Labels We Love – Cotillion

Emerson, Lake & Palmer on Cotillion

More Prog Rock

With outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it throughout, this vintage Cotillion pressing makes the case that ELP’s debut is clearly one of the most powerful rock records ever made
Spacious, rich and dynamic, with big bass and tremendous energy (particularly on side one) – these are just some of the things we love about Eddie Offord‘s engineering work on this band’s albums
ANALOG at its Tubey Magical finest – you’ll never play a CD (or any other digitally sourced material) that sounds as good as this record as long as you live
“Lucky Man” and “Take a Pebble” on this copy have Demo Disc Quality Sound like you won’t believe
4 1/2 stars: “Lively, ambitious, almost entirely successful debut album… [which] showcased the group at its least pretentious and most musicianly …there isn’t much excess, and there is a lot of impressive musicianship here.”

If you’ve got the system to play this one loud enough, with the low end weight and energy it requires, you are in for a treat.

The organ that opens side two will rattle the foundation of your house if you’re not careful. This music really needs that kind of megawatt reproduction to make sense. This is bombastic prog that wants desperately to rock your world. At moderate levels it just sounds overblown and silly. At loud levels, it actually will rock your world.

This Cotillion pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records rarely even 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.
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Various Artists / Woodstock

More Live Albums

These original pressings boast seriously good Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER on all SIX sides
With Mint Minus Minus vinyl and no marks that can be heard, you will have a very hard time finding a copy that plays this well
We guarantee there is dramatically more richness, fullness, 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
“As potent a musical time capsule as ever existed, it captures the three-day, 1969 concert event that united close to half a million members of what came to be known as the ‘Woodstock Generation.’ It topped the Billboard Charts for four weeks and sold two million copies.”

You will have a very hard time finding a quieter copy!

Folks, it was a struggle, let me tell you! Not as much of a struggle as putting on the concert itself to be sure, but a struggle for those of us charged with finding good sound on this famously badly recorded album.

First off there are six sides to play for every copy.

Secondly the sound is problematical at best; figuring out what the best copies do well that the run-of-the-mill copies don’t takes quite a bit of concentration, and one has to stay focused for a long time (most of the day in fact). After a while it can really start to wear on your nerves. (more…)

Listening in Depth to Emerson, Lake & Palmer

More of the Music of Emerson, Lake and Palmer

Reviews and Commentaries for Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s Debut

If you’ve got the system to play this one loud enough, with the low end weight and energy it requires, you are in for a treat.

The organ that opens side two will rattle the foundation of your house if you’re not careful. This music really needs that kind of megawatt reproduction to make sense. This is bombastic prog that wants desperately to rock your world. At moderate levels it just sounds overblown and silly. At loud levels, it actually will rock your world.

To play this record right, you should have, at a minimum:

Big dynamic speakers, and they should be pulled well out into the room to create a three-dimensional presentation, in this case of a live rock concert. If they are too big for the room, and stuck in the corners, you haven’t got a chance.
A large room — our new studio has a 12 foot ceiling, a big help with recordings such as this.
Strong walls with no windows, and a concrete floor to keep the bass from leaving the room (if at all possible).
Seating for a single listener far from any boundary, especially the back wall (a common problem with small-ish rooms).
Extensive room treatments to deal with the loud levels required by this music.
Enough power to move all the air in the listening room with authority.
And, finally, high quality electricity, a heavily tweaked front end and all the rest of the audio stuff we discuss so often on this blog.

Without all of these things, it’s hard for us to imagine anyone could hear this record sound the way the artists and engineers wanted it to. Playing a record like this in a small room at moderate levels practically guarantees that the listener will not be able to hear what makes the best copies of this album so special.

Our system evolved over the decades to play these kinds of records, primarily for two reasons:

We love music and want to hear our favorite recordings sound their best, and
With this much money on the line, we have to be right about the superior sound of the vintage Hot Stamper pressings we offer if we want to stay in business.

Side One

The Barbarian
Take a Pebble

Superb sound! Big, spacious and effortlessly alive. So dynamic too.

Lots of sibilance though, which means it’s a good test for cartridge and arm setup. Higher quality arms and cartridges — at least those cartridges that are not only of higher quality but are more neutral, two things that cannot be assumed to go together — should be able to track the sibilance with less grit and distortion.

The piano on the best copies is clear and solid. Compare any two or more copies for how much weight, clarity and freedom from smear on the individual notes can be heard on each.

The copy with the best sounding piano is probably going to be the copy with the best sound, period.

Eddie Offord engineered Fragile, and the song South Side of the Sky at the end of side one has an exceptionally well recorded piano as well. I am not aware of any engineer who has done a better job recording the piano for a rock or pop album. On Big Speakers at Loud Levels it is a powerful instrument indeed.

We like our pianos to sound natural (however one chooses to define the term).

We like them to be solidly weighted.

We like them to be free of smear, a quality that is rarely mentioned in the audiophile reviews we read.

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King Floyd / Self-Titled – Another Surprisingly Well Recorded Album Discovered

More King Floyd

More Soul, Blues, and Rhythm and Blues

King Floyd’s sophomore release finally arrives on the site with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on both sides
We were shocked at how well recorded this album is – the first track is a bit rough, but after that you feel like you are right in the studio with these guys
With its presence, clarity, and timbral accuracy, this pressing is guaranteed to be one of the best sounding groove-laden soul records you’ve heard in a very long time
We guarantee there is dramatically more space, richness, 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 marke