivations to make previously released music materially and aesthetically available to new audiences. Bruel links these concerns to a discussion of various concepts of authenticity, which unfortunately are not revisited later in the book. He further brings forth commercial considerations around remastering, including the so-called ‘loudness wars’, and concludes the introduction by considering to what extent listeners perceive the difference between masters and remasters.
After giving an overview in chapter 1 of remastering from vintage formats and how it differs from sound archiving, the following case chapters (2–5) describe processes involved in four specific examples and analyses of their sonic results. The cases – The Beatles’ Abbey Road (1969, remastered in 1987 and 2009), Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (1973, remastered in 1995 and 2014), Oasis’ (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? (1995, remastered in 2014), and a recording of a 1962 BBC broadcast of Mozart’s The Magic Flute (remastered in 2015) – represent different eras and approaches to both mastering and remastering, including early remasters for CD in the 1980s, remasters for multiple formats (including CD and vinyl) in the 2000s, original mastering for CD in the 90s, and remastering live orchestral recordings. Each case chapter opens with a short introduction of the album in question, followed by descriptions of the original production processes, based on secondary sources and as told by Bruel’s informants. These descriptions include the production techniques involved in producing the original master and the individuals who were involved. The background histories help to understand the many considerations made by remastering engineers, though these descriptions tend to be disproportionately elaborate, and their relevance to remastering practice is not always made clear.
Through interviews with remastering engineers, Bruel then examines processes involved in remastering these albums. In his data, remastering involves the sourcing of master tapes (and sometimes the equipment that was used in their production), session notes, and other relevant information, in order to reproduce the original master as accurately as possible. The accounts of the remastering process also include the informants’ work methods, technical setups, and social dynamics between engineers, record labels, and people involved in the original productions. Moreover, the tension between preserving original aesthetic decisions and making the remaster sonically relevant to contemporary listeners is discussed throughout all case chapters. Bruel thus shows how the conditions for mastering and remastering have evolved from the 1960s up until the so-called digital age, both due to technical limitations of different formats and the likeliness of access to information about the original productions. Readers are here presented with solid insight into which roles are involved in remastering and some aspects of sonic and aesthetic outcomes. However, the interview quotes are not contextualised – neither via the author’s own comments or analysis nor in discussions considering previously presented theory. Readers are therefore left to interpret these insights themselves.
Each case chapter includes comparative digital audio analyses of original masters and remasters. These are mostly based on tools available as plugins in Bruel’s digital audio workstation, including waveform representation and FFT (fast Fourier transform) frequency analyses of audio files. Bruel succeeds in producing useful data like peak volume, RMS (root mean square) and LUFS (loudness units full scale) levels, as well as dynamic range. However, as he points out, his analyses of frequency range and distribution are only based on visual interpretation of FFT curves, which represent only a particular point in time. More systematic methods are available and relatively easy to use and could have contributed to other useful and more accurate data, including timbre measurements and average frequency range/distribution (e.g. Lartillot Reference Lartillot2024). It would also be interesting to see comparisons of stereo spread between the different versions, as this appears to be a commonly used effect in remastering.
The conclusion chapter offers a summary of the findings in the case chapters, which Bruel then relates to his own practical experience with remastering. Bruel then summarises the social dynamics in remastering, including what can be changed significantly in the remastering process and who allows themselves to do such changes (often original producers and/or artists). He concludingly argues that remastering is not only a technical and/or creative process but also must take into consideration its role in preserving and potentially impacting cultural heritage.
Remastering Music and Cultural Heritage is a part of Focal Press’s ‘Perspectives on Music Production’ series, which moves beyond a traditional academic framework and aims at covering industry- and practice-related issues. This is evident in the book’s unexpected approaches to structuring and presentation of interview material. However, the book is also not fronting pedagogical approaches to remastering and seems to aim for a rather traditional academic analysis, with the significant exception that the interpretation of data is missing. Furthermore, a lack of critical thoroughness applies to the use of certain key terms, such as the concept of ‘the original’, which is an important reference point for remastering engineers. The question of what represents ‘the original’ is occasionally brought up, but the term itself is not questioned. The book would have greatly benefitted from such a discussion, by, for example, asking who has the right to define ‘the original’ – is it the vinyl mastering engineer, the mixer, the producer, the artist, or others? These issues could have been addressed by referring to studies of creative systems in record production (e.g. Thompson Reference Thompson2019) or previous discussions of original versus copy in relation to record production (e.g. Sterne Reference Sterne2003).
My main concerns with this book stem from the confusion about what it aims to contribute, because, apart from the mentioned flaws as an academic analysis, Bruel succeeds in describing what kind of work is involved in remastering practice and saying something about how the practice changes along with technological and aesthetic conditions. Someone interested in learning about the art of remastering would therefore likely still gain a lot from reading it.
