Revinylization

Sometimes artists walk away from a final mix, heads shaking after a reluctant sign-off. They've long since thrown up their collective hands, whether they've given in to immovable production deadlines, creative disagreements among band personnel, conflicts with the producers and engineers, or some combination of the above. This is essentially what British prog outfit Gentle Giant did with their 1973 LP In a Glass House. "The music was really good, but the sound was not," vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Derek Shulman told me during a recent Zoom interview. "The drums are so dry, and the bass was buried."

Columbia, which was Gentle Giant's US label, refused to release In a Glass House Stateside. They thought it was (their word) "uncommercial." Maybe they were comparing it to the band's more accessible previous album, 1972's Octopus. In a Glass House—GG's fifth studio album—comprised six songs ostensibly exploring the adage "Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones." It was released overseas in 1973 by Vertigo/WWA.

In a Glass House became a surprise import favorite that year, as Gentle Giant fans gravitated toward its challenging songs, especially "An Inmates Lullaby" and the title track. But as Shulman said, the production didn't do the album justice.

In our interview, Shulman told me what was wrong with the original album's sound and feel. "It was written and recorded so quickly, in a period of time where we were trying to find ourselves again as a five-piece," he said. (His eldest brother, trumpeter/saxophonist Phil Shulman, had left the six-man GG after Octopus, and he wasn't replaced.) "We had an American tour coming up, and we literally wrote and recorded the album in something like four or five weeks. Obviously, we didn't have time to put the right finishing touches on it. Had we had enough time back in the day, we would have maybe raised Ray [Shulman]'s bass to make it more punchy and had John [Weathers]'s drums less dry."

It took some 50 years for technology to hand Shulman and Brooklyn-based producer Eber Pinheiro (Gilberto Gil, Chick Corea) the tools they needed to give In a Glass House a proper scrub. It became available in August on both 180gm black and 180gm ultraclear vinyl via Madfish Records. There's also a CD/Blu-ray combo with Pinheiro's mind-boggling Dolby Atmos mix on the Blu-ray. Madfish even took care to replicate the original 1973 UK LP's die-cut cover, complete with its cellophane overlaid 3D effect, which wasn't done for an earlier reissue, in 2009, on GG's own Alucard imprint.

Around 20 months ago, Shulman handed the original half-inch Glass House tapes over to Pinheiro to let him work his magic by extracting the stems, something he hadn't previously thought possible, because it hadn't been. "We were able to break the stems down into the instruments themselves, individually. But with every track, we were very careful to keep what was played, and we made sure the feel and the atmosphere was the same as it was—or should have been—on the original album," Shulman explained. "Eber had the software and the technology for us to actually have a real remix of this album. We spent a lot of time and care bringing it back to something we wish we'd have done in 1973."

To these ears, on the 2026 reissue, a song like "A Reunion"—which features an understated lead vocal from Derek accompanied by his brother Ray's "gentle" violin lines—carries much more weight, akin to having a windshield wiper clear away lingering sonic debris. The annoying surface noise I encountered during the quieter sections of "Experience" on my copy of the 2009 Glass House LP is thankfully nowhere to be found on my ultraclear vinyl edition. Shulman cited "Way of Life" as one example of how well the reclamation project went. Certain parts of that side 1–ending track that he felt were buried in the original mix were brought back to life. "At the end of the song, there's that majestic theme, and then the countertheme Kerry plays." Shulman is referring to Kerry Minnear, GG's keyboardist. "It's gonna sound weird for me to say it to you like this, but it gives me chills. And when music gives you chills, you know you've got something.

"We spent hours and hours making sure the placement of the cymbal, the sound of the kick, and the bass were there again," Shulman said. "Ray would have loved this." Ray Shulman passed away at age 73 in March 2023. "My younger brother's not around anymore, but he's smiling somewhere in the ether for sure.

"I don't want to sound pretentious, but one thing about our music was, the parts and the themes were written in a semi-orchestral way," Derek continued. "Kerry has a degree in composition from the Royal Academy of Music, and Ray was a classically trained violinist. So, our music has a classical feel as well as elements of rock'n'roll, the blues, and everything else. Bass parts go into a certain theme, and even the vocals are part of the theme of a specific piece of music. Everyone was pushing each other in different directions. We were learning as we went along, and I think that's the essence of what Gentle Giant is."

Fifty-three years later, a freshly remixed Glass House stands tall and clear.