Sunday, March 6, 2011

Nico - 1974-12-13 - Reims Cathedral France - Remastered


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2 comments:

Dr. Forrester said...

Nico
Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Reims
Place du Cardinal-Luçon
Reims, France
December 13, 1974
Opening for Tangerine Dream

Compiled from a French FM radio broadcast *
and an audience recording ^
Sources combined where possible )(
Occasional editing was used to smooth tape pauses
and to remove all Francophone radio host commentary

1. Janitor of Lunacy (4:21) ^ )(
2. The Falconer (5:38) )(
3. Valley of the Kings (3:29) )(
4. The End (The Doors) (9:32) )(
5. Abschied (3:05) *
6. Mütterlein (4:26) ^
7. Frozen Warnings (4:44) ^
8. You Forget to Answer (4:49) ^
9. We’ve Got the Gold (4:50) ^
10. No One is There (4:04) ^
11. Ari’s Song (Encore) (3:09) ^


I've included some decent cover art in a separate file folder
with a few nice Nico photos from around this time period,
along with a few interior shots of the Reims Cathedral
to give you an idea of this performance space.
I've also included a scan of a ticket stub from this show,
which I believe I somehow got from this upload
of the Tangerine Dream show.
http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-details.php?id=124436
This artwork will also be uploaded as separate attachments.

I also included an amusing excerpt from an article about the show
from a Circus Magazine from 1975.

----------------------------
Known Lineage FM Broadcast : FM French radio broadcast > unknown generation cassette > CDR > Wavelab 4.01 Remastering > WAV > FLAC8
----------------------------------
Known Lineage Audience recording : Master Cassette from the taper > CDR > Wavelab 4.01 > WAV > FLAC8
----------------------------------
Details :
---------

Basically I was given two rare recordings of this concert
and this is a compilation and a combined version
of both of these shows removing the French DJ commentary
that was present on the FM broadcast version.

The FM broadcast portion although from an official radio broadcast
and of much better quality, does not seem to accurately convey
the magnitude and ambience of this extraordinary venue,
which is amply evident in the audience version of this recording.
I found that by combining the two together, you get the best of both.
Unfortunately this was only possible for about 1/3 of the show
as the FM broadcast was quite short.

The audience recording was pitch matched to the FM Broadcast version,
which is very close to Nico's performance on the official June 1, 1974 CD.
The Indian harmonium she used was not a perfectly tuned instrument
and so digital analysis is not an accurate reference.

The audience portion aside from the pitch correction is untouched,
but the FM broadcast portion required some mid range compression
to reduce giant volume spikes in Nico's vocals.
There was a fair amount of hiss present as well that was removed
as this is more than compensated by the ambience of the audience
recording which had plenty of nice high end frequencies.
A widening of the stereo separation was also applied to match
the audience recording and because it sounded better in my opinion.

The first two minutes of Janitor of Lunacy is missing from the FM broadcast,
so it begins with only the audience recording.

The beginning few bars of Abschied was subbed from a show
at the Squat Theatre in 1980 to assist in the removal of the DJ dialogue.
Oddly this song was missing from the more complete audience recording,
likely due to a tape flip.

The remainder of the show is only the audience version and is
not present in the broadcast without dialogue on top.

Also of note is the rare encore of Ari's Song.
This may be the only recorded live performance of this
classic from the Marble Index record.

A number of liberties were taken to simulate transitions between tracks
as the audience taper shut his recorder off between every song.
Infinitely preferable to the jarring Francophone DJ interruptions.
If anyone has the pre-FM broadcast tapes, please contact me
and I would be thrilled to upgrade this further.

Enjoy !

March 6, 2011 at 3:07 AM
Anonymous said...

Now here's an intriguing thing.

I had this boot before on mp3. The difference is the boot was credited to Nico AND Tangerine Dream with one extra track "Atmospherics" at the end.

The last track is typical TD, 15 minutes long with no Nico evident. I had assumed till now that they must be backing her on some of the earlier tracks.

I do know that TD played Reims Cathedrale December 13, 1974 but given your download doesn't credit them, I have to assume that the earlier mp3 copy was incorrect.

Still an interesting idea Nico and Tangerine Dream.

March 7, 2011 at 1:35 AM

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