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Powerful, poignant, important, and beautiful are all words that describe Imagine – both the title song and the LP that was John Lennon’s second solo album release, in the autumn of 1971. One song does not make a great album, even when it is as seminal and defining as Imagine… and, make no mistake, this is a great album, full of brilliant songs, with great hooks. With John’s acerbic wit ever-present, though, the album never approaches the kind of music that John found irrelevant and meaningless. John began work on the album that was to become Imagine a little over three months after finishing John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. Recording his new album was done in three separate stages, the first between February 11 and 16, followed by another from May 24 to 28, before some final overdubs and mixing in New York over the 4th of July weekend. The earlier sessions were at Abbey Road and the May sessions were at the Lennon’s home studio at Tittenhurst Park, the New York sessions in July were at the Record Plant. With the Raw Studio Mixes release, listeners can experience the moment John and The Plastic Ono Band record each song, raw and live, from a sonic soundstage at the centre of Ascot Sound Studios at John & Yoko’s home in Tittenhurst. "Before the strings and the saxophone, before the brilliant application of sound shaping techniques that were used to produce the iconic album, there were the original, unadorned performances that were the foundation of the Imagine album. So Yoko and I set to work, mixing 5.1 and stereo versions of the Imagine album and select out-takes in a way that’s being presented as ‘Raw’ [...] John is directly in front of the listener, and the imperfections are chillingly perfect; the flaws flawless. John’s voice, which in the height of irony, he himself wasn’t fond of and often sought to mask with [...] reverbs and delays, is both ferocious and painfully vulnerable, at times within the same composition." - Rob Stevens (Engineer)