Hi, PipRadish,

As the original uploader and recorder of the FLACs I can assure you that their timing is correct and that the other version sounds very gabbled, as though PB had been ingesting helium.

But although the original recording was made on high-end equipment, the hi-fi I used to digitize the master tape could have been better - (the cassette deck wasn't great) - and I'm optomistic that an even better version can be obtained with a decent tape deck. Watch this space.

For those with no access to TheBox, this is the description that accompanied my original upload:

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The Maritime Suite is a collection of songs on a maritime theme - some traditional, some settings of Rudyard Kipling's poems - with music composed by the late Peter Bellamy, who's also the vocalist.

And what a vocalist. This astonishing live performance from 1982 still raises the hairs on the back of my neck.

It seems to me that in the plaintive wail of Peter Bellamy's extraordinary voice, you can hear the eternal suffering and bitterness of the unquiet ghosts of those forgotten, ill-used men who sacrificed their good health - and often their very lives - to ensure England's supremacy as a maritime power.

They could wish for no finer memorial than this heartfelt suite of songs and the same applies to Peter Bellamy, who never lived to see this - his greatest work, in my opinion - in the public domain. Scandalously, it's never been publicly available except in the form of a very lossy and poor quality cassette recording that Peter Bellamy sold at his performances.

Shortly before his death I met him at a gig and told him I had this lossless recording of the suite, recorded from a 1982 BBC Radio 2, Folk on 2 special that was devoted to a live performance of the Suite.

He gave me his card and asked me to send him a copy as he didn't have a decent recording of the broadcast and couldn't get one out of the BBC.

Sadly, before I got around to sending it, I heard the news of his tragic and untimely death.

Since then I've often wondered what to do with this recording and I'm very glad that the Internet will now ensure its availability to anyone who wants it.

I recorded the two part broadcast on stereo TDK metal tape - the best available at the time - and it's very clear. I then recorded the tape into Adobe Audition as a WAV file which I converted to lossless FLAC files. I didn't use any noise-reduction filters as they tend to reduce treble clarity and I find that my brain soon filters out the background tape hiss.

I hope this stunning performance will stand as a tribute to Peter Bellamy - a truly great artist - and to the brave men who inspired this work - the generations of English mariners who "fed our sea for a thousand years".
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