I don't know what you're missing. He also said: They were transferred by me, personally, at The Mastering Lab at 24/192, and those files remained UNPROCESSED and untweaked throughout the digital steps for LP production. Maybe you're unaware that 24/192 is a digital term? Even if you are, he clarified that when he talked about "digital steps" & then bluntly stated, "What you hear on the LP is those flat 24/192 files". He digitized the analog tapes to 24 bit/192 kHz digital, period. 24/192 is digital - it's not analog. Given this info, I don't see why anyone would buy the LP. Although at my age, I do appreciate the large LP artwork.

It’s poor. As a devoted le Carre reader and Smiley fan of many years, it was a poor imitation of the books. Best to leave it with the creator. 

In this particular case, the performances were recorded on an Ampex 600, if I recall correctly, and yes, the recordings are mono. A set of tapes has been in Jim Wilke's collection for all these decades, and those two reels were physically shipped to me for mastering. (Blue Note now owns and archives these original tape reels.)   As the production team and I started going through the contents of the tapes, we discovered a problem: One song was absent from the tapes I received, but a flat, existing, archival digital transfer existed for that track, and it sounded fine, so we included it -- and the album is better for it.