The Beatles will celebrate Abbey Road’s 50th anniversary with a number of special releases of the legendary album.
The album’s 17 tracks have been newly mixed by producer Giles Martin and mix engineer Sam Okell in stereo, high res stereo, 5.1 surround, and Dolby Atmos, accompanied by 23 session recordings and demos, most of which are previously unreleased.
The packages will be released worldwide on September 27 by Apple Corps Ltd./Capitol/UMe.
“The magic comes from the hands playing the instruments, the blend of The Beatles’ voices, the beauty of the arrangements,” Martin explains in his written introduction for the new edition. “Our quest is simply to ensure everything sounds as fresh and hits you as hard as it would have on the day it was recorded.”
The news was revealed 50 years to the day that the Fab Four stepped out from London’s EMI Recording Studios to stride, single-file, across the black and white stripes of Abbey Road’s nearby zebra crossing for the iconic cover image.
To create Abbey Road’s new stereo, 5.1 surround, and Dolby Atmos mixes, Martin and Okell worked with an expert team of engineers and audio restoration specialists at Abbey Road Studios. All the new Abbey Road releases feature the new stereo album mix, sourced directly from the original eight-track session tapes. To produce the mix, Martin was guided by the album’s original stereo mix supervised by his father, George Martin.
The new edition of Abbey Road follows the acclaimed remixed and expanded anniversary editions of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and The White Album, released in 2017 and 2018, respectively.
