Bitter Fruit & Lost Opportunities - WCPAEB

Recently I have received several comments from folks who are querying my input in regards to the recent 4 CD reissue of The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band's entire Warner Bros./Reprise catalog, on Grapefruit Records (a subsidiary of the British label Cherry Red, managed by David Wells). In addition to the stereo mixes, the deluxe box-set brags the first mono reissues of Part One, Vol. 2, and A Child's Guide To Good And Evil on CD. This reissue has been long-anticipated (I first heard rumors of it at least two years ago) and has made quite a splash upon its release.

Unfortunately, as one might have guessed from the title of this post, the mastering on this reissue is not definitive nor archival in any form, and therefore I will keep my posts for the aforementioned mono mixes active for the time being. Rather than edit those essays with descriptions of the mastering issues present on this 2023 reissue, I figured that I would make a dedicated post to enumerate the problems which kept this compilation from being what it could have been. Hopefully this helps shed some light for folks who are interested in purchasing this box set.

Please note that this is a review and there are no downloads here.
You can purchase this new deluxe reissue (as I did) here: Amazon

The 4 CD box set A Door Inside Your Mind: The Complete Reprise Recordings 1966-1968 was mastered by Alec Palao, a well-known Bay-area musician and producer who has worked on countless projects over the last 30+ years. Most of us have Big Beat and Ace CDs on our shelves that were done with his touch. The mastering is typically signed with boosted treble and added gain, which can sound pleasing on some of these old recordings (e.g. the remixed Frumious Bandersnatch), or other times not so great (e.g. Kak-Ola, as compared to the excellent-sounding original Kak CD).

The West Coast Pop Art recordings on this box set may sound okay on first listen, but when juxtaposed with what they could (should?) have been, the excitement quickly drains. A treble boost is immediately apparent upon listening, with an estimated 3 to 6 dB high shelf starting above 3 kHz.

Approximate EQ differences for the mono mix of Part One, averaged over the entire album.
Original white-label promo LP (green); 2023 remaster (white); effective EQ difference (orange).

The dynamic range of the new remaster is also compromised, which can be heard by a lack of presence on the CD as compared to previous issues. Without close comparison or knowing the sound by heart, though, it would be easy to miss this, even checking the waveforms by eye. The peaks were limited (the audio was compressed), and then for some reason negative gain was added afterwards, while maintaining the clipped peaks. The result is that the mastering has neither the benefits of a boost (higher volume) nor the appeal of a neutral approach (full DR). Below are some example waveform screenshots; you can click to blow these up to full-screen.

"Shifting Sands" (stereo), 2023 remaster, no edits.

"Shifting Sands" (stereo), 2023 remaster, +5.906 dB (bring existing peaks to 0 db).
The clipping on this remaster is now readily apparent.

"Shifting Sands" (stereo), 2001 Sundazed Music SC 6173, no edits.
There is some limiting, but not as severe as the 2023 remaster.

A quick look at the spectrograms reveals excessive levels of dither to the point of noise modulation above ~18 kHz. It is frustrating to see this on CD masters, as dithering is the least audible part of digital mastering and there are no benefits from it being overdone. Nonetheless, the unnecessary reduction in amplitude by an approximate factor of 2 (as seen above) will result in higher quantization errors, increasing the need to dither. 

Dither (noise) added during the CD mastering of "Shifting Sands" (mono), 2023 remaster.

There also appears to be some adaptive noise reduction (NR) which was used on several mono tracks. The digital source files which were used for both the 2017 Jackpot mono LPs and 2023 mono CDs have phase issues that are not present on the original 1967 pressings. These problems are consistent with a damaged tape. In order to cover this up, some light processing was apparently applied in places where the noise fluctuations caused the biggest problems. The differences in noise levels can be seen by comparing the spectrograms from these various masterings.

Spectrogram comparisons for "Shifting Sands" (mono).
Top: original 1967 mono pressing. Tape noise is smooth and consistent throughout.
Middle: 2017 Jackpot LP reissue. Fluctuating tape noise is audible in the master.
Bottom: 2023 remaster. The phase issues remain, with apparent NR above ~12 kHz being used to limit audibility.

While using inferior audio sources for the haphazardly-done remaster, the producers of this reissue still managed to visit this blog to "lift" some scans for their reissue, without any contact given to me. While this blog definitely floats in grey territory, it is still disheartening that these producers did not even care to write a note of thanks for making money off of my hard work and investments. Below is a photo comparison between a scan posted to my blog in January 2022 and the rear sleeve image for the Part One CD included in this box set.

Left: scan from my mono LP, posted to this blog in January 2022.
Right: back cover image of the picture sleeve from 2023 box. Notice the identical splotches of ring wear over the dark areas.

The producers also apparently failed to check the market for previous issues of this material. CD 4 -- the only disc which retains any value, as no previously existing digital versions are available for most tracks -- includes a few single edits which were also included on the 2001 Sundazed CD reissue of Part One. Remarkably, despite the Sundazed versions being mastered from tape with excellent sound, the 2023 Grapefruit versions were seemingly mastered from vinyl, with a low-pass shelf around 14 kHz and only meaningless distortion and artifacts above that. 

Spectrogram comparisons for the mono single edit of "Unfree Child".
Top: 2001 Sundazed CD, mastered from tape with full frequency response.
Bottom: 2023 Grapefruit remaster, with truncated frequency response.

 

In summary, the 2023 Grapefruit Records remasters of the Warner/Reprise catalog of WCPAEB is a bitter disappointment. While in-the-works for years, the producers failed to check appropriate sources, neglected to give appropriate credit for the sources that were used, and degenerated to amateurish mastering faults. The anthology is neither definitive nor archival in nature, and while its sprawling 40-page booklet is a wonderful feature, it fails to make up for the hefty $40 price tag. For the original stereo mixes, the Sundazed CDs remain superior listening sources; for the mono ones, the vinyl transfers available here remain untrumped. I suggest to folks who want to own the original mono mixes to track down one of the various Jackpot LP reissues, which appear to have been uncompressed cuts from the surviving WB masters, despite their faults.

The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band - Part One (1967) [Mono Mix]

The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band - Part One

Original 1967 Mono Promo LP
Reprise Records R 6247 (Discogs)
~ThePoodleBites rip at 96 kHz / 24 bit + full high-res scans!~

"Formed in Los Angeles, California in 1965, The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band created music
that possesses an eerily atmospheric and at times sinister quality that is bluntly political, childlike, and bizarre."
~Jackpot Records reissue sticker

The major-label debut from the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band (what a mouthful!) is probably one of the strongest contenders for the band's best LP output. Fittingly matching with the band's title, the album is basically a '60s pop LP comprising, yes, some experimental moments, along with the more mainstream-sounding tracks. A long-time favorite for many collectors, many of the band's most well-remembered recordings fill these grooves. The trippy painting which envelops the sleeve has undoubtedly only contributed to its allure. While not quite attaining "masterpiece" status for me, this record is certainly still a cool and unique part of California hippie-rock history and remains very enjoyable from beginning to end, even 55 years after its release.

Front cover illustration on the first mono pressing of The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band Part One

Perhaps most importantly, the band's main detractor, the controversial lyrics of Bob Markley, seem to make little appearance here, apart from perhaps the tracks "I Won't Hurt You" and "Leiyla". But being pinched between the heavily-stoned compositions like "Shifting Sands" and "1906", and even being heavily stoned-out themselves, it's pretty hard to notice. Other highlights include the great psych-rocker "Transparent Day" and the garagey mushroom-eater "'Scuse Me, Miss Rose". The song credited solely to Dan Harris, "Will You Walk With Me", is actually a cover of the classic Bonnie Dobson track "Morning Dew", though it is so different from the Tim Rose and Grateful Dead versions that you may not recognize it at first. (Unfortunately I've heard so many versions of that song now that it's hard not to liken it to the "Louie, Louie" of psych-folk.)

A cover of Frank Zappa's "Help, I'm A Rock" is attempted as well, and although it's a nice tribute, it's still a far cry from the freakiness of the Mothers' original. Being from L.A., though, it's understandable why these guys had to try. One of the more interesting numbers is a rendition of P.F. Sloan's composition "Here's Where You Belong", which was apparently influential enough that the Grassroots also took a crack at cutting it the following year (but WCPAEB did it much better!). The album is closed out with an instrumental version of Van Dyke Parks' "High Coin", which may be more familiar to some from the Charlatans' version, later released on their LP on Philips in 1969.

Back cover artwork, featuring psychedelicized photos from a live performance of the band

The stereo mix of this album has been available on CD since Sundazed reissued it from the tapes in 2001. While not a totally perfect remaster (it is a bit too loud in some places), it is generally a quite nice-sounding CD; nonetheless, since this album was also treated to both mono and stereo variants upon initial release, many still have rightly wondered what the original album sounded like in its rarer monaural form. In 2017, Jackpot Records finally reissued the first three WCPAEB records in mono, using high-resolution transfers from the original tapes. However, for Part One, there seems to have been some problem with the analog transfer; "choppiness" of the tape noise suggests that the mono tape may have suffered some age-related degradation, or that it was simply transferred using a stereo tape head, producing two channels ever-so-slightly out-of-phase which, when collapsed to mono, caused partial cancellation of the audio during some parts of the recording. 

[ ***UPDATE 2023***: the mono mix has now also seen an inferior CD production; see here. ]

After hearing this problem on the 2017 reissue, I decided to invest in this clean original white-label promotional copy in order to share it here. I was delighted to find that the disc played flawlessly, making this one of the quickest clean-up jobs I've had for a used LP in recent memory. The sound quality is excellent as well: while there's a low-pass filter applied at about 17 kHz, this exactly matches the stereo mix and the mono Jackpot reissue, so it was apparently baked into the master itself.

After recovering from the initial shock of the wide stereo mix disappearing, I became curious about how this mix actually compared to a stereo fold-down. Indeed, while this does appear to be a dedicated mono mix, don't expect any extraordinary missing elements to suddenly appear here: from my comparisons, which I've noted below, it seems that most of that changes between the two are rather small, and were probably intended to "balance out" the sound in mono as opposed to the wide stereo version. I also noted that folding the stereo version sometimes resulted in phase cancellation issues similar to those described above, whereas the original mono LP plays perfectly with no such problems.

Tr. 1-2: Guitar marginally louder, more balanced in the mix
Tr. 3: Lead vocal marginally louder, can be heard above background "ahh" vocals
Tr. 4: Softer vocals. Less loud mix in first half of the song, crescendos more in second half
Tr. 5: Much more balanced mix: louder guitar & xylophone, quieter vocals. Less reverb
Tr. 6: Guitar marginally louder, entire track more dynamic
Tr. 7: Percussion marginally louder, very similar otherwise
Tr. 8: Quieter drums (almost buried) & louder guitars
Tr. 9: Better balance between instrumental track (louder) and vocals (quieter)
Tr. 10: Clearer (louder?) drums, especially the snare
Tr. 11: Drums quieter in intro, but slightly louder & clearer in the "main" part of the song

The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band performing live

Track Listing:
1) Shifting Sands – 3:56
2) I Won't Hurt You – 2:27
3) 1906 – 2:21
4) Help, I'm A Rock – 4:28
5) Will You Walk With Me – 3:02
6) Transparent Day – 2:19
7) Leiyla – 2:56
8) Here's Where You Belong – 2:51
9) If You Want This Love – 2:52
10) 'Scuse Me, Miss Rose – 3:03
11) High Coin – 2:02

Vinyl Condition: M-
Dynamic Range: DR 12

Equipment Lineage:

– Audio-Technica VMN40ML stylus on AT150MLx dual moving-magnet cartridge

– Audio-Technica AT-LP1240-USB direct drive professional turntable (internal stock preamp/ADC removed)

– Pro-Ject Phono Box S2 Ultra preamp with dedicated Zero Zone linear power supply

– Focusrite Scarlett 6i6 MkII (96 kHz / 24 bit)

– Adobe Audition CC 2020 (recording)

– iZotope RX 8 audio editor (manual declicking, EQ subtraction, additional adjustments)

– Audacity 2.3.3 (fades between tracks, split tracks)

– Foobar2000 v1.6.6 (tagging, dynamic range analysis)

 

Full album available on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/SB4bEWKRZTY&list=PLhEBA51qbhIqM5tAW1elBzF9HnPcNzJRP

 

Thanks for taking the time to read my posts and check out my blog. I'd greatly appreciate it if you leave a small comment below. Notes from my readers are what inspire me to keep going. Thanks!
MEGA: https://mega.nz/folder/Ns5gQSBa#eGSp6QKsa-gub6gLQrbRHA

And as usual, enjoy!  :)

The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band onstage with light show, 1967 (source)

The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band - Vol. 2 (1967) [Mono Mix]

The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band - Vol. 2

Original 1967 Mono LP Mix

2017 Jackpot Records JPR 039 (Discogs)

~ThePoodleBites rip at 96kHz/24bit FLAC + full high-res scans!~

If you were to ask three different guys what their favorite West Coast Pop Art LP is, you'd probably get three different answers. By and large, WCPAEB remains one of the most well-known psychedelic rock bands from the L.A. scene (that is, well-known to those who care about such things), and although their album output was quite consistent, none of their records have really stood up as the timeless masterpieces you'd expect given the hype; nonetheless, like all experiments, some are unsuccessful, while others are breakthroughs. The band's second major-label offering, aptly titled Vol. 2 (also Volume II or Volume Two (Breaking Through), depending on where you look), features some of their best tracks, namely "Smell Of Incense," "Suppose We Give A War And No One Comes," and the less-oft-mentioned "Carte Blanche," but otherwise remains relatively inconsistent, for me. Nonetheless, those tracks justify having this album on my shelf in both its stereo and mono forms.

With a band name like this, you immediately get an idea of what to expect from this album. There are elements of experimental music, folk ballads, and of course fuzzed-out acid explosions. The style is admittedly quite varied, which is a plus, but the lyrical content on this album was strongly influenced by bankroller Bob Markley, and frequently ventures into creepy territory -- and not in a good way: it feels like reading a precursor to Nabokov's Lolita while listening to a talented group of guys try their best to make weird, haunting pop songs. Here are some of the my favorite cringe-worthy lines:

"This is an African tribal chant that we wrote" -- spoken by a bunch of white American hippies

"You have a perfectly round tongue... Let me in, let me in! I'll give you candy." -- proclaimed by an emphatic Markley

"You're too young, you're just a child... when you're older, there'll be a place for us" -- oh, God...

"I'd take her riding on my BSA" -- with "BSA" pronounced suspiciously like "penis, eh?"

Several vocals are pretty weak and even a bit out-of-tune, but with the major-label engineering, it was dealt with properly: for example, "Smell Of Incense" wisely used double-tracking with lots of reverb, working to good effect. At the very least, this is a unique LP which has earned its spot in history as a representation of the experimentation that the '60s music scene seems to have come to embody.

Back cover artwork, with Bob Markley's stare occupying most of the real estate

T̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶d̶e̶d̶i̶c̶a̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶m̶o̶n̶o̶ ̶m̶i̶x̶ ̶h̶a̶s̶ ̶n̶e̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶(̶y̶e̶t̶)̶ ̶b̶e̶e̶n̶ ̶r̶e̶i̶s̶s̶u̶e̶d̶ ̶d̶i̶g̶i̶t̶a̶l̶l̶y̶,̶ ̶w̶h̶i̶c̶h̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶b̶i̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶a̶ ̶c̶u̶r̶i̶o̶s̶i̶t̶y̶.̶ ̶I̶ ̶h̶e̶a̶r̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶g̶r̶a̶p̶e̶v̶i̶n̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶c̶o̶u̶p̶l̶e̶ ̶y̶e̶a̶r̶s̶ ̶b̶a̶c̶k̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶a̶ ̶m̶o̶n̶o̶ ̶C̶D̶ ̶b̶o̶x̶s̶e̶t̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶k̶s̶,̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶s̶t̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶h̶a̶s̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶a̶p̶p̶e̶a̶r̶e̶d̶,̶ ̶s̶o̶.̶.̶.̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶e̶'̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶.̶

[ ***UPDATE 2023***: the mono mix has now also seen an inferior CD production; see here. ]

The mono does offer better balance than the stereo version, typical of this period. I bought this reissue a couple years after it came out, and was pleasantly surprised at how excellent it sounded. The audio was sourced from the original 15ips 1-track (mono) mixdown master tape, though probably with some (high-resolution?) digital intermediary. The mastering is pleasant, and the pressing quality is totally superb. It's one of the best reissues I've bought in the last few years. The original might sound better -- but I suspect that it could also sound worse, with the high-end roll-off and inner-groove distortion expected from a '60s mono pop LP. Note that the original mastering notes pictured above call for "HP 55 | LP 12.5," meaning for a high-pass filter at 55 Hz and a low-pass at 12.5 kHz, which isn't that much better frequency response than AM radio.

My dub is from this album's virgin playing, and a full manual restoration only took the matter of a few hours. There is a little bit of noise here and there which is actually on the master, which I left intact: "The Arena" has some audible static, and the baby crying at the end of "Suppose They Give A War" seems to have been dubbed from an LP itself, so there's some light clicks there. I won't enumerate the rest, but you can rest assured that this restoration represents as closely as possible the sound of the mono master tapes as is currently available.

Track Listing:

1) In The Arena -- 4:13

2) Suppose They Give A War And No One Comes -- 3:41

3) Buddha -- 2:09
4) Smell Of Incense -- 5:49
5) Overture - WCPAEB Part II -- 1:32

6) Queen Nymphet -- 2:21

7) Unfree Child -- 4:00

8) Carte Blanche -- 2:45

9) Delicate Fawn -- 2:31

10) Tracy Had A Hard Day Sunday -- 4:27

Vinyl Condition: Mint (virgin playing)

Dynamic Range: DR12

Equipment Lineage:

– Audio-Technica VMN40ML stylus on AT150MLx dual moving-magnet cartridge

– Audio-Technica AT-LP1240-USB direct drive professional turntable (internal stock preamp/ADC removed)

– Pro-Ject Phono Box S2 Ultra preamp with dedicated Zero Zone linear power supply

– Focusrite Scarlett 6i6 MkII (96kHz / 24bit)

– Adobe Audition CC 2020 (recording)

– iZotope RX 7 audio editor (manual declicking, EQ subtraction, additional adjustments)

– Audacity 2.3.3 (fades between tracks, split tracks)

– Foobar2000 v1.5.1 (tagging, dynamic range analysis)

Full album available on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPoPP_61RIc

Thanks for taking the time to read my posts and check out my blog. I'd greatly appreciate it if you leave a small comment below. Notes from my readers are what inspire me to keep going. Thanks!
MEGA: https://mega.nz/folder/ilUyTTxA#6UNb176HthYNb8fN61t8tA

Enjoy! :)