Robert Baird

Recently, I opened a package and there was a pair of records that feature Elvis Presley's voice singing over a new rhythm track and new orchestral accompaniment played by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Both are huge hits in the UK and the US, having sold over a million copies each. My eyes instinctively narrowed. A cynical smile curled across my lips. "Gimmick" I dissed with a whisper.

But wait! Much as elitist music fans like to get snobby and disparage anything that sells, sometimes you just have to open your ears, hold your nose, stifle the facetiousness and just listen. Everything that's popular cannot be unlistenable garbage right? It was with this egalitarian ideal firmly in my mind that I decided to sit down, suspend my prejudices and listen to the "new" Elvis Christmas record, Elvis Presley Christmas with Elvis and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

The idea behind this sales goliath is to strip out the vocals from his classic 1957 Christmas record, Elvis' Christmas Album, which has sold somewhere over 20 million copies and is the largest-selling domestic Christmas album of all time. Then tracks by the original backing band of Scotty Moore, Bill Black, and D.J. Fontana, were either augmented or supplanted by new rhythm tracks recorded at Bunker and Shin Studios in London, UK. Next, the Royal Phil convened at Abbey Road Studio 2 to put on headphones, listen to the young Elvis sing while they sight-read a new orchestral accompaniment.

Again, gimmicks like this naturally raise my cynical hackles but I waded in and listened a number of times. Aware that this was quite an undertaking, a project with many moving parts, I decided to hook up a chat with Nick Patrick who, along with Don Reedman, produced this project, as well as the other two aforementioned Elvis/Royal Phil collaborations, The Wonder of You and If I Can Dream, as well as a new Roy Orbison record, A Love So Beautiful, all of which are products of the same process.

"There are really two processes," Patrick told me last week. "The Wonder of You and If I Can Dream were very similar but the Christmas record was very different because we only had mono recordings.

"For the first two, we'd get all the multitracks, listen through them, and start replacing the rhythm section. That's all done to a tempo mat that is created so they follow the ebb and flow of the original recordings. They also have to match his voice so there isn't a disconnect when his vocal is sitting with a newly recorded rhythm track. The tempos have to match exactly."

"On the second record, "If I Can Dream," there were a couple of mono tracks and so we developed a piece of software that could partially extract a vocal out of a mixed track and increase the vocal level between 6 and 8dB more than on the original recording. On the mono recordings, it helped us to treat the vocal in more isolation and apply the restoration process that we were able to do on the multitracks, where he was pretty much separate. On the Christmas record, we used it on every track because, apart from the additional tracks, they were all mono records.

The additional tracks he speaks of, all of which come from multitrack sources, are "Oh Come, All Ye Faithful," "The First Noel", "Silver Bells" "Merry Christmas Baby" and "Winter Wonderland."

The key, according to Patrick, was keeping enough elements of the original track so that it would seamlessly and effectively mesh with the new recordings.

"Just having shiny new elements and expecting his vocals to sit in there perfectly wouldn't have worked. We need to have that sonic bridge which some of the original track supplied."

Judge for yourself from the link below, but the results of this idea, which was approved by Priscilla Presley who wrote the liner notes, is much grander, has more sweep, than any previous Elvis Christmas recording. The orchestra is mixed into the background and the focus does stay on Presley's voice. Despite being something of a Frankenstein, the sound of this record is fairly rich if detectably artificial.

"We always approach these projects as new records, not as a rehash of catalog," Patrick says. "We want them to sound like new Elvis Presley records. But also to have an aesthetic that could bring in an audience that listens to bootlegs and all manner of records. New projects that presented him in a way that utterly protected his legacy, which I have to say wasn't always the case in his recording career. They are entirely different but they feel the same. They are meant to connect with his existing fan base but also take it further by giving it an aesthetic and environment that he feels utterly natural in."