Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Love
““It’s magical what they’re doing, recreating these old records,” Fremer said as he swapped out more Electric Recording discs.”
Swapped them out? Anyone with an ounce of respect for Love’s music would have tossed them into the nearest trash bin.
Our Story Begins
We did a shootout for Love’s Forever Changes earlier this year, and it was our good luck to get hold of a copy of the Electric Recording Company’s pressing of the album in order to see how it would fare against our Gold Label Stereo original pressings.
As you can see from the notes, to say that we could hardly believe what we were hearing clearly understates the depth of our befuddlement.
We simply have no context for a record that sounds as bad as this record sounds. We’ve never heard anything like it, and we’ve played a lot of records in the 35 years we’ve been in business. After critically auditioning thousands upon thousands of pressings in our shootouts, all day every day for the last twenty years, we’ve worn out scores of cartridges and even our Triplanar tonearm.
But this is new ground for us. A quick recap:
- Incredibly dull,
- Has no top or space at all,
- One of the worst reissues I’ve ever heard.
You get the picture. What more needs be said? Last year I wrote the following:
Pete Hutchison of The Electric Recording Company makes some of the worst sounding records I have ever played in my life.
If you play me one of his awful records, and don’t tell me who made it, I can judge the record on its merits, the way we judge all records. We test records blindly for precisely this reason. We let the record tell us how well it was made, what it does right and wrong relative to other pressings of the same album, comparing apples to apples.
His records tell me he loves the sound of the murkiest, muddiest vintage tube equipment ever made, and wants every record he produces to have that sound.
In my book that is an egregious case of My-Fi, not Hi-Fi. We wrote about it here.
It’s astonishing to me that anyone takes this guy seriously.
In the Washington Post video, we did a little comparison on camera for two pressings of Quiet Kenny, a record I will have more to say about in Part Two of this commentary. Here is Geoff Edgers’ description in the article of how it all went down.
The first is from the Electric Recording Co., based in London, which produces roughly a dozen albums each year on vintage equipment painstakingly restored by owner Pete Hutchison. ERC makes just 300 copies of each reissue and charges $376 per album. The stock sells out immediately. Then the records pop up on eBay for as much as $2,000.
[Sunshine] English, [our assistant at the turntable] has agreed not to reveal which copy is being played so the shootout can be truly blind. She lowers the needle onto the ERC edition of “Quiet Kenny.” Port groans loudly. “Listen to that bass,” he says. “Blah, blah, blah, blah. Who wants to play a record that sounds like this?”
Next up is a copy pressed by Analogue Productions, the Kansas-based label founded by Chad Kassem. Port says that Kassem “has never made a single good sounding record” since AP’s founding in 1991. (Kassem calls Port a “f—ing loser.”) This blind listen gets better marks, which surprises Port when he’s told it’s an Analogue.
“That’s the best-sounding Analogue Productions record I’ve ever heard,” Port says. “Because it’s not terrible.”
Later on in the article, Edgers writes:
We talk more about ERC and how coveted Hutchison’s records are in the market. He agrees to try song two on the ERC vinyl, but things don’t get better. I suggest that maybe English adjust the arm on the turntable. The vertical tracking angle, or VTA, as he calls it. “Nothing can fix this record,” he shouts back. “It’s junk. And that guy should be ashamed of himself.”
If you go to the video embedded in the article on their site, about thirty seconds in I have this to say about the ERC pressing:
“This guy’s a mud pie maker. That’s junk.”
Which seems obvious to me. Apparently others, including the audiophile quoted at the top of this commentary, see things differently.
A few questions come to mind.
This is the muddy sound audiophiles want?
Has anyone else called out the awful sound of this guy’s records?
Can everyone be in on the grift?
Is there not a single self-identified audiophile with ears that operate well enough to tell him how bad this guy’s records sound?
Let me add an additional thought to the quote at the top of this commentary:
Any reviewer who claims to be writing for audiophiles and has ever said anything nice about this guy’s work is clearly not qualified to do his job.
More from our commentary that posted last year:
The Mud Pie Maker Himself
Presenting the poster boy for the Dunning-Kruger effect, a man who fancies himself an audiophile/mastering engineer.
He’s a mastering engineer in the same sense that a person who makes mud pies is a piemaker.
I have not played any of his classical albums. I have in fact only played one title, a jazz record I happen to know well, and his remastered version is no better than the other records that get an F grade for sound and currently are to be found in our bad sounding audiophile records section.
I will publish a review one of these days, but until then, I recommend you steer well clear of this man’s records.
The article in which Fremer is quoted can be found here.
Further Reading
- Unsolicited audio advice
- More on the subject of tubes in audio
- Our stereo (and thoughts on equipment)
Thank you very much for this commentary. The “audiophile” community recently went crazy concerning “The Doors S/T” in Mono. I have not seen many bad reviews (on YouTube and on the Steve Hoffman forum) coming from owners of that expensive record, although the tape seems to be in an awful condition. In fact the only one who trashes it was that record shop owner from Phoenix/Arizona. They all seem to be thinking they now have literally the flat “Original Master Tape” of that title in their possession, no matter what its condition is. I went back and checked reviews of this record you are writing about here by the group “Love”, and
commentaries are similar positive. By the way, one person on YouTube reviewed several records by the “Electric Recording Company” in the past. He did not like them that much either. Some even had speed issues. But, if they really do a 1:1 transfer of the Master Tape they use, without any mastering moves, this seems to be the sound of the original tape. Like it or not.
Thanks for writing.
There is plenty I could say about the points you raise. Let me settle on just two.
The Doors on ERC is not the sound of The Doors Master Tape.
It is the sound of the Master Tape run through some — I suspect, I really have no way of knowing, having never heard them — truly godawful electronics.
I owned vintage tube gear many years ago. I know that sound. In general, it is the sound of coloration taken to the next level.
Nothing that passes through this man’s gear comes out the other end unharmed, although I can only make that judgment based on the Kenny Dorham record I played. My listening crew has played two others, the Love album and Monk’s Brilliant Corners. We agree that it would be hard to find three worse sounding records.
The second point is that the sound of the Master Tape should be none of our concern. Master Tapes were never supposed to be transferred to disc without the benefit of actual mastering. If the Master Tape has too much bass, it is the job of the mastering engineer to fix it. Hutchinson is not a mastering engineer. He is a scam artist who doesn’t even know why a mastering engineer would be needed. His astonishing ignorance means he thinks flat transfers using old tube equipment results in a superior products, when all the evidence is that this approach results in the creation of sound so bad it defies all understanding.
This level of stupidity is only matched by that of his customers, who apparently know as much as he does about the process of making records and do not appear to be able to judge the sound for what it very clearly is: awful.
They have given themselves over to this modern Tulip mania, paying outrageous prices for limited editions of records that sound so bad they have no actual value to the person who might be inclined to play them. Their true value, outside of bragging rights, can only be found on the secondary collector’s market. They are an investment predicated on the Greater Fool theory, and it appears that there are a great many more fools than even I would have suspected, and I suspected there were a lot, otherwise Analogue Productions, Mobile Fidelity and the other labels like them would have gone out of business decades ago for the bad sounding records they have produced.
People accuse us of being snake oil salesmen and scam artists, but there is clear difference between our offerings and Pete’s.
Ours sound good. His do not. Surely that should count for something.
Best, TP
I *very* briefly owned an ERC copy of Forever Changes. Even on my modest system, I couldn’t believe how terrible it sounded. I would play it for non-audiophile friends, comparing it to an early 1980s reissue. I couldn’t get rid of the ERC fast enough and it finally cleansed my desire for audiophile pressings of any kind. Musical Malpractice!
And those early ’80s reissues are barely passable themselves, so that ought to tell you just how bad this record sounds.
But if it turned you off to audiophile pressings of all kinds, that is the best outcome you could have hoped for. Pete Hutchison did you a service.
We used to give away the Rhino pressing of Blue for the same reason. Play it against our Hot Stamper pressings and see how much of the real Blue Magic is missing for yourself. In a head to head comparison, perhaps you will see how mediocre-at-best these new pressings are.
And Blue isn’t awful the way Forever Changes is.
ERC albums (I have 3) actually sound great. But… there is variability from copy to copy – I had to return all 3 and the replacements were great. The first copies I received were not great.
You also need a high end system to appreciate it. Sorry, but on a “modest” system, you’re not going to be blown away – you will get “modest” sound.
It’s funny how many people like to disqualify what a world class system can do, simply because they don’t have one. Why can’t you admit it sounds great, even if you don’t have one?
You sound a lot like this guy.