Mike Mettler

Music Reviews
”Part of the Plan" and "Hold Me Down” in Atmos on Apple Music
Mike Mettler  |  Oct 02, 2024
And the beat keeps on keepin’ on for East Atlanta rapper Hunxho, who just dropped a sonically seductive two-track single, “Part of the Plan + Hold Me Down”, on September 27.
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Music Reviews
Juice WRLD: The Pre-Party EP in Lossless on Apple Music
Mike Mettler  |  Sep 24, 2024
Sadly lost to us in his prime at only age 21 in 2019, Chicago-bred emo rapper Juice WRLD at least left behind a wealth of unreleased material—and his estate’s latest official offering is a two-track stunner, The Pre-Party EP, now available as a Lossless option on Apple Music and via other digital platforms.
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Music Reviews
Lil Tecca: “Bad Time” Music Review
Mike Mettler  |  Sep 13, 2024
LIL TECCA: “BAD TIME” IN ATMOS ON APPLE MUSIC

Queens rapper/producer Lil Tecca is back in a bad way with his upcoming fourth LP Plan A (which drops in full on September 20)—and one of its lead tracks, “Bad Time,” clearly sets the table for what’s to come, especially in its Atmos mix on Apple Music.

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Immersive Audio FileSpatial Audio File
Alan Parsons Tells Us Tales of Atmos Remixing and Imagination for The Alan Parsons Project’s Deluxe Pyramid Box Set
Mike Mettler  |  Aug 30, 2024

Alan Parsons has long been acknowledged as a pioneering surround-sound mixer/producer all the way back to the early days of quad, and now he’s finally triangulated his sights on the kind of project we’ve all been waiting for—namely, by taking the maiden Dolby Atmos remixing voyage into his own deep catalog as the co-mastermind behind The Alan Parsons Project. Parsons’ initial APP-in-Atmos foray appears on the Blu-ray that’s included in the new 4CD/1BD/2LP Super Deluxe Edition box set for their May 1978 release, Pyramid, via the ironically named Cooking Vinyl label. During a recent Zoom interview, Parsons and music editor Mike Mettler discussed his overall Atmos goals for Pyramid, what he was able to “correct” in Atmos, and his dream Atmos mixes for other artists. . .

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Music Reviews
Def Leppard: ‘Pyromania’ – Super Deluxe Edition Box
Mike Mettler  |  Aug 20, 2024
Def Leppard was an ’80s anomaly. The band wasn’t exactly part of the decade-opening NWOBHM (a.k.a. New Wave Of British Heavy Metal) scene, nor was it entirely aligned with the androgynous, hair-sprayed looks and vibes of metal-adjacent contemporaries like Mötley Crüe and Poison. Instead, Def Leppard took inspiration from their own ’70s heroes, fusing glam-slam and pub-rock roots with power-pop harmonies and arena-rock guitar riffage. Stir it all together, and you get one of that decade’s biggest albums, January 1983’s Pyromania.
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Music and Soundtrack FeaturesSpecial Features
Back to the Garden: Woodstock at 55
Mike Mettler  |  Aug 14, 2024
Fifty-five years ago on August 15, 1969, 500,000 people gathered in upstate New York for the Woodstock Music & Art Fair — a long, heady weekend that lives on as a landmark soundtrack and film that deftly capture the counterculture zeitgeist.
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Immersive Audio File
Ben Wiseman on Remixing Nektar’s Forward-Thinking 1973 Masterpiece Remember the Future in 5.1 (and More)
Mike Mettler  |  Jul 31, 2024

British mixing engineer Ben Wiseman has a C.V. that more than mirrors the sagacity implied by his given surname. Among his many mix/remix and master/remastering production-related projects of the past two decades include albums from the likes of Soft Machine, Hawkwind, Barclay James Harvest, and Tangerine Dream. One of his latest projects includes the ever-intriguing 5.1 mix he did for inclusion in the recent 50th anniversary multidisc box set for Nektar’s November 1973 masterstroke concept album, Remember the Future. Here, music editor Mike Mettler and Wiseman discuss how he initially attuned himself to Nektar’s music, the process of finding and incorporating discarded tracks when it was appropriate to do so, and how he tried to honor the album’s lyrical content with his remixes. . .

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Music Reviews
Remaster Class – Prince: Purple Rain
Mike Mettler  |  Jul 12, 2024
In the summer of 1984, two ascending musical forces vaulted themselves into the megastar stratosphere on a parallel tract that would be virtually impossible to duplicate today. Bruce Springsteen upped his own iconography by touring stadiums in support of Born in the U.S.A., a perpetually catchy album whose underlying message actually served to tear down the tenets of the American mythos. At the same time, Prince and The Revolution dominated the charts with Purple Rain, the ostensible soundtrack to the low-budget box-office phenomenon of the same name that chronicled the rise of “The Kid” and his killer Minneapolis-bred band, despite their respective struggles with a myriad of mental and physical obstacles alike.
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The S&V Interview
Jesse Colin Young and S&V Get Together to Discuss the Core Elements and Key Sounds of Great Songwriting
Mike Mettler  |  Jul 10, 2024
The art of songwriting can sometimes be mysterious, frustrating, and even off-putting, to a certain degree—but when it’s done right, a songwriter can literally teach the world to sing. One such songwriter who has an inherent knack for consistently reaching the masses in a special way is Jesse Colin Young. During a recent Zoom call, Young and music editor Mike Mettler discussed the impetus behind The Perfect Stranger Songwriting Contest, how “Get Together” beat the odds to become an indelible hit, and why he feels “Darkness, Darkness” is among his best-loved—and most covered—songs. . .

Click here to enter The Perfect Stranger Songwriting Contest.

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Immersive Audio File
Dweezil Zappa on His Atmos Mixing Philosophy, Part 2
Mike Mettler  |  Jun 30, 2024

When last we met in this column space, Dweezil Zappa was describing the truly immersive 24-bit/96kHz remix—key word, remix—that he did for the 50th anniversary 3CD/1LP/1BD super deluxe edition box set celebrating Deep Purple’s seminal March 1972 album Machine Head (Warner Records). Here in Part 2, music editor Mike Mettler and Zappa discussed how “Space Truckin’” really takes off in Atmos, what sold him on the Atmos format in the first place, and how he honed his mixing skills by zeroing in on how he feels drums should sound in Atmos. . .

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