In 2022, Tom Waits decided it was time to remaster the albums he made during his stint at Island Records. The Waits classics Swordfishtrombones (1983), Rain Dogs (1985), Franks Wild Years (1987), Bone Machine (1992), and the Waits (with Robert Wilson and William S. Burroughs) musical fable The Black Rider (1993) are the first new remasters to be released.
Remastered from the original tapes (except one, for which a digital source was used), all five are available on LP and CD as well as streaming and download. At TomWaits.com and UDiscover Music, the LP versions are available in colored-vinyl variations: The Black Rider in opaque apple red, Bone Machine on translucent milky clear, Swordfishtrombones in canary yellow, Rain Dogs in opaque sky blue, and Franks Wild Years in opaque gold. Of the seven albums Waits did for Elektra/Asylum early in his career, only Closing Time, recut at half-speed at Abbey Road studios, has so far been remastered. All the new UMG LPs were pressed in Burlington, ON, Canada, by Precision Record Pressing, which is owned by Czech record pressing giant GZ Media.
To lead the project to remaster his catalog, the wizard-poet of sentiment and grit chose Karl Derfler, who has been Waits’s chosen engineer—his third set of ears if you will, assisting Waits and his wife, Kathleen Brennan—for all new Waits recordings since 2006’s . Working from
