Labels We Love – Decca/London Phase 4

John Mayall with Eric Clapton – Blues Breakers

More John Mayall

More Eric Clapton

  • You’ll find outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound on both sides of this superb pressing – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Far more richer, smoother and livelier than most, with Tubey Magic and space you won’t believe
  • The Decca UK vinyl on this superb pressing is as QUIET as we ever expect to find for this album
  • 5 stars: “Bluesbreakers was Eric Clapton’s first fully realized album as a blues guitarist — more than that, it was a seminal blues album of the 1960s, perhaps the best British blues album ever cut, and the best LP ever recorded by John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers.”
  • Want to find your own shootout winner? Scroll to the bottom to see our advice on doing just that.

This copy is guaranteed to be superior to virtually all imports, all domestic pressings, whatever crappy Heavy Vinyl they’re making these days — in short, any version of this music on any format that you’ve ever played. This is it folks. They cut this one right and it doesn’t take a pair of golden ears to know it. Blues Breakers finally sounds the way you always wanted it to sound.

We’ve been searching for copies of Bluesbreakers for years — everyone wants a great copy of this Five Star Classic, the only album John Mayall ever made that we would consider a Must Own. After many, many years of experimentation and dozens of copies purchased we’ve finally discovered the British pressings that deliver the best sound we’ve ever heard for this music.

But they don’t come easy and they sure don’t come cheap, so don’t expect the floodgates to open with White Hot Stamper after White Hot Stamper hitting the site. One was it and it will be a year or two at the very least before we have a big enough stack of copies with which to do a shootout fo find another.

Until then this is a great copy that belongs in your collection, and it’s QUIET. (more…)

Satie / Parade – The Eccentric Erik Satie

More Recordings on the London Phase IV Label

This contains various works by Satie as performed by Camarata, Bernard Herrmann, London Philharmonic and The London Festival Players.

Obviously these were Phase 4 recordings which have been compiled on this album from 1973. The sound is quite good: very transparent and lively. It does not have the tubey magic that the best of the Golden Age recordings so often have in abundance, but the tonal balance is correct and the overall sound is quite good.

This album contains many of Satie’s most famous works on one LP. I can’t imagine that you will find this music easy to come by on other pressings.

Satie, Ravel, Debussy / The Impressionists – Phase 4, its Strengths and Shortcomings

More Bernard Herrmann

Presenting an exceptionally rare and very good sounding Decca Phase IV pressing (with the textured cover, ooh!), the first to ever hit the site. We have been on the lookout for this album for years and somehow cannot find any clean copies, other than this one of course.

Not to worry; this one will do nicely. Three of the six works here have SUPERB better than Super Hot Stamper sound. We went through them one by one and were rather surprised that the sound quality varied so much from track to track.

One might conclude from the variation in the sound that the album must be a compilation — so many of Herrmann’s albums are — but that is not the case, assuming the liner notes are to be believed.

Here’s what we heard, taken directly from our notes.

Side One

Satie / Gymnopedies I & II

A++ or better. Rich, smooth, sweet, big, natural, clear and very ANALOG. I don’t know when I’ve heard these famous works sounding better than they do here.

Debussy / Clair de Lune

A+, rich but a bit smeary, strings need more texture.

Debussy / Valse ‘la Plus Que Lente

No grade – Too murky.

Ravel / Five O’Clock Fox-Trot

A++ to A+++, with Demo Disc sound! So lively and clear, the sound will jump out of your speakers when you play this track!

Side Two

Faure / Pavane

A+++, probably the best sound here — we called it Hard To Fault. Gorgeous woodwinds, textured strings, true Demo Disc sound.

Honegger / Pastorale D’Ete

No Grade – Phase IV at its worst, with the shrill strings you find on the worst of the series.

Hit and miss to be sure, but the hits are KNOCKOUTS.

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Herrmann – Conducts Psycho and Other Film Scores

More Bernard Herrmann

Bernard Herrmann Records We’ve Reviewed

More Recordings on the London Phase IV Label

  • An incredible sounding copy of this London Phase 4 title with both sides earning Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades
  • Especially noteworthy is the ’Psycho Narrative For Orchestra’, at 14 minutes the longest piece here – written purely for string orchestra, the string tone is Right On The Money, with biting violins and cellos that growl like the real thing
  • This London recording is yet another brilliant showcase for one of the great orchestral colorists, Bernard Herrmann
  • The London Phase IV recording approach allows powerful orchestral works such as these to explode right out of your speakers and into your listening room
  • Features works from Citizen Kane, Snows of Kilimanjaro, North by Northwest, Mysterious Island, Vertigo, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts, The Three World of Gulliver, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, The Devil and Daniel Webster, and Psycho

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The Music of Leonard Bernstein – Our Four Plus Mind Blowing Shootout Winner

More music written or performed by Leonard Bernstein

More Recordings on the London Phase IV Label

This London Phase 4 British import has some of the most SPECTACULAR sound I have ever heard reproduced from disc. The sound is so BIG and BOLD that it handily puts to shame 95% or more of all the Golden Age Shaded Dogs, London Bluebacks, Mercury Living Presence’s, EMI’s and Decca’s we’ve ever played. If we had a Classical Top 100 list, this record would belong in a Top Ten taken from it, right near the top judging by what I heard when I played it.

Side two here is BEYOND White Hot, earning a sonic grade of A++++! I don’t know that any other copy has earned such a high grade for side two but this one sure did. It blew our minds.

If you have a system with the speed, power and size to play this record properly (yes, you will need all three and a whole lot more), it’s hard to imagine it would not qualify as the best sounding classical recording you’ve ever heard. Demo Disc barely begins to do it justice. What sound. What music. What a record! Side two is where the real action is on this album, and it is presented here with SPECTACULAR AUDIO FIDELITY the likes of which you may have never experienced.

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The Jacques Loussier Trio – Brandenburg Concerto No. 5

  • This jazzy, innovative interpretation of three of Bach’s most famous works boasts Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound throughout – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Baroque genius meets jazz pioneer in this unique confluence of musical conventions
  • Full-bodied and warm, exactly the way you want your vintage analog to sound – the piano is surprisingly real here, solid and dynamic
  • Born from his love of classical works and improvisation, Loussier “loved to play the music, but add my own notes, expanding the harmonies and playing around with that music,” and the results should be interesting to fans of jazz and classical music alike

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Tchaikovsky / Capriccio Italien & Rimsky-Korsakov / Capriccio Espagnol / Black / London Festival

  • Incredible sound on both sides of this London Phase 4 pressing with each side earning Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or very close them – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
    These pieces are some of THE BEST on record – not only do they have incredibly powerful DEMO DISC sound, but the performances are superb in every way as well
    The energy and excitement of these works are brought to life by Stanley Black and the London Festival Orchestra like nothing you have ever heard
    This White Hot pressing may make you reevaluate virtually every classical recording in your collection

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Ronnie Aldrich / Melody and Percussion For Two Pianos – Reviewed in 2012

This Decca Phase 4 record from 1962 has Demo Disc sound of a sort on side one. Super Hot sonics, coupled with the Super Phase 4 “jumping out of the speakers” recording techniques that were employed, mean that this is one LIVELY record!

The pianos can get to be a bit much, but when they are under control, the huge stage and the effect of all the percussion that jumps out of the soundfield is really quite something to behold.

Zero smear on this side too, which is what makes it work — the blunting of all those transients would quickly ruin the fun.

Which is what happens on side two; the smear and hardness of the typical Phase 4 pressing are evident and do spoil all the fun.

Try tracks 1, 2, 4 and 6 – talk about immediacy and explosive dynamics.

This is an Older 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 fine art.

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 out Hot Stamper listings, the Sonic Grades and Vinyl Playgrades are listed separately.)

We were often wrong back in those days, something we have no reason to hide. Audio equipment and record cleaning technologies have come a long way since those darker days, a subject we discuss here.

Currently, 99% (or more!) of the records we sell are cleaned, then auditioned under rigorously controlled conditions, up against a number of other pressings. We award them sonic grades, and then condition check them for surface noise.

As you may imagine, this approach requires a great deal of time, effort and skill, which is why we currently have a highly trained staff of about ten. 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 come along to do the kind of work we do.

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 exceptionally high 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.

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Ten Years After / Self-Titled – Reviewed in 2008

I had no idea the band’s first album was recorded this well. I expected it to sound something like an old Rolling Stones Decca — tubey magical but plagued by a fair amount of compression, distortion and limited at both ends of the frequency spectrum. 

Instead, when the needle hit the groove, out of the speakers poured truly MASTER TAPE SOUND! Who knew? Clear as a bell, super-transparent, zero-distortion, spacious, and tubey magical in the best sense of that phrase — not fat and sloppy, but rich and sweet. To my ear there is practically no processing to the sound.

For a recording from 1967 to sound this good is a bit of a shock. Sgt. Pepper came out in 1967, but it’s full of studio trickery. The kind of purity and freedom from distortion that characterizes this Ten Years After record puts it at the opposite end of the artificial recording spectrum. I can’t think of another record from this far back that has this kind of sound. More than anything it proves it could be done; they had the technology.

Oh how far we have fallen. And you can be sure of one thing: the domestic pressings are not going to sound like this one. The Moody Blues on domestic Deram pressings are a joke next to the imports. Those tapes are in England, baby, and I doubt they ever crossed the pond.

Camel – Breathless – Our Shootout Winner from 2011

This Decca original UK pressed LP has BETTER than Super Hot Stamper sound on BOTH sides. It finished just a half grade behind the best one we played, and we played close to ten copies for our shootout, all British imports, so that should tell you this is a very special pressing indeed.

If you like your Prog with Pop flavorings, more Supertramp than King Crimson, you may find yourself liking Camel more than you thought you would. I was never a fan of the original iteration of the band, but both this album and Rain Dances, the one previous, have much to offer — if you like this sort of thing.

If you don’t, hard to imagine you starting now. I grew up on this music and find it quite enjoyable to this day.  (more…)