Immersive Audio Album has published a 51-minute video interview with the band and producer Ian Beabout, recorded shortly after the release of the hi-res Dolby Atmos edition of Morri’s Rock Boutique.
The conversation is hosted by Jonathan Cornell, who mixed the record in Atmos, and it turns on a detail that predates the remix by years: Ian has said that much of the tracking and stereo mixing on Refestramus records was already done with a future immersive iteration in mind. The interview picks that thread up and follows it through to what the surround and height channels finally did with all those layered vocals and keyboards.
It also covers the forming of the band, the reference points behind the sound — classic American pomp rock on one side, the more adventurous end of British prog on the other, plus Procol Harum, Bob Ezrin’s productions, and Ghost — the songwriting and recording process, building up the vocal arrangements, playing this material live, and what comes next for Refestramus. Along the way everyone is asked to name a favorite track on the record; “Hell or NYC” and “The Lucky Ones” both get a hearing.
Immersive Audio Album again reaches for the tag it used in its Atmos write-up, describing the band as “The Punks of Prog” for a refusal to sit neatly inside any one subgenre.
Watch the full interview: https://youtu.be/6SCl6PfYRk0
The immersive edition — Dolby Atmos, 5.1 surround, binaural and the original stereo mix, with a visualizer film for all nine tracks — is available from Immersive Audio Album.