Here’s a sneak pre­view of Bob Dylan’s forth­com­ing Christ­mas album. It will hit the streets in Octo­ber, and you can pre-order now. A safe assump­tion: this will be a “love it” or “hate it” album.

On Sep­tem­ber 9th, EMI released a remas­tered ver­sion of the entire Bea­t­les cat­a­logue — the first remix since 1987. And now the Bea­t­les are once again back on top of the charts. If you’re won­der­ing whether to buy the remas­tered ver­sions at all, or whether to buy the stereo or mono box sets (or some com­bi­na­tion of the two), or if you’re sim­ply won­der­ing what goes into remas­ter­ing the Fab Four’s com­plete body of work, then you will be inter­est­ed in this inter­view with Bea­t­les his­to­ri­an Kevin Howlett, who helped write the lin­er notes for the new releas­es. In this con­ver­sa­tion with NPR’s All Songs Con­sid­ered (MP3 — iTunes — RSS Feed), Howlett describes what the remas­ter­ing involved, and then com­pares the old ver­sions to the new ver­sions (both mono and stereo). When you’re done lis­ten­ing to this 20+ minute inter­view, you’ll have a much bet­ter sense of what this long-await­ed remas­ter­ing deliv­ers. You can lis­ten with the play­er below, or via the links post­ed above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What New York­ers Heard on the Radio the Night John Lennon was Shot

The Bea­t­les: Pod­casts from Yes­ter­day

The Grey Video: Mix­ing the Bea­t­les with Jay‑Z