As someone who was quite vocal about Niko Bolas' strange [and incongruous to Prince's usual style] of mixing, I have to say Chris James is a vast improvement.

The live mixing of Syracuse, Glam Slam 91 and Welcome 2 America have been fantastic. A perfect balance of clarity across the direct inputs of the instruments/ vocals and audience/ ambience.

In terms of studio recordings, he impressed me with the Do Me Baby demo, but the few tracks on the Diamonds and Pearls SDE have really shown he tried to mix to the sound of that era. My Tender Heart is particularly stunning and Cream is reasonably close to the original, given its rougher nature.

Hopefully the new Estate keeps him around.

(And for those unaware, he mixed Prince's last few albums as well.)

yeah he did great work....I do think that one cringe part of Cream....maybe... could have been if not edited out....did they have to use a close up?

I agree.

Chris is a much better mixer when it comes to Prince.

Not saying Bolas is bad but he just was totally ignorant of Prince's works and you could tell by the way he'd mixed his songs.

I wouldn't say Chris' work is perfect but he knows what he's doing plus it's obvious he's a Prince fan contrary to Bolas who discovered his music in 2018.

I hope the Estate will stick with him too.

[Edited 11/15/23 0:08am]

OnlyNDaUsa said:

bluegangsta said:

As someone who was quite vocal about Niko Bolas' strange [and incongruous to Prince's usual style] of mixing, I have to say Chris James is a vast improvement.

The live mixing of Syracuse, Glam Slam 91 and Welcome 2 America have been fantastic. A perfect balance of clarity across the direct inputs of the instruments/ vocals and audience/ ambience.

In terms of studio recordings, he impressed me with the Do Me Baby demo, but the few tracks on the Diamonds and Pearls SDE have really shown he tried to mix to the sound of that era. My Tender Heart is particularly stunning and Cream is reasonably close to the original, given its rougher nature.

Hopefully the new Estate keeps him around.

(And for those unaware, he mixed Prince's last few albums as well.)

Do I ever agree...don't forget Dylan Dresdow. He did work on at least Phase 2 (Baltimore and Stare).

The only thing I will say is that whoever (I think it was Chris) that mixed the Syracuse show for 2 channel put too much crowd noise. I only know this after hearing someone reduce it and remix it from the blu ray audio tracks. The improvement was amazing.

Everything feels very defined and in its place, well balanced. I have no complaints.

No complaints here overall. I just find some of the audience noise on Glam Slam 1992 a bit weird (are they from the recording or have they been overdubbed?).

Yes, the package sounds sooo good. Hope he stays.

olb99 said: