You certainly don’t need me to tell you Blue Lines is a classic. That’s well established. While the material was so good it inspired a new genre, the recording itself was tinny and dry. Twenty years on, we finally have a decent remaster.
The new mix is noticeably louder, and the bass has been cranked a bit. A glance at the waveform doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.
There’s definitely some serious compression and clipping going on here, and it looks like the whole thing has been pushed to 0dB and limited, while the original peaked around -0.40dB,
Still, the engineers have struck a pretty good balance. The clipping isn’t noticeable, and the soundstage has plenty of space. Shara Nelson’s vocals soar easily above the copious bass on “Safe from Harm,” and they sound less strained and reedy than on the original master. The stereo image on “Be Thankful for What You’ve Got” is better, and though the backing vocals have been panned a bit more towards center, it’s an overall improvement in clarity.
I imagine “Unfinished Sympathy” was the biggest challenge. The low strings tend to blur in with the bass, but the engineers wisely chose to roll off the low end and accentuate the midrange. “Hymn of the Big Wheel” is an absolute revelation. While the original mix was a bit muffled and underwhelming, the remaster turns it into a phenomenal headphone track.
It isn’t perfect, but this is still a good example of how a remastering job should be done. One needs only to listen to the last version of Graceland or the latest Peter Gabriel remasters to hear how the industry now considers loudness to be preferable to clarity. I’m grateful they bucked that trend with Blue Lines. It deserves the treatment it’s received here.