- The band’s 3rd studio album finally makes its Hot Stamper debut here with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from start to finish – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
- We guarantee there is dramatically more space, richness, vocal presence, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard, and that’s especially true if you made the mistake of buying whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing is currently on the market
- Features some of the band’s best rock epics, including “Icarus-Borne on Wings of Steel” and “Mysteries and Mayhem”
- “Musically, Masque foreshadows the tight melodies and instrumental interplay on the next two albums, Leftoverture and Point of Know Return, which together serve as the peak of Kansas’ vision.”
This vintage Kirshner pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records rarely even BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound.
If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.
What the best sides of Masque have to offer is not hard to hear:
- The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
- The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1975
- Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
- Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments having the correct timbre
- Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional space of the studio
No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.
Finding the Best Copies
Most copies, like so many rock records from the era, are veiled and smeary. Often they lack extension at one or both ends of the frequency spectrum, usually up top, which results in harshness and shrillness — not the sound you want on a Kansas record!
Another tough test: the vocals on the first track. They can sound strained right from the get go. In fact it’s the rare copy that doesn’t show some strain on those first four lines. Sometimes the sound is so strained it’s game over after the first thirty seconds. Who can listen to that kind of sound? Hot Stampers are all about finding the copies that don’t have that problem, along with a host of others.
The higher the grade, the fewer the sonic problems.
What We’re Listening For on Masque
- Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
- The Big Sound comes next — wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
- Then transient information — fast, clear, sharp attacks for the guitars, keyboards and drums, not the smear and thickness common to most LPs.
- Tight, note-like bass with clear fingering — which ties in with good transient information, as well as the issue of frequency extension further down.
- Next: transparency — the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the players.
- Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren’t “back there” somewhere, way behind the speakers. They’re front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would have put them.
- Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.
TRACK LISTING
Side One
It Takes A Woman’s Love (To Make A Man)
Two Cents Worth
Icarus – Borne On Wings Of Steel
All The World
Side Two
Child Of Innocence
It’s You
Mysteries And Mayhem
The Pinnacle
AMG Review
Kansas’ third album, Masque, is a lyrically dark effort courtesy of guitarist/keyboardist Kerry Livgren’s brooding songwriting. Musically, Masque foreshadows the tight melodies and instrumental interplay on the next two albums, Leftoverture and Point of Know Return, which together serve as the peak of Kansas’ vision.
The band deserves more respect than it gets for incorporating British hard rock and progressive rock to become the only U.S. progressive rock band of note during the genre’s 1970s heyday. Robbie Steinhardt’s violin work certainly helped give Kansas a distinctive sound.
The liner notes indicate Masque is a “concept album” thanks to the title’s definition: “A disguise of reality created through a theatrical or musical performance.”
Vocalist/keyboardist Steve Walsh’s “It Takes a Woman’s Love (To Make a Man)” is the leadoff track, and it’s atypical of the rest of the album. The song is a fairly basic yet groovy pop/rock tune about musicians’ loneliness on the road, but it is spiced up with some saxophone lines. “Two Cents Worth” addresses guilt, misery, and spiritual longing — pretty heavy stuff for six guys who were only in their mid-twenties. In “Icarus–Borne on Wings of Steel,” Kansas’ prog rock ambitions show through the mythology-based lyrics and the densely arranged guitars and keyboards. Walsh and Steinhardt’s “All the World” is largely a bleak examination of loneliness and death, although it does end with a glimmer of hope. “Child of Innocence” is a tough blast of hard rock with a soaring chorus. “Mysteries and Mayhem” rocks along, yet it’s rich with haunting nightmare imagery and biblical references. The nine-and-a-half-minute epic “The Pinnacle” closes the album.