Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jethro Tull Available Now
UPDATE 2026
The comments you see below for Stand Up were written in 2023.
Unfortunately, we rarely have any stock on Stand Up, or any of the other classic Tull releases for that matter. (There is a copy of Thick as a Brick on the site as of this writing, but it may have sold by the time you read this.)
In our commentary we discuss some of the reasons why a truly awful sounding Heavy Vinyl pressing — in this case Analogue Productions’ remaster of Stand Up — could possibly have gotten released.
Our Commentary from 2023
Here’s how we think it might have gone down.
On whatever crappy audiophile system they are using to play these records, the new pressing beat the original Pink Label Island. Drinks all around.
Not knowing that the original pressings do not sound very good — really, not knowing all that much about records period — made their job seem a lot easier than it actually was.
They didn’t produce a good sounding record. They produced a record that was (perhaps) better than a bad sounding record. They unknowingly set the bar very low.
But unknowingly is how this label has been operating from the very beginning.
I’ve written extensively about many of their bad sounding records, starting all the way back in 1995 with Way Out West.
Not much has changed. You may remember from the Washington Post video years back that Geoff Edgers blind-tested me with two copies of Quiet Kenny, one from The Electric Recording Company (“this guy makes mud pies!”) and the other from Analogue Productions (‘it’s the best record they ever made, because it’s not terrible”), or words to that effect.
If I’d had a good copy of Quiet Kenny on hand, a record I think I know much better now that we have done a couple of shootouts for it, I could have elucidated all the shortcomings of the AP pressing in great detail. Instead I was stuck comparing a very bad pressing of the album to a copy that was not as bad.
What purpose does such a comparison serve?
For that matter, what purpose does the new pressing of Stand Up serve, other than to put more money in Chad’s pockets? He’s about to ruin the Steely Dan catalog. Is that what you want?
What are some of the more important takeaways from this review of Stand Up?
Let’s start with these six.
- Stand Up is yet another imperfectly mastered original [1] that can easily be beaten by the right vintage reissue. (Those are the pressings we sell, obviously. No original we’ve ever played would qualify as a Hot Stamper.)
- The original is never the de facto standard for judging any other pressing. Provisionally, yes, but when the original is not that good sounding, as is the case here, why try to beat it? The goal should be to try to beat a good sounding record, for chrissakes!
- If you are an audiophile looking for the best sound, avoid any vinyl pressing of Stand Up made in the last four decades or so.
- The Gold CD is your best bet, unless you want to buy one of our rare and expensive Hot Stamper pressings.
- Analogue Productions produces records that rarely sound better than awful. They should be avoided by anyone with good equipment [2] and well-developed critical listening skills [3]. No one with both could possibly be fooled by the atrocious reissues Chad Kassem has been producing for the last twenty five years. (He calls it saving the world from bad sound? We call it servicing the mid-fi record collector market.)
- Kevin Gray is also responsible for remastered records that are rarely better than mediocre and more often than not just plain awful. If you are looking for audiophile sound on vinyl, take our advice and avoid his badly-remastered records, too.
[1] We’re nothing if not consistent
[2] Our stereo
[3] Improving your critical listening skills
