Mike Mettler

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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Music and Soundtrack FeaturesSpecial Features
Runnin’ Into the Great Wide Open
Mike Mettler  |  Jun 26, 2024
50 years ago, Tom Petty and his soon-to-be Heartbreakers were on a crash course for success or bust. What these rebels with a clue achieved over their rightfully acclaimed multi-decade career stands as a benchmark for how to match universally appealing songwriting with uncompromising sound quality.
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Music Reviews
Deep Purple: Machine Head – Super Deluxe Edition Box
Mike Mettler  |  Jun 07, 2024
Performances
Sound

Machine Head is one of those perfect storm albums. As Deep Purple entered the 1970s, they undertook a creative shift from the psychedelic blues/pop of their late-’60s origins — embodied by hits like 1968’s perpetually catchy “Hush” and their cover of Neil Diamond’s “Kentucky Woman” — to move into full-on rock overdrive with June 1970’s Deep Purple in Rock and July 1971’s Fireball. With that tableau firmly set, Deep Purple ramped it up yet another notch to construct March 1972’s truly seminal Machine Head, which features enduring hardrock staples like “Smoke on the Water” (ahh, that right-of-passage guitar riff), “Highway Star” (their 8-cylinder vehicular love letter), and “Space Truckin’” (“Come on!”) among them.

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Immersive Audio File
Dweezil Zappa on Mixing Deep Purple’s Machine Head in Atmos, Part 1
Mike Mettler  |  May 31, 2024

Dweezil Zappa knows how to push the boundaries of surround sound. He was already testing the limits of 5.1 when I asked him to be on a surround-centric panel I hosted at CES two decades ago. More recently, Dweezil has been laser-focused on mixing in Atmos, and his highest profile Atmos mix to date is the truly immersive 24-bit/96kHz mix he did for the 50th anniversary 3CD/1LP/1BD super deluxe edition box set celebrating Deep Purple’s seminal March 1972 album Machine Head. During Part 1 of a recent Zoom interview, music editor Mike Mettler and Zappa discussed his “bookend” approach to “Highway Star,” how he put an additional spotlight on keyboardist Jon Lord on “Lazy,” and what his specific directive was for the Atmos version of “Smoke on the Water”—and how he honored the song’s references to his late father, Frank Zappa. . .

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Music Reviews
Yes: The Yes Album – Super Deluxe Edition Box Set
Mike Mettler  |  May 30, 2024
Performances
Sound

Because of his close association with Yes’ signature sound, guitarist Steve Howe is assumed to have been a member of the British progressive giants from the outset — but he only came aboard with the five-man band’s third studio release, February 1971’s The Yes Album. Though his fretboard predecessor, Peter Banks (who later co-founded the prog-adjacent ’70s outfit Flash), foreshadowed the aural adventurism to come on July 1969’s Yes and July 1970’s Time and a Word, it was The Yes Album that cemented the wide-ranging, time-signature challenging sonic template for one of the most forward-thinking progressive acts of the past six decades.

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