Mission and Structure of PRRP

Progressive Rock developed out of the culture and musical events of the 1960's and 1970's. Bands such as Genesis, Yes, Pink Floyd, Camel, Jethro Tull, ELP and King Crimson charted a new direction for Rock music. This progressive movement was then taken through the 1980's by bands such as Marillion and I.Q., just to name a few. During the decades of the 1970's and 80's many live recordings were made of these bands. Some were broadcast on local radio stations, others were recorded straight off the soundboard and a large number were recorded by audience members.

The purpose of the Progressive Rock Remastering Project (PRRP) is to help preserve, restore and enhance these recordings as much as possible. With modern digital audio engineering equipment many of these recordings can be made to sound substantially better than the original. Further, many of these recordings were stored on cassette tape or LP and converted to CD many years ago. The original sources still exist and modern digitization equipment can often capture subtleties within the music previously missed. Other remastering projects within the progressive rock genre do exist and we applaud their efforts. It is our purpose to complement these other projects so that the best sounding live progressive rock can be made available.

We intend to make PRRP recordings available for trade and distribution by torrent and a vining process. They will not be sold and should not be bought. Each recording produced by our efforts will carry the PRRP logo on the artwork for easy identification. Artwork will be generated for each show which will hopefully reproduce the images and words of the time and the event.

We seek the help of other fans of progressive rock who would like to participate in our project. Anyone with a master or 1st generation recording of live progressive rock on tape, LP or CD is encouraged to contact us for consideration of their material. If your show is remastered by PRRP we will ask you to help by providing information about the show and the recording which can be included in the release. We intend to focus our efforts on the bands listed above but will consider any band's recording if they are within the progressive rock genre.

PRRP Show Series

PRRP began with a single series of remastered recordings. Each PRRP is numbered sequentially as they were released. With the first anniversary of PRRP we decided to release a very special show, with great meaning to all of use here at PRRP. We gave that show the sub-title “Special Anniversary Edition” or PRRPSAE. Since that time we have made a point of having a special show mark the anniversary of our beginning and each is released as a special anniversary edition. Thus, we have a special section of PRRP called the PRRPSAE series.

After the first few years, we decided that our interest in remastering Genesis recordings was such that we also created a separate numbered series of PRRP releases just devoted to the band Genesis. You will see Genesis recordings as part of the early PRRP series but all future PRRP remastered Genesis shows will be released as part of the PRRPGS name. As a matter or scheduling, we at PRRP will try to alternate regular PRRP releases with PRRPGS Genesis recording releases. Once a year, in February, we will add the PRRPSAE release. A release will occur every 6 to 8 weeks but this may vary depending on the intrusion of life on our musical pursuits.

Remastering

The process begins by listening to the original recording. Notes are made regarding audible imperfections, balance, tonality, volume and noise. Most live recordings require adjustment in volume as well as removal of noise (hiss, clicks and pops). Where appropriate, equalization is applied. This is most helpful when the source is an old tape muffled by over-whelming bass. Despite our efforts, most remastered works are imperfect. Audience microphones often have limitations in frequency response and suffer from the effects of microphone location. However, much of the noise from cassette tape and microphones can be removed. Complete noise removal will often degrade the music therefore a compromise is always made in this process. The philosophy should be to make the recording as good as possible. Finally, all of these works are written to disc using “disc at once” recording to maintain gap-less audio. Once the remastered version is made, it is compared to the original recording and reviewed on a number of audio systems. Based on this review final adjustments are made in the audio before a final remastered version is produced. The audio is then converted to FLAC files to produce a loss-less compressed archive version, ready for torrenting.

Artwork

Artwork is intended to be original. There are plenty of photos, tour book covers and images available for the artistically minded to work with. We produce artwork for each show that reflects the time of the recording and the state of the band at the time of the concert. Ideally photos from the actual concert should be used but other artistic images from the band's tour at the time can be used as well. If photos from the original recording can be found, they become are highest priority. Liner notes are also written for each show and are included in the artwork. These notes are intended to provide historical and -we hope- educational information about the band and the music of the time. These notes, along with the details of the remaster process are also contained in a documentation file (DOC) which is included in the torrent of the show and is also available on our website.

Torrents

Each show is initially released via torrent on the Genesis-torrent site or the Dimeadozen site. The torrent includes the FLAC files of the show, the DOC file mentioned above, the artwork (JPEG) files and a small info text file containing the track listing, track times, show venue and date. The torrent page will contain the info text file material as well as a reference to our website.

PRRP Staff

Should you wish to contact PRRP, please direct your questions / comments by clicking the addresses below to send us an email:

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