Historic Sound

Divine Art founder Stephen Sutton has from the age of 14 been a collector of vintage recordings, though the "78" was obsolete well before then. The passion began with his parents' small collection and, in 1968, with a gift of two edited highlights sets of Gilbert & Sullivan. The collection has now grown to over 10,000 discs. A long held ambition, once digital sound restoration software became affordable, was to start a series of historic recording re-issues, and by pure coincidence, in early 2005, Stephen was contacted by Andrew Rose, an ex-BBC engineer who had relocated to France and was setting up his company Pristine Audio, with the aim of providing the best possible audio restorations . Andrew was looking for a home for some existing projects and so the Divine Art "historic Sound" label was born.