The Rolling Stone website ran an interesting article titled 'Ready for an AI-Boosted ‘Sun Sessions’? Inside the Elvis Presley Archives with Ernst Jorgensen.
In charge of the Elvis Presley catalogue since the late Eighties, Jorgensen, stated that "when the technology’s ready, Jorgensen is hoping for an ambitious, AI-fueled reworking of Presley’s 1950s masterpieces, starting with his epochal recordings at Sun Studios between 1954 and 1956."
Elvis' Sun Studios sessions were originally recorded live to single-track mono tape, which means any real remixes of the songs have always been impossible. But AI de-mixing technology, like Digitally Extracted Stereo advanced rapidly over the past few years and now allows instruments to be separated from a single track.
In the article Jorgensen said that he recently asked Emile de la Rey, who worked on the sound for Peter Jackson’s 'Get Back' Beatles documentary, to do a test remix of the classic 'Good Rockin’ Tonight' using Jackson’s proprietary AI technology. And result he said was "a perfect separation of instruments", and along with the removal of tape hiss, the new versions were "far superior to any more widely available machine-learning methods".
Audio engineer Anthony Stuchbury, who released some great sounding 'Mono II Stereo' releases the past few years was part of this journey added on his Facebook page: "I’ve been sharing my work with Ernst, and there have been many conversations discussing mono to stereo which led to me suggesting the only people I know who could possibly do it better than me, at this moment in time, would be ‘Wingnut’. Ernst asked me which track would be a good test for them, so I suggested ‘Good Rockin’ because I could do everything other than separate the frequency for the acoustic guitar from it. He got in touch with them and after a number of months, voila!"
Rolling Stone continued: Jorgensen is now waiting for access to that level of technology, and once he’s got it, he says, “I’d like to do everything from the fifties. Because even the Sun recordings, they are very simple. There’s an acoustic and electric and a slap bass. But when you open that up, it’s still like a new revelation. It’s not like it becomes thin and you think, ‘Oh, is that all there is?'” A problem is the availability of the original tapes, as many were lost, taped-over or simply destroyed to save money not having to archive them ...
Looking back, the recent 'Memphis' box-set may have been a learning experience. And although Artificial Intelligence tools have been used on the recordings of this set, the stripped back versions of songs like 'In the Ghetto', 'Suspicious Minds' and 'Danny Boy' did learn him that there are many "hidden elements" to be found in Elvis' recordings, which can now be brought to light.
Matt Ross-Spang, who worked on these recordings using his analog equipment as much as possible in his Memphis-based Southern Grooves Studio said about the so-called 1976 'Jungle Room Sessions': “They show a more focused Elvis than people think, you can hear how engaged and driven he was during those recordings.”
Vintage Rock published it's annual Elvis special. This year's single issue magazine is titled 'Elvis: The Ultimate Album Guide' with a complete in-depth overview of Elvis' discography.
Publicity stated: 'Elvis – The Ultimate Album Guide' takes a deep dive into the King's LP career. From his incendiary 1956 debut through to his final album in 1977, via the live records, compilations and remixes, this is your complete guide to Elvis' long-players.
Promoting her mother's biography, Riley Keough did an interview and photoshoot for the Australian Harper Bazar.
(Source: Rolling Stone / Facebook / Vintage Rock / Pascal Matteo / Harper Bazar)
