Interview: Keith Elshaw and the Great Tango Crime

February 2005: Keith Elshaw of Montreal is a well known DJ in North America. He's also been one of the biggest proponents of the movement to improve the sound quality of classic tango recordings. His web site is www.ToTANGO.net

Close-Embrace.com: You've spent the last few years re-mastering a lot of golden age tango recordings. Aren't they classics that can't be improved?

Keith Elshaw: Good question. We love that old music, and it doesn't really matter to us in many ways that the sound quality is poor. The music and playing is magnificent. But, wow - can they be sonically improved. And when you do that, the music takes on whole new aspects and truly enhances the listening/dancing experience. The difference is akin to listening to a sound system through a key-hole or opening the door and walking onto the room. I want so much to be 'in the orchestra' when I'm dancing. I want the sound big and rich and to envelop me. So, I have been painstakingly putting the best recordings back into their original shape. So far, I've restored and enhanced more than 1100 songs from the Golden Era of tango. It is purely a labour of love. I work from LPs as much as possible - the sound is so much warmer and the speed true. The difference is remarkable. The subtlety - the brilliance - of the musical ideas come through again. I take away all of the noise of the original 78's which comprise the Masters used to make CD's today. By hand, as I'll explain, not by noise reduction software. I then add body, high-end and dynamics with today's technology. You end up with a big sound and no distracting noise between the musicians and your ear.

So, yes - the recordings can and are being improved and made to sound more like they would have if you were standing in the studio control room when they were initially recorded - except with today's much better playback systems and acoustics.

Keith Elshaw: Some people have said to me, "But, I like the sound of the scratchy records ... it makes them seem authentic." I say, "You've got to be kidding!" Trust me, Pugliese, Di Sarli and the boys did not record a song in the afternoon and then hire a sound technician to come to their gig that night and introduce record noise into the room as they played and equalise the sound so it was tiny and thin. There can be no doubt, they would have HATED how their records sound today. The feedback that's come from DJs and teachers who have these restorations confirms my belief that the dancing/listening experience is much enhanced by hearing them.

Close-Embrace.com: Perhaps you could tell us what is wrong with a lot of tango recordings and give some examples of the worst offenders.

Keith Elshaw: Some of the recordings are sped-up. (What I have found is that you come across certain sped-up recordings mostly in the Tanturi and D'Agostino catalogues.) Other music has been released with noise and clicks. All of the Great [composers] we are forced to hear through a sheen of noise.

A separate but related issue is that, like DJs of all kinds, many tango DJs are currently playing with speed themselves. It can't be denied that cranking up some Julio de Caro provides interesting and surprising results. That's one for instance. I think some DJs are tempted to bring it up a little too much. Of the 1400 or so songs in my personal playlist, I've "helped-up" 4 vals and "helped-down" the same number of milongas. These modifications are in the range of 3 beats-per-minute. Not huge, just a feel thing to get them in a pocket for dancing.

Close-Embrace.com: Besides speed and background noise, what are some other things wrong with certain recordings?

Keith Elshaw: Well, I'll never get over my consternation at the appalling reproductions that have been issued of all old tango. It's a shame, and there is no other word for it. Criminal in a musical sense.

Keith Elshaw: I put at the top of the list a distinct lack of caring. If anybody in power at the record companies over the years had attended to the matter of quality, it wouldn't have been lost in the beginning. The recordings wouldn't have been exclusively distributed as deteriorations from day 2 and forever from then until now. Now, there is more attempt at making things sound better. Slowly. Not enough. But, some attempt is better than none!

But staying on the subject of how it happened, second on my list would be inferior recording equipment like, most crucially, microphones together with the inferior technical skill of the recording technicians/producers (not the musicians). When there is an exception, like the Firpo orchestra (not quartet) sessions of the late 30's and same period Filiberto and Canaro recordings, you know everything recorded COULD have sounded that good. If someone knew and cared. That's the essential combination to achieve quality.

Economic conditions were also a factor. Not a lot of money was available to continually update equipment as was done in America and Europe. This excuse doesn't hold much water, though, in sight of the fact that the multi-nationals moved in at the beginning. RCA Victor, EMI, etc. The biggest record companies in the world let this happen to their copyrights.

Of course, there was this event called WW2 and Argentina was not in the Allies camp. Ouch. Relations between Argentina managers and the head office must have been touchy. After the war, things were not in good shape - the generals working overtime to kill tango, and all. So everything fell apart in the tango business just as the Peron alliances and economic isolationism of the previous decade came home to roost. So long the good life in Argentina - hello curfew and struggle and keeping your head down. Viewed through this lens, it is easier to see how the Great Tango Crime (how bad the catalogue sounds) happened.

As for the addition of reverb, fortunately it was isolated to a few tracks by Tanturi and Di Sarli (by pirates?) and did not become a wide-spread fashion.

Keith Elshaw: Briefly, I begin by auditioning my source material of a particular artist to select the songs I wish to work on. This involves comparing the various versions of the same recording I have. I might have 3 CDs and an LP or two with the same recording but manufactured at different times and distributed by different companies. The audio quality can vary widely. I choose the best sounding version, naturally. In a perfect world, it will come from vinyl pressed before the oil crises of 1972 (after which the compounds used were inferior). I still prefer the warmth of analog. I use as little noise-reduction as possible as the first step. Then, I equalize and limit as appropriate. This has the effect of bringing out the strings; the breath of the vocalists and of the bellows of the bandoneon and tightens up the bottom end.

Quite often, I must make major repairs, create new starts because the source is clipped; replace a second that is missing in the song or an ending that has been chopped off. (I am fastidious about endings, I want the concluding environment rich; the last notes to hang in the air and fade away satisfyingly.)

Now, it's time to attack all the surface artifact problems. I make waveform repairs by drawing them back into health. That's why what I do that is unique in the world of tango (and other?) restoration: I zoom-in to thousands of a second in the time-line and re-draw the waveforms all the way through the song. In this way, I take away the dust, clicks, and assorted noises WITHOUT TOUCHING the music the way noise-reduction does. (It took quite a while to learn to visually recognize problems at that micro level and to get my hand and wrist to draw the shapes of the waves to eliminate the surface problems. You can quickly get into serious trouble if you don't know what you are doing!) I've even discovered ways of reducing distortion, something I had not previously believed possible.

The final step it to get it to the optimum level where it's loud, but still has head-room. Viola! Print it!

Keith Elshaw: At this point, 3 1/2 years. There three were phases in that time: Excitement and learning, then marathon work for a couple of years, finally being satisfied. When this point [of satisfaction] was reached, in the fall/winter of 2003, I re-did everything I had done before to bring it all up to best standard. Everything.

Now that I have over 1100 restorations in the can, I devote less time to it. I do it now for pleasure as opposed to when I was obsessed. The cold Montreal winters the last couple of years encouraged me to stay indoors and work, work, work. Now, I am focused on recording new music for dancing tango to. In 2005, my project with Soana will be released. It will be world-music with a mix of influences.

Close-Embrace.com: On a side note-- New York is only seven hours away from Montreal. Do you see many New Yorkers up there?

Keith Elshaw: Yes, we see a regular stream of visitors, from all over the U.S. and Europe. There are out-of-towners every weekend. It makes Montreal a special place to be.