Bob Ludwig

Rock legends QUEEN are releasing a special edition boxed set entitled “The Ultimate Studio Collection” on September 25. The box will contain all 15 Queen studio albums on 180g coloured vinyl, remastered by famed engineer Bob Ludwig. All 15 albums will also be available individually on black vinyl. To celebrate the release, turntable manufacturers Rega are also producing a limited edition turntable featuring a screen-printed Queen logo, as reported by classicrock.com.

Queen Turntable

Three of the albums included in the set are being issued as doubles for the first time. “Innuendo” and “Made In Heaven” (the original white vinyl edition of which currently sells for well over £100) were both originally released as single discs despite having CD-length track listings, and are now available as two disc editions. Meanwhile, “Queen II” expands on the original’s black side/white side theme and is available as a black vinyl/white vinyl double, with a custom etching on one side of each disc. This edition is only available as part of the boxed set.

Five years in the making, compiling the collection necessitated a great deal of tape research, during which better source tapes of six songs – ‘Under Pressure’, plus five tracks from the “Innuendo” album — were located.

The task of mastering the new releases was given to engineer Bob Ludwig, who was handed the task after a series of double-blind comparison tests were carried out with a number of candidates. Because some of the original analogue tapes had deteriorated and now featured speed errors, missing audio and unwanted noise, the band elected to create new super-high quality digital masters using 24-bit samples and a sampling rate of 96 kHz.

After this work was completed at Ludwig’s Gateway Mastering suite in Portland, USA, the new digital masters were sent to Abbey Road in London, where the vinyl cut was carried out — at half-speed, to ensure accurate groove cutting — by Mike Showell, who did the same job on Queen‘s “Live At The Rainbow ’74”, and has worked on other major projects with Genesis and Roxy Music.

The boxed set is completed by 12 x 12 inch 108-page hardback book, which features notes on each album alongside quotes from Queen themselves, hand-written lyrics, rare photographs, memorabilia, plus information on singles and videos.

“The Queen Studio Collection”:

Queen
Queen II
Sheer Heart Attack
A Night At The Opera
A Day At The Races
News Of The World
Jazz
The Game
Flash Gordon
Hot Space
The Works
A Kind Of Magic
The Miracle
Innuendo
Made On Heaven

“The Ultimate Studio Collection” is released on September 25. For more information or to pre-order the set, head to the Studio Collection microsite, or visit uDiscovermusic, where stories relating to each album will be unveiled over the coming weeks.

Queen Vinyl

Source: Blabbermouth.net

The debut album from BLACK STAR RIDERS — the new band formed by THIN LIZZY alumni Ricky Warwick (vocals), Scott Gorham (guitar), Damon Johnson (guitar), Marco Mendoza (bass) with new addition Jimmy DeGrasso (ALICE COOPER, MEGADETH, DAVID LEE ROTH, SUICIDAL TENDENCIES) on drums — is currently being mixed by producer Kevin Shirley (LED ZEPPELIN, IRON MAIDEN, AEROSMITH, RUSH) at his The Cave studios in Malibu, California for a late May release via Nuclear Blast. Songtitles set to appear on the CD include “All Hell Breaks Loose”, “Someday Salvation”, “Bound For Glory”, “Kingdom Of The Lost” and “Hoodoo Voodoo”.

According to BLACK STAR RIDERS, the last song on the album is “being mixed today by Kevin” before the recordings are shipped off to Bob Ludwig (JIMI HENDRIX, RUSH, KISS, LED ZEPPELIN) at Gateway Mastering Studios in Portland, Maine for mastering.

At the end of March, there will be the first single release that will have an exclusive airing via certain media outlets prior to public release. Around the same time, more tour dates for the fall will be announced.

In October 2012, THIN LIZZY announced that they would not be recording new material under the THIN LIZZY monicker. The last incarnation of the band — Gorham, Brian Downey, Wharton, Warwick, Johnson and Mendoza — would be looking to form a new project.

According to a press release, Brian Downey decided to not become involved with BLACK STAR RIDERS because he didn’t want to commit to the touring cycle a new album would entail and Darren Wharton wanted to concentrate on DARE and other music and filmprojects.

“Brian and Darren just don’t want to be on the road 150 days a year. anti that’s completely understandable,” Warwick tells Classic Rock magazine. “But we do. We work very well together, and there’s no better man than Jimmy to gel it together. This is a kick-ass band.”

The BLACK STAR RIDERS album will feature material the band wrote while touring as THIN LIZZY and the sound retains that classic feel but is very much its own as well. The BLACK STAR RIDERS record is the next step in the evolution of the THIN LIZZY story.

“There’s no way it could sound like THIN LIZZY with [late THIN LIZZY frontman] Phil [Lynott],” Gorham tells Classic Rock. But Johnson disagreees. “I think Scott is too dose to it,” he says. “Ricky or I would bring in a song idea, and as soon as Scott starts playing on it, it sounds like THIN LIZZY, whether Scott realizes it or not. Everybody who’s heard the new music says it has that dassic THIN LIZZY vibe. No, it can’t sound like the original band. But that classic LIZZY vibe is absolutely there.”

“I’m not gonna pull any punches here,” says Warwick. “It sounds like classic THIN LIZZY brought up to date. l’ve been singing Phil‘s songs every night for two years, and although it sounds a bit crass because the man’s not here, I feel like I’ve had these lessons from getting so deep into his work. Phil‘s songwriting, his lyrics, his phrasing, his pitching, his delivery — it’s genius. And that’s really helped me as a writer.”

It was Warwick who named the new band BLACK STAR RIDERS, after an outlaw gang in the 1993 western movie “Tombstone”. As Johnson tells Classic Rock: “Scott said from the very beginning that we did not want a name that was specifically related to THIN LIZZY, because this band has to stand on its own.”