Japan | Swing | Live on Old Grey Whistle Test | 21 December 1980 | Remastered

Continuing my mission to improve upon Japan’s online video legacy, here’s my remastered version of their classic 1980 OGWT live performance of Swing. • The December ’80 Old Grey Whistle Test show is currently the only live Japan performance footage of note in circulation from the Polaroids era. Fortunately, sound and vision quality of the broadcast is basically excellent, as one would expect from the BBC. However, the BBC audio mix is problematic. It is mono, it lacks depth and Sylvian’s vocal is very dry and way too loud in the mix. And because the vocal is so loud, and some crude limiter must have been applied to the overall track, when Sylvian sings, the level of the backing track suddenly drops significantly. What to do? I asked my pal the producer Particledots, if he could look in his box of magic tricks for an solution. Particledots came up with a technical miracle - he managed to separate the vocal and the backing track almost 100% cleanly. And so with the two separated tracks, I was able to work on them individually. Adding limiter and compression to the backing track, I was able to stabilize the wildly changing volume levels. To Sylvian’s vocal, I added some subtle reverb and other effects. Then individually, both tracks were EQ’d and had a little fake stereo added to them. Lastly, when recombining the two tracks back together, I kept the vocal track much lower in the mix than on the original version. On the visual side, I combined two different sources of the footage, and by adding various filters I could create a clean, optimized version. Thanks for watching, hope you dig it! • Credits Audio and Video Source: Japan • Swing • Live on Old Grey Whistle Test • 21 December 1980 • BBC TV Musicians: David Sylvian • vocals, guitar, synthesiser Rob Dean • guitar Richard Barbieri • synthesiser, keyboards Mick Karn • bass, saxophone Steve Jansen • drums, percussion, synthesiser • Always more videos to follow, so please keep your electric eye on me babe! I don’t own the rights, and I’m not making any money out of this etc. Just a fan making videos for other fans. Please Share, Like, Comment, Subscribe TheNachoVideos@ I edit, therefore I am #Japan #DavidSylvian #Swing #GentlemenTakePolaroids