Octave Records released its third album on November 16, an exclusive Direct-To-Master high-resolution audio reissue of Hey Joe Opus | Red Meat by blues/rock artist Otis Taylor. Winner of multiple Downbeat and other awards and a member of the Colorado Music Hall of Fame, singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Otis Taylor is the founder of the annual Trance Blues Festival. He has spent a lifetime creating and perfecting his signature trance blues style, rooted in blues and blues/rock yet reaching beyond convention with Taylor’s deep improvisations and category-defying playing.
In addition to electric and acoustic guitar, Taylor plays banjo, mandolin and harmonica. On Hey Joe Opus | Red Meat he’s joined by world-class musicians including band members Todd Edmunds (bass), Taylor Scott (guitar), Larry Thompson (drums) and Anne Harris (violin). Other musicians on the album include Warren Haynes on guitar, plus Langhorne Slim (backing vocals), David Matthew Moore (banjo), Ron Miles (cornet), Gus Skinas and Steve Vidaic (keyboards), and The String Cheese Incident’s Bill Nershi on guitar.
The hybrid SACD features a unique format. Tracks 1 – 10 are in pure high-resolution Direct Stream Digital (DSD), and tracks 11 – 20 are from a vinyl needle drop to DSD from a 45 RPM DMM (Direct Metal Master) release from record company and cable manufacturer in-akustik.
Hey Joe Opus | Red Meat is available in a limited-edition release of 1,500 gold-pressed hybrid SACD discs with the master SACD layer and a CD layer. In addition, the album is available as a download bundle including DSD64, DSDDirect Mastered 192kHz/24-bit, 96kHz/24-bit and 44.1kHz/24-bit PCM.
Hey Joe Opus | Red Meat features eight Otis Taylor originals and two versions of the classic “Hey Joe,” presented in two parts. How does an artist breathe new life into “Hey Joe,” a song that’s been covered by everyone from Jimi Hendrix to Patti Smith? Taylor does it with heart, fire and incandescent guitar playing and Ron Miles’ cornet playing providing impassioned counterpoint. Taylor’s originals span a wide range from the rocking funk of “Cold at Midnight” to the echo guitar and cornet-fueled contemplative instrumental, “They Wore Blue,” to the slow-blues shuffle, “The Heart is a Muscle (Used for the Blues)” and the up-tempo acoustic guitar and banjo fingerpicking of “Peggy Lee.”
The album was originally recorded at Boulder, Colorado’s Immersive Sound, engineered and mixed by Mike Yach and mastered by David Glasser at Boulder’s Airshow Mastering. It was remastered from the original Direct Stream Digital (DSD) master mixes by Octave Records’ Gus Skinas in pure high-resolution DSD using the Octave Records’ DSDDirect Mastering process. The sonic result is a recording with exceptional presence, detail, clarity and dynamics.
The reissue production of Hey Joe Opus | Red Meat was done using a Sonoma digital audio workstation (DAW) in pure one-bit DSD and mixed on an analog console. During mastering, the album was monitored on ATC SCM50 and Infinity IRS V loudspeakers driven by PS Audio BHK Mono 300 power amplifiers.
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