Big Star Third makes Rolling Stone top 10 of 2016

David Fricke over at Rolling Stone Magazine has included Omnivore Recording's Big Star - Complete Third (with restoration and mastering courtesy of Osiris Studio) on his top 10 best reissues of 2016!  There's lots of other goodies on the list, check it out.

6. Big Star, 'Complete Third'

This three-CD set is the last word on one of the greatest – and most harrowing – rock albums ever made: demos, rough mixes, every final master. This is everything in nerve, sweat and tears that surviving Big Star members Alex Chilton and Jody Stephens and their producer Jim Dickinson gave on the way to this willful fusion of avant-pop exploration, rattling funk and brutally direct, romantic candor.

Michael Graves Receives 7th GRAMMY Nomination

Exciting news from Osiris Studio HQ; Dust-to-Digital's Music of Morocco: Recorded by Paul Bowles 1959 has been nominated for a Best Historical Album GRAMMY!  The nominees for this collection of music (originally recorded for the Library of Congress) include Michael Graves & Rick Fisher (mastering engineers), April G. Ledbetter, Steven Lance Ledbetter, Bill Nowlin & Philip D. Schuyler (compilation producers).

The 59th GRAMMY Awards will be held at 12:30 PM, February 12, 2017 in Los Angeles, CA. and will be broadcast live on CBS.  The Premier Ceremony, where Best Historical and about 90 other categories will be awarded, can be streamed live at grammy.com.

Big Star Complete Third reviews

Omnivore Recordings' latest deluxe release, Big Star Complete Third, is out and getting some big attention.  Amidst the praise for the overall album and the herculean task that the team at Omnivore took on to produce this package, several critics are noticing the mastering and restoration.

"Michael Graves has remastered all three discs to great effect." - The Second Disc
"Thanks to Michael Graves' audio restoration, those nuances come through with largely impeccable clarity." - All About Jazz
"The sound is remarkable (the 1993 Rykodisc release always sounded a little thin and tinny) and the thread of the songs is taut and tight so that, to me, the coherency that was lacking is now there. Disc 3 is the presentation of the final mixes and sounds much cleaner, crisper and buoyant here than before." - Pop Dose
"Massive praise must be heaped on Cheryl Pawelski, Adam Hill, and Michael Graves for wrangling this material into sequence and restoring it in such as a way that listening to this set feels like you're hearing so much for the first time."
"The success of Complete Third really hinges not on how much material the folks at Omnivore Recordings managed to dig up but, instead, by how they made Third sound. The verdict is, quite simply, that you've never heard the album like this before. Whatever Hill and Graves did to clean up these recordings might be the stuff of alchemy 'cause I very nearly ran my car off the road while I got transfixed by how sharp and clear album tracks like "Blue Moon" and "Take Care" now sounded."
"Disc 3 is so fundamentally sharper than any you've heard and loved before that I can say that you should offer up a massive thanks to these folks for attempting this." - A Pessimist Is Never Dissapointed

Audio Restoration at the 141st AES convention

Archiving and restoration were the topics in the early hours of the first day at the AES Convention in Los Angeles, CA.  9:00 AM is not typically the best time for audio engineers to gather, but we had a nice, enthusiastic crowd!  Thanks to Jessica Thompson (Coast Mastering) for inviting me, Cheryl Pawelski (Omnivore Recordings), Steve Rosenthal (The Magic Shop), and Jamie Howarth (Plangent Processes) to talk about what we love to do!

(L-R: Michael Graves, Cheryl Pawelski, Jessica Thompson, Steve Rosenthal, Jamie Howarth)

(L-R: Michael Graves, Cheryl Pawelski, Jessica Thompson, Steve Rosenthal, Jamie Howarth)