'It's time travel' Beatles producer Giles Martin used artificial intelligence to pull apart and reconstruct the group's seventh album Revolver
Last month, in Abbey Road's legendary Studio 3, Giles Martin performed a magic trick.
It's a revelation. The kick drum pedal squeaks on every beat, and the snare reverberates off the studio walls. No-one, not even Ringo, would have heard those details at the time. Martin isn't clear on how the de-mixing process works, but he knows it involves elements of AI and machine learning. It's a technique Martin applies to the whole album. Compared to the muddy CD mixes that emerged in the 1980s, the new Revolver is bristling with life, full of presence and attack.
An expanded, deluxe edition of Revolver captures the strings being recorded at Abbey Road, with Giles's father George Martin arranging the musicians on the fly. It's unrecognisable from the bumptious singalong it became - the words Yellow and Submarine are conspicuously absent - but Martin says the development of the song shows the Beatles at their most harmonious.
"And the thing about the Beatles is they never tried it again," says Martin. "I can't work out the mentality of it, in all honesty, what was going through people's minds.