Oasis have released a new, old song. It’s the version of “Up In the Sky” recorded during the early sessions of the album “Definitely Maybe,” and it is slightly different from the one released in August 1994.
The song has been remixed by Noel Gallagher and will be included in the 30th-anniversary reissue of the album, which will be released on August 30. This edition will feature, in addition to the original album, both tracks from the session later abandoned at Monnow Valley Studios, such as this version of “Up In the Sky,” and tracks from the final recordings held at Sawmills Studios in Cornwall.
Produced by David Batchelor, the sessions at Monnow Valley Studios in Wales notoriously went poorly. As the recording sessions progressed, Paolo Hewitt recounts in his book “Oasis: Out of Their Heads!” that Batchelor “increasingly clashed with the band over his working methods. Instead of recording the basic tracks live and then adding overdubs later, Batchelor insisted on recording each part of each member separately; this method not only proportionally lengthened the production time but also resulted in a sound that did not resemble the raw, gritty sound the band wanted.”
According to Hewitt, Noel wanted “something loud and boiling over, like The Who’s ‘Live at Leeds,’ but a listen to the initial mixes of the album revealed that the band’s sound was too subdued for his and the band’s tastes. ‘We didn’t even sound like ourselves,’ explains Guigsy. ‘The sound was too… nice. He did everything to get a nice sound, instead of just recording us.'”
In the end, the band decided to scrap the Welsh sessions (except for “Slide Away”) and redo the album from scratch at Sawmill Studios with Mark Coyle as producer and later Owen Morris.
Here la tracklist della riedizione. Below are the two covers of Oasis’s debut album: the original from 1994 and the reissue without the musicians, a perfect representation of the band’s current state.
