Two legendary bands are getting the Atmos treatment in Apple Music: Oasis and New Order. The Oasis album is already streaming and New Order's Atmos mixes will be live from 20 September.
Apple Music has some great news for fans of Mancunian music: both Oasis and New Order are getting the Spatial Audio treatment. Definitely Maybe, Oasis's debut album, is already live on the service so you can recreate the Oasis Live 25 experience by waiting six hours to stream it before chucking £384 in the bin and playing it on a speaker half a world away.
Cheap gags aside, this is a big deal for Oasis fans. The new Atmos mix, by Grammy award-winning producer, mixer and engineer Ryan Hewitt, should be fascinating: as we've heard in Atmos releases from other big-name acts such as R.E.M., when Atmos is mixed well it's a really thrilling audio experience.
If you're not familiar with music in Dolby Atmos, it uses the same surround sound technology as movie soundtracks to place the instruments and artists in a three-dimensional space. Apple's been pushing it hard because rivals such as Spotify don't offer Atmos streaming; it's even built Atmos mixing into its Logic Pro music production software. It also helps Apple shift headphones such as the Atmos-friendly AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods Max.
New Order are getting the Atmos treatment too
Oasis isn't the only Manchester legend to get the Spatial Audio treatment. Later this month you'll be able to hear a whole new dimension to New Order too.
If your tastes are more electronic, the September 20 release of New Order's Movement and Low Life – along with Blue Monday – should be right up your street. These mixes have been recreated from the original master tapes by Steven Wilson, and drummer Stephen Morris has been overseeing the project – so the spatial audio versions will be coming with the band's seal of approval.
I'm looking forward to this one: Movement was their first post-Joy Division album and was produced by the legendary Martin Hannett. Hannett's productions were something really special, and to hear them with the extra dimension of Atmos is enormously exciting. And Low Life features one of New Order's best ever records, The Perfect Kiss.
