Kevan Budd resigns from BMG

im sorry to say i have quit bmg and working for ernst jorgensen, i was betrayed and undermined by ernst and sebastian jeansson and i longer wish to work with such persons.

i made great sacrifices to try and bring the best possible sound to all new releases, however when i offered to do the elvis is back material i was met by silence. in fact it wasnt until someone else informed me that sebastian jeansson had in fact done this release, i feel this is a shame as when sebastian has attempted to remaster the same material he himself has admitted that i had achieved superior results. sebastian was offered the remastering of the elvis is back material as a friendly favour from ernst and not offered through merit. i had also offered to remaster all the 50s box from scratch which considering the new 2005 reissues would have not taken much more to do.

the 2005 reisues were to be just the old lp masters which sounded very poor as this was supported by ernst and sebastian yet i made a case for them to be completely remastered from scratch with little support from sebastian who was just prepared to just jog along with anything ernst said.

in the end it was bmg who agreed that they should be remastered.

in the end i was given 3 weeks to remaster all 3 but the tapes i asked for were arriving as late as 3 days before the deadline and to top it all the digital copies i was given were faulty and i just had to do the best with what i had. on top of all this with such a short deadline and only getting 3 hours sleep a night sebastain was bugging me for raw copies of the few tapes he did not have?...i then found that his reason for doing this was to submit his own versions of the reissues to ernst, however even sebastian admitted my cds were far better than his versions.

i was not paid for any of the work i did other than a small sum to contribute towards costs. in fact i recently invested £6,000 in equiptment to help get even better results for the benefit of the fans. and especially the new sun set that was planned.

i have serious concerns over sebastians abilty to remaster the hayride material as in the past i have found his efforts to be poor. i have been asked why i do not wish to work with sebastian and my answer is that when i was working on the elvis at sun release sebastian just doubted everything i did and just slowed down work to a grinding halt. the only influence he has had on releases i have lived to regret. such as him insisting that i remove the drum count in beats from take 13 of loving you. on top of this sebastian wanted me to play no part in projects where he thought he woulf be the sole engineer. this is a double standerd.

erst said i would be the main mastering engineer for all work outside of the std engeneers yet behind my back he gave the work to sebastian with a total disregard for our past disccusions and the huge commitment i had made....the sun box set was over two years of work on top of this i had found new tapes with better sources and new material, this was at great cost to myself with over £1,000 of phone calls alone in the last quarter just on international calls seeking such material.

its with a heavy heart i leave and i just hope the quality will not suffer too much and id also like to thank everyone for the great support over the last 6 months. id also like to thank barry mclean for contributing youre a heartbreaker for the elvis at sun release...his name was put forward by myself but removed from the credits by ernst.

all the best

sincerely

kevan.

(News, Source: For Elvis CD Collectors Only messageboard, 27 Feb 2005)