The Beatles remasters will finally be available on 9-9-09! The remasters have been worked on over the last four years at Abbey Road Studios in London.
This reissue campaign encompasses the entire Beatles catalogue as they were released in the UK (track-list and artwork). In addition, the previous Past Masters (Vol 1 and Vol 2) will be combined to release as one Volume. As you can tell from the pictures, these are going to be extravagant. They will be presented with original and new liner notes, detailed historical notes, and recording process notes. As bonuses, and for a limited time only, each Beatles title will include Quicktime files, mini documentaries on the making of the particular album they’re on. These documentaries will include archival footage, photos, and in-studio chats by the members of the band as they were in the process of recording. These are meant to be definitive releases of the Beatles albums.
In addition, there will be Box sets. There are two distinct sets that include a Stereo set and a Mono set. The Mono set contains ten of their albums that were mixed in Mono and two extra discs of mono masters, a kind of Past Masters collection except in Mono. To make the Mono Box more complete, it will also include Help and Rubber Soul in their 1965 Stereo mixes not released on CD. The Stereo Box will contain all of the separate releases and a DVD collection of the documentaries in a convenience package for hard core Beatles collectors.
All of the discs will be released in the popular Japanese-styled Mini-LP digipak format and will be reproduced exactly as the original LP was released, inserts (if any) and all.
As stated before, these CDs will be released on September 9th, coinciding with the release of Rock Band: The Beatles video game. This could also be the release date for the Beatles’ library to finally go digital as well.
Really looking forward to these.
About time they remastered the entire catalogue. I was really impressed with the sound quality of the Yellow Submarine songtrack from 1999 and have been (im)patiently waiting for these.