Sound engineer John Stewart has never fallen out of love with DJ Danger Mouse's genius 2004 Grey Album, a mashup of the Beatles' White Album and Jay-Z's Black Album (and neither have I). He's got a golden ear, and over the years, the little audio infelicities in his copy have been niggling at him, so he undertook a complete, crisp, and beautiful remaster of the album. You can download the tracked-out album from MediaFire, or listen on SoundCloud.

It’s got plenty of advantages too: Revisiting The Grey Album with an expert ear gave Stewart the ability to pinpoint its audio flaws, and his professional experience gave him the agency to do something about it. Stewart says he first got the idea to remaster The Grey Album on Wednesday, Nov. 21, but it didn’t really click until that Saturday. On Sunday he set out to improve the album’s audio, tinkering with various faders in ProTools until he achieved the desired effect: “I just kind of put the sonics on steroids,” he says. Stewart knocked out the entire project that day and uploaded The Grey Album (Remastered) to SoundCloud and MediaFire on Monday. In the few passing days since releasing the updated version of The Grey Album it’s been covered by sites such as The Source and FACT Magazine, and a swarm of fans have reached out to Stewart to thank him. “A lot of people have thought that it needed to be remastered,” he says. “So it worked out.”
Stewart says he’s seen people from around the world flock to him—he said his website received about 200 hits from Hungary on Tuesday alone—though personal fame wasn’t the goal. “I wasn’t putting it out to be discovered,” Stewart says. The digital artwork for The Grey Album (Remastered) does include his name on the back cover (“I’ve always enjoyed seeing my name in credits,” he says), but that’s also part of what he considers a pragmatic move. “I wanted people to be aware it was something different,” he says. Among the subtle changes Stewart made to the artwork is a bold border, which also covers up the lower half of his name. It’s more or less a reminder that this is Danger Mouse’s original product, just with a new polish.

EMI mercilessly censored the original release, chasing down people all over the world for having the audacity to share what Danger Mouse had freely given, and which Paul McCartney and Jay-Z had endorsed. I wonder if they'll do it again?

The Story Behind The Newly Remastered Version Of 'The Grey Album' [Forbes] (via Waxy)

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I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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TheOven

I was just listening to this the other day. Good times.
OoerictoO

looks like he just plopped “Re-Mastered” on it in powerpoint and went on his way. no attempt to match typographically. i’m glad people seem to think the audio stuff is masterful… headed off for a listen
- http://memoid.tumblr.com/ memoid
  
  “Lorem ipsumRemastered”
http://twitter.com/Davidbench David Bench

Sounds infinitely better :)
http://twitter.com/loquaciousmusic Ben Gott

Remastered LOUD. That’s a bummer. It would’ve been much more enjoyable to hear the intricacies.
- http://theladyfingers.blogspot.com/ Ladyfingers
  
  Yeah, it’s totally brickwalled.
  - hadlockk
    
    Hopefully someone remasters the remaster; whatever improvements were made, I certainly can’t hear them.
- http://downlode.org/ Hex
  
  Seriously. I couldn’t even listen to more than a few seconds – hugely disappointing. Louder does not equal better.
- http://theladyfingers.blogspot.com/ Ladyfingers
  
  Actually, to be fair, it looks like the original was flat as a pancake too: http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/details.php?id=4817
  - Sam Ley
    
    Wow, great resource, I’m going to have to look at that more closely and maybe make some submissions. I was just imagining that it would be nice to have a dynamic range database for music…
- http://anomicofficedrone.com/ AnomicOfficeDrone
  
  The loudness is a bit out of hand, but the sound is improved over the original.
  - http://theladyfingers.blogspot.com/ Ladyfingers
    
    -4dBFS RMS FTW!
http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby

Awesome, haven’t listened to this in years!
franko

i’ve never tired of this album, either. i can’t believe it’s been out for so long already.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=521240745 Ryan Griffin

“niggling nabobs of negativism” -how I feel about BB trolls. on topic-looking forward to hearing this remaster.
Ashen Victor

I fond the Grey Albun here long time ago and I have never stopped listening it…
THANKS!
http://www.ikaink.net Itsumishi

Paul McCartney and Jay-Z had no right to endorse the original album! Don’t people realise record companies control the rights of artists music for the good of music fans everywhere!
Pheckphul

If Stewart cares so much about sound quality why didn’t be post a lossless version as well?
- Sam Ley
  
  Not sure, maybe the masters he was working with weren’t high enough quality to justify a lossless version?
  - http://twitter.com/_thejohnstewart The John Stewart
    
    Precisely
http://theladyfingers.blogspot.com/ Ladyfingers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
Sam Ley

It is definitely mastered for the car stereo, rather than the headphones, but I suppose I don’t mind – that is usually where I blast the Grey Album anyway. I do wish it wasn’t quite so heavily compressed for normal listening.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_QRR5BOIQUEPTR6ZV7KCXY6C6CE Steve

it doesn’t matter if God himself gave his nod to D. Mouse. EMI owns the copyright, they control what can and can not be done with it. Don’t like it, get the laws changed.
- http://www.facebook.com/kbenedek Karl Benedek
  
  Yeah, OK I’ll get right on that.
  - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_QRR5BOIQUEPTR6ZV7KCXY6C6CE Steve
    
    How else would you suggest changing the laws?
    - http://www.facebook.com/kbenedek Karl Benedek
      
      I’m more interested in changing the interpretation of the laws that describe fair transformative use. But since I’m too lazy to go to law school, I’ll just work on changing the culture by downloading this album (again) and spreading the word.
kawayama

Can I have a version without Jay-Z, please?
zaba

Is this what you are looking for? http://www.amazon.com/The-White-Album-Beatles/dp/B0025KVLU6

Or, did I miss the whoosh?
http://twitter.com/bradbelltv Brad Bell

I feel this was really let down by bad metadata. The files come in untagged. iTunes can’t tell the difference between the files. I ended up trashing the originals and losing all the metadata. Now I wish I’d kept the original. Archive.org saves the day by providing the tagged original:
http://archive.org/details/DjDangerMouse-TheGreyAlbum
- http://twitter.com/_thejohnstewart The John Stewart
  
  it’s a shame that you would be ‘let down’ by receiving something for free and then needing to do 10 seconds of work so that it appears as you like every time you listen.

Grey Album remastered by golden-eared engineer

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