In a recent interview Bruce mentioned that he and Roy Z. are remixing Balls To Picasso and Skunkworks to make them heavier and more modern sounding, and may reintroduce some dropped guitar parts or even add some new ones.
Personally, I’m pretty interested to hear these. Balls To Picasso has the most to gain from this, I think. I have more trepidation about Skunkworks, since it has a very particular sound to it, though I can imagine how some songs would benefit from a thicker feel.
Wow. This is certainly interesting, at least regarding Balls. Not so much Skunkworks, I agree. On the other hand, an album is an image of its time, so to speak, so I’m not a huge fan of remixes. Balls is important to me as it is.
I asked Chris Dale his thoughts on this on the Skunkworks FB group, and he said it sounds like the Skunkworks remix is for a 3D atmos mix, and doesn’t think Roy is doing it personally. If true, that one at least wouldn’t be heavier, it would just be remixed to create a multidimensional sound.
Balls to Picasso, on the other hand, sounds like it’s getting unused guitar tracks added to it to beef it up, though it would be cool if Roy went ahead and added the Molossian guitar to “Cyclops” in particular, since Bruce mentioned during the Chemical Wedding days he and Roy had talked about re-recording the whole track with that guitar.
According to the FB Skunkworks group, Chris Dale has apparently heard the new Skunkworks mix by Brendan Duffey and he seems to like it (even) better than the original one… but no idea when it will be released.