Labels We Love – Virgin

Face Value with Hugh Padgham’s Big Drum Sound

More of the Music of Phil Collins

There may be some hope for Hello, I Must Be Going! (1982), but Phil’s third album, 1985’s No Jacket Required, sounds digital and way too heavily processed. I suppose not many albums from 1985 weren’t, but it’s still an unfortunate development for us audiophile types who might’ve wanted to enjoy these albums but are just not able to get past the ridiculously bad sound. (If we ever do a listing for it, you can be sure it will go right into our Hall of Shame.)

Fortunately, the recording quality of this album is still analog and can be excellent, thanks to hugely talented engineer and producer Hugh Padgham (XTC, Peter Gabriel, Genesis, The Police, Yes, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, etc.). On this copy, the sound is nothing short of superb.

Check out Phil’s take on Tomorrow Never Knows for some heavily reverbed vocal effects, complete with a slew of backwards psychedelic sounds. If anybody can play the weirdly syncopated rhythms of TNK, it’s Phil Collins.

Whomp!

Until we heard some of the better copies, we were never able to appreciate just how important bass definition and weight are to the sound of this record. When the bass is wooly or thin, as it is on so many copies — not clear, not deep, not full enough — it throws the rest of the mix off.

When the bass is huge and powerful, the music itself becomes huge and powerful.

The copies with the big bottom end are the only ones that really make you sit up and take notice of just how big the sound is. The best Hot Stamper pressings will be Demo Discs for Bass on big speakers at loud levels. Here are some others you may enjoy reading about.

After moving into our new custom-built studio and spending a few months optimizing the room treatments, we now have even more transparency in the mids and highs, while improving the whomp factor (the formula goes like this: deep bass + mid bass + speed + dynamics + energy = whomp) at the listening position.

There’s always tons of bass being produced when you have three 12′ woofers firing away, but getting the bass out of the corners and into the center of the room is one of the toughest tricks in all of audio.

Transparency Is Key

Phil’s lead and harmony vocals are both breathy and present on the best copies, with natural, not hyped-up, texture, and harmonics. This is especially important for the love songs.

The many ballads on the album — This Must Be Love and If Leaving Me Is Easy are two of our favorites — don’t work unless the sound is intimate and immediate.

Only the best pressings have the high-resolution, full-bodied sound that allows both the rockers and the ballads to sound their best.

If you’re a fan of big drums in a big room, with jump out of the speakers sound, this is the album for you.

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Phil Collins – Face Value

More Phil Collins

  • An early UK copy of Phil Collins’ killer solo debut with superb Double (A++) sound from start to finish
  • The recording quality of this album is still analog and can be excellent, thanks to hugely talented engineer and producer Hugh Padgham (Peter Gabriel, Genesis, The Police, Yes, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, etc.)
  • We’ve tried his other albums, but nothing we’ve played has struck us as being remotely as well recorded as his debut
  • 5 stars: “. . . Collins’ most honest, most compelling work. He went on to become a huge star, with loads more hits, but Face Value stands as his masterpiece and one of the finest moments of the ’80s musical landscape.”
  • If you’re a fan of Phil’s, this has to be seen as a Top Title from 1981 that belongs in your collection
  • It’s without a doubt his best sounding album, and, to our way of thinking, his only essential one
  • The sound may be heavily processed, but that kind of sound works surprisingly well on the best sounding pressings (played at good, loud levels on big dynamic speakers in a large, heavily-treated room, of course)

Song after song, Collins’ songwriting and musicianship shine with this breakout record, the first and clearly the best of all his solo albums. The sound on the best copies, like this one, is VIBRANT, with SUPERB extension on the top, PUNCHY BASS, and excellent texture on the drums and percussion, as well as spacious strings and vocals.

There may be some hope for Hello, I Must Be Going! (1982), but Phil’s third album, 1985’s No Jacket Required, is digital and ridiculously processed sounding. I suppose not many albums from 1985 weren’t, but it’s still an unfortunate development for us audiophile types who might’ve wanted to enjoy these albums but are just not able to get past the bad sound.

If you’re a fan of big drums in a big room, with jump out of the speakers sound, this is the album for you.

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XTC / Nonsuch – Reviewed in 2005

Two Virgin British Import LPs from 1992.

Playing this album I was strongly reminded of one of my all time favorites: Jellyfish’s Spilt Milk. Since that album came out a year after this one, there’s a very good chance they were influenced by this XTC record.

If you like this one you will probably like that one and vice versa.

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.

Further Reading

New to the Blog? Start Here

Helpful Advice on Cleaning Your Records

Helpful Advice on Doing Your Own Shootouts

What We’ve Learned from Record Experiments

Simple Minds – Live In The City Of Light – Reviewed in 2007

This is a very nice looking Virgin British Import Double LP with BIG BOLD live rock sound. These import pressings consistently trounce the domestic versions.

Recorded primarily at Le Zenith in Paris on the last date of a world tour in August 1986 and released as a stopgap to satiate fans while the group spent another two years crafting its studio follow-up to Once Upon a Time, Simple Minds’ double-album Live in the City of Light was a good summation of the band’s rise to worldwide fame between 1982-1985.

Peter Gabriel / Shaking the Tree – Recommended UK Press

More Peter Gabriel

New British import pressings with EXCELLENT SOUND. 

There is not a track here that wouldn’t KILL the sound of that track found on any of the Classic Heavy Vinyl pressings in a head to head shootout. And if you don’t agree we are more than happy to take this copy back and refund your money.

These pressings typically have some surface noise at the start of one side or the other, mostly caused by dust in the jacket that scuffed the vinyl in transit, so they have been priced far below what they would sell for if they were quieter, because the sound is, as I said, excellent.

This “greatest hits’ package comes across as a nice overview of his solo career, since he virtually had no hits in this country until So.

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XTC / English Settlement – A Sonic Tour de Force

More of the Music of XTC

This is an AMAZINGLY well-recorded album, with huge amounts of open studio space and that Tubey Magical, rich, fat, dense British Rock Sound. That sound isn’t easy to reproduce, but this copy absolutely nails it. Nothing else in our shootout came close to it!

If you have big speakers and the room to play them, this is quite the sonic tour de force. Credit Hugh Padgham, producer and engineer, who’s worked with the likes of Peter Gabriel, Genesis, The Police, Yes and Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Those bands make the kind of music that make good use of Padgham trademark sound: wall-to-wall, deep, layered, smooth, rich and stuffed to the gills. XTC with Padgham’s help have here produced a real steamroller of an album in English Settlement.

The big hit on this album is one that most audiophiles will probably know: Senses Working Overtime. Even over the radio you can hear how dense the production is. Imagine what it sounds like on an original British pressing with Hot Stampers, played on a modern audiophile rig. Simply put, IT ROCKS. (more…)