Atmos Redeemed

When the history of 20th Century American music is written at a sufficient remove from its creation and initial consumption, three white poet/songsmiths will figure prominently within a larger universe dominated by people of color. Bob Dylan will likely be designated the most influential but two Canadians will also have their champions. The late Leonard Cohen, respected as much for his written word output as for his darkly evocative songs, will loom large. And Roberta Joan “Joni” Mitchell, whose worldview developed in a small Saskatchewan town and matured in the cultural maelstrom of Los Angeles, is the literary equal of her two male colleagues and, many would say, a more accomplished musician. Rhino Records has been honoring the artist with their ongoing Joni Mitchell Archives project and has recently reissued her first four albums for Asylum Records on music-only Blu-ray discs that hold high-resolution stereo, quadraphonic, and Dolby Atmos mixes that demonstrate, perhaps for the first time, the potential for the last of these formats to reveal the full musical meaning of the best popular music.

The content of the four albums requires little comment other than to acknowledge the fecundity of Mitchell’s imagination, her probing stylistic adventurousness, and her gift for combining the highly personal with the universal—often with a uniquely female perspective—in songs that never seem dated. For the Roses (1972) followed the masterpiece Blue (1971) and continued to manifest Mitchell’s folk beginnings, even as she was moving towards the pop/rock spirit of Court and Spark (1973), her greatest commercial success with more than two million copies sold to date, and songs one can still encounter, unbidden, on a daily basis—“Help Me,”  “Free Man in Paris,” “Raised on Robbery.” Rolling Stone magazine included Miles of Aisles (1974) in their list of the 50 best live albums. Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, which included players the songwriter frequently tapped for studio work, provided fresh, alert support for Mitchell, who demonstrates she’s a first-rate performer herself. The Hissing of Summer Lawns (1975) shows Joni edging ever-closer to a jazz esthetic.

The recordings were all originally engineered by Henry Lewy. They were released during the fleeting era of commercial four-channel sound, the late 1960s through the mid-70s, and two of the four, Court and Hissing, were issued as CD4 Quad LPs. Miles of Aisles was actually mixed for Quad but never released as such; that version sees the light of day here for the first time in 50 years. Bruce Botnick, best known for producing The Doors’ L.A. Woman, prepared a new four-channel mix of For the Roses. Rhino calls its high-resolution remasterings of quadraphonic originals “Quadio,” and that catalogue currently number about 20 albums, with artists ranging from Gil Evans to Randy Newman to Alice Cooper. The Atmos mixes for the Rhino set, prepared by Ken Caillat and Claus Trelby, are the audio option that will receive the most attention. Caillat, a half-century earlier, had been an assistant engineer for the Miles of Aisles recording and went on to co-found 5.1 Entertainment Group, a company specializing in multichannel mixing and mastering. Trelby has extensive spatial audio experience as well. It’s been reported that Joni Mitchell herself monitored their work and made occasional suggestions regarding this new treatment of her recordings from five decades previously.