A new slant on ‘Life On Mars’ . By Mister Sussex.

Thirty two years after it was originally recorded, producer Ken Scott revisited the master recordings of ‘Life On Mars’ in 2003. He created several new mixes for a Swedish TV documentary on the song. Some of these mixes were stripped down versions which isolated different elements such as David’s vocal, the piano and strings.

I’ve used a couple of these mixes, together with the original version of the song, to create a completely new take on this classic.

The song begins with the ‘Voice Mix’ which is only 90 seconds long and so after that time, I mixed it into the original studio version . For the last part of the song (after the vocals finish), I’ve used the ‘Instrumental Mix’ which highlights the strings. I’m not an audio expert and so this ‘blending’ has been done on the audio tracks of my video editor.

The video for Life On Mars was originally shot by Mick Rock in 1973. I put this particular version together from several sources of variable quality, namely clips from the excellent ‘Five Years’ documentary, the ‘unbleached’ original promo video, outtakes from the video shoot, and even a few seconds from the ‘official’ video.

I hope you enjoy it.

Mister Sussex. July 2016.

From Hunky Dory, released in 1971. Order via Amazon UK & US below:

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