4 out of 5

Label: Landland Colportage

Produced by: Dave Gardner (remastered by)

Between remasterer Dave Gardner’s work on the more rocking As Seen From Above and the smoothed out sounds of Battle Champions, I was hopeful for his take on the John McEntire-recorded, inching-toward-Tortoise third release, Millions of Brazilians: he’d warmed up Albini’s isolated rock sound on the debut, but could only play with the nuances on Champions, as that album already struggled from being half-in / half-out of different post-rock sounds. What would he do with McEntire’s (to my ears) overly slick mix?

My hope was fulfilled: just as he’d taken the more raw Dianogah sound on Above and fleshed it out, the same is true when dealing with the kinda sorta opposite of that sound on Brazilians: from the opening notes / beats of the album, it’s clear that Gardner is – again, to my ears – appropriately bottoming the levels out, trying to add in edge which had been polished away. In Steve’s world, it’s all very cold due to sounds being flat – as though recorded in a sealed, brick box. McEntire does a headphones thing – as in making the sounds a bit more intimate – but it’s very cleaned up, to the point of again feeling flat. Gardner took it upon himself to widen the scope; get more of a feeling or range and organicness to things. The album, for the most part, sounds like a live band, touched up by some click production here and there.

The one catch is that there are tracks that were initially very manipulated / polished that Dave maybe pushes on too far to get some grit back in. This blows out the bass sound in a way that circles back to sounding somewhat artificial; by my opinion, tracks like Pitufina are superior in the original master for this reason.

Regardless, we again get a remaster that provides a very unique experience compared to its prior version without betraying what I take to be core tenets of the band’s sound, making it worthwhile to own and give time to both.