Decca and London Hot Stamper Pressings Available Now
UPDATE 2025
This was written a very long time ago!
INSANELY GOOD vintage Decca sound from 1958 — bigger, richer and more Tubey Magical than 9 out of 10 (or more!) records we’ve ever played from the pre-’60s early stereo Golden Age. How they got this one so right is beyond me.
We were sorely tempted to grade it White Hot, but chose instead to err on the side of modesty and call it A++ to A+++ or better (which is practically White Hot when you think about it).
Can it be that THIS was the first stereophonic sound music lovers of the world were exposed to on LP? (Stereo tapes may have existed in 1954, but they had to wait until 1958 to be transferred to vinyl.)
Could we possibly have fallen so far in only fifty years?
Judging by the quality of the sound on this copy — dramatically better than others we’ve played, and quieter too — the answer can only be a resounding yes. If you like your sound BIG and LUSH, this record is guaranteed to blow your mind.
Chabrier’s Espana with Argenta gets things off to an amazing start — when have you heard it sound better?!
Capriccio Espagnol (Rimsky-Korsakov), Mozart’s Concerto Piano Concerto No. 27 and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring are included here as well, all with audiophile sound to die for.
Both Sides are KILLER
A++ to A+++, big, spacious, Tubey Magically Rich, as well as tonally Right On The Money (ROTM), the sound here is Hard To Fault (HTF) — IF one is willing to accept the euphonic colorations of the equipment used at the time. We know the sound isn’t real — one would never hear it sound this way in the concert hall — but we love it anyway!
Heavy Vinyl
Rather surprisingly there is a Heavy Vinyl import reissue of this album available, at a cost of $50, not cheap by any means and undoubtedly a pale shadow of this London Blueback LP.
There is simply no chance in the world that a recording of this fidelity could be mastered and pressed properly these days — we sure haven’t heard one, and we’ve played them by the hundreds.
We implore anyone who made the mistake of buying such a modern record to pick this one up and hear what they couldn’t possibly know they were missing, but is nevertheless clearly audible on this very pressing for all to enjoy.
UPDATE 2026
Stop the presses and hold your horses.
As of 2026 we know of more than one Shootout Winning title on modern Heavy Vinyl, and you can read about one of them here. There is another one we’ve discovered as well and we will be writing about that one soon.
Side One
Train Sequence
Espana
Tap Dance Sequence
Under The Bridges Of Paris
Ernest Ansermet – Rehersal Sequence
Rite Of Spring (Excerpt)
Die Walkure – Act 4 (Excerpt)
Racing Cars Sequence
True Love
Ceremony Of The Keys
Side Two
Capriccio Espangol (Excerpt)
O Divine Redeemer
Only One Of You
Another Time
June Is Busting Out All Over
Piano Concerto No., 27 In B Flat Major (K. 595) (Excerpt)
Portrait Painter Of Paree
Fantastique, Opus 14
This is an older classical/orchestral review.
Most of the older reviews you see are for records that did not go through the shootout process, the revolutionary approach to finding better sounding pressings we developed in the early 2000s and have since turned into a full-time practice for our staff of ten.
We found the records you see in these older listings by cleaning and playing a pressing or two of the album, which we then described and priced based on how good the sound and surfaces were. (For Hot Stamper listings, the sonic grades and vinyl playgrades are listed separately.)
We were often wrong back in those days, something we freely admit.
There is no reason to hide the fact that we know a great deal more now than we used to. Audio equipment and record cleaning technologies have come a long way since those darker days, a subject we discuss here.
100% of the records we offer on our site have been cleaned, then auditioned head to head against a number of other pressings under rigorously controlled conditions. We award the copies in the shootout sonic grades for each of their sides, and then condition check the best sounding ones for surface noise before listing them on the site.
As you may imagine, this approach requires a great deal of time, effort and skill, which requires a highly trained staff. No individual or business without the aid of such a committed group could possibly dig as deep into the sound of records as we have, and it is unlikely that anyone besides us could ever do the work we do, not at scale anyway.
The term “Hot Stampers” gets thrown around a lot these days, but to us it means only one thing: a record that has been through the shootout process and found to be of audiophile quality.
The result of our labor is the hundreds of titles seen here, every one of which is unique and guaranteed to be the best sounding copy of the album you have ever heard, or you get your money back.
