More Michael Jackson
- If you’ve heard one of our amazing Hot Stamper pressings of Off the Wall – the best sounding record Michael Jackson ever made – then you know exactly the Tubey Magical sound of the best copies of Triumph
- 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
- 4 stars: “Released during the summer of 1980, just as the hits from Michael’s Off the Wall were sliding off the charts, Triumph became the Jacksons’ first Top Ten pop album since 1972’s Lookin’ Through the Windows…”
- If you’re a fan of The Jacksons, this is one of their best.
- The complete list of titles from 1980 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.
This vintage Epic pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely 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 Triumph 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 even as late as 1980
- 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 Triumph
- Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
- Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren’t “back there” somewhere, lost in the mix. They’re front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
- 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, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
- Tight punchy bass — which ties in with good transient information, also 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 instruments.
- 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 other 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 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
Can You Feel It
Lovely One
Your Ways
Everybody
Side Two
Heartbreak Hotel
Time Waits For No One
Walk Right Now
Give It Up
Wondering Who
AMG 4 Star Review
Released during the summer of 1980, just as the hits from Michael’s Off the Wall were sliding off the charts, Triumph became the Jacksons’ first Top Ten pop album since 1972’s Lookin’ Through the Windows.
As on 1978’s Destiny, the Jacksons wrote and produced the material, this time with keyboardist Greg Phillinganes bumped up to associate producer, and with an uptick in star backing — including but not limited to Ronnie Foster, Phil Upchurch, Webster Lewis, Michael Boddicker, and Ollie Brown, as well as Triumph holdovers Michael Sembello, Thomas Washington, and Nathan Watts. The other singles, including “Lovely One” (very nearly “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” reheated) and “This Place Hotel” (an elaborate six-minute affair, written and arranged by Michael, that could have easily swollen to greater length) propelled the album into sales greater than that of Destiny, and it’s equally durable (and markedly slicker) all around.