- Wind and Wuthering finally returns to the site with outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
- This copy has real depth to the soundfield, full-bodied, present vocals, and lovely analog warmth
- Their Masterpiece is still A Trick of the Tail, the album that came out before this one, but Wind and Wuthering certainly has much to offer in the same vein
- 4 stars: “Wind & Wuthering followed quickly on the heels of A Trick of the Tail and they’re very much cut from the same cloth, working the same English eccentric ground that was the group’s stock in trade since Trespass.”
We have struggled like crazy to find copies of the album that are able to present the music as well as this one does. Most of the pressings we’ve gotten our hands on were a disaster, and that includes everything that does not say Made in England on the label.
These UK sides are livelier, more dynamic, more transparent and more present than practically any other copy we played.
What the Best Sides of Wind and Wuthering 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 1976
- 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 studio space
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.
What We’re Listening For on Wind and Wuthering
- 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 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 — David Hentschel in this case — would have put them.
- Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.
Vinyl Condition
Mint Minus Minus and maybe a bit better is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)
Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of later pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don’t have the vintage analog magic that is a key part of the appeal of these wonderful recordings.
If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that’s certainly your prerogative, but we can’t imagine losing what’s good about this music — the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight — just to hear it with less background noise.
TRACK LISTING
Side One
Eleventh Earl of Mar
One for the Vine
Your Own Special Way
Wot Gorilla?
Side Two
All in a Mouse’s Night
Blood on the Rooftops
Unquiet Slumbers for the Sleepers in That Quiet Earth
Afterglow
AMG Review
Wind & Wuthering followed quickly on the heels of A Trick of the Tail and they’re very much cut from the same cloth, working the same English eccentric ground that was the group’s stock in trade since Trespass.
But if A Trick of the Tail played like Genesis’ attempt at crafting a great Genesis record without Peter Gabriel, as a way of finding their footing as a quartet, Wind & Wuthering finds Genesis tentatively figuring out what their identity will be in this new phase of their career.
The most obvious indication of this is Mike Rutherford’s “Your Own Special Way,” which is both the poppiest tune the group had cut and also the first that could qualify as a love song. It stands out on a record that is, apart from that, a standard Genesis record, but quite a good one in that regard.