More Prog Rock
- This is an outstanding Island Sunray domestic pressing offering spacious Tubey Magical Double Plus (A++) sound throughout – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
- Low Spark is clearly one of the best sounding Proggy/Arty Rock records ever made – the space it recreates in your listening room is HUGE
- A Better Records Top 100 album and a real Demo Disc on a pressing that sounds as good as this one does
- 4 1/2 stars: “The commercial and artistic apex of the second coming of Traffic… The standout was the 12-minute title track, with its distinctive piano riff and its lyrics of weary disillusionment with the music business. “
UPDATE 2025
The shootout described here was carried out in 2019. The domestic pressings do not do as well now as they did then. Our best domestic pressing earned a grade of 1.5+ on both sides, which would put it in our section for good, not great sounding LPs. It’s possible a domestic pressing could earn a grade of 2+ in the next shootout, but my feeling is that it would not be very likely.
The best early imports are a huge step-up in sound quality and they have won and will win all the shootouts we do in the future.
Note that it was six years between shootouts for this title. They are hard to find in audiophile playing condition and only getting harder, and dramatically more expensive when you do find them.
After doing the shootout for John Barleycorn recently, a record we love in spite of its problematic sound, this album was truly a breath of fresh air. I can honestly and enthusiastically say that the sound we heard on the best pressings was OUT OF THIS WORLD. This album is a permanent member of our Rock And Jazz Top 100, that’s how good it is.
Who knew? We had no idea this recording could sound so incredibly spacious and open. The distortion level is so close to zero that we don’t even want to assign a positive number to it. Let’s just say it’s below the threshold of hearing; does that work for you?
Side One
Hidden Treasure
The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys
Light Up or Leave Me Alone
Side Two
Rock and Roll Stew
Many a Mile to Freedom
Rainmaker
AMG 4 1/2 Star Rave Review!
The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys marked the commercial and artistic apex of the second coming of Traffic, which had commenced in 1970 with John Barleycorn Must Die. Low Spark pointedly contained changes of pace from his usual contributions of midtempo, introspective jam tunes. “Rock & Roll Stew” was an uptempo treatise on life on the road, while Jim Capaldi’s “Light up or Leave Me Alone” was another more aggressive number with an unusually emphatic Capaldi vocal that perked things up on side two. The standout was the 12-minute title track, with its distinctive piano riff and its lyrics of weary disillusionment with the music business.
MoFi – The Worst Version Ever
Obviously our Hot Stamper pressing is going to be far better than the MoFi Anadisq LP from the mid ’90s. How much better? Words fail me.
That record was an out and out disaster. Perhaps some of the MoFi collectors didn’t notice because they had nothing to compare it to. God forbid they would ever lower themselves to buy a “common” pressing such as this Island. Had they done so, what they would have heard is huge amounts of musical information that is simply missing from the MoFi pressing.
The MoFi has no leading edges to any of the transients. They’re all shaved off, how that managed that I frankly have no idea. Blunted and smeared, their version is positively unlistenable. My friend Robert Pincus once left a Post-It note stuck to a MoFi jacket of a record he was playgrading for me that pointedly (albeit cruelly) summed up our shared thoughts on the quality of their mastering: “Did MoFi bother to listen to this before they ruined it?”