Top Artists – Brian Eno

Roxy Music – For Your Pleasure

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  • With a KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side one mated to an outstanding Double Plus (A++) side two, we guarantee you’ve never heard For Your Pleasure sound this good
  • Roxy and their engineers and producers manage to capture a deliciously Tubey Magical keyboard sound on their first two albums that few bands in the history of the world can lay claim to
  • It took us a long time to figure what pressings had the sound we were looking for, more than a decade, bit it was worth the wait because For Your Pleasure now sounds the way you want it to sound – Big and Bold
  • 5 stars: “… another extraordinary record from Roxy Music, one that demonstrates even more clearly than the debut how avant-garde ideas can flourish in a pop setting.”
  • If you’re a Roxy fan, For Your Pleasure has to be considered a Must Own Title of theirs from 1973

Spacious, dynamic, present, with HUGE MEATY BASS and tons of energy, the sound is every bit as good as the music. (At least on this copy it is. That’s precisely what Hot Stampers are all about.)

Strictly in terms of recording quality, For Your Pleasure is on the same plane as the other best sounding record the band ever made, their self-titled debut.

Siren, Avalon and Country Life are all musically sublime, but the first album and this one are the only two with the kind of dynamic, energetic, powerful sound that Roxy’s other records simply cannot show us (with the exception of Country Life, was is powerful but a bit too aggressive).

The super-tubey keyboards that anchor practically every song on the first two albums are only found there. If you want to know what Tubey Magic sounds like in 1972-73, play one of our better Hot Stamper Roxy albums.

Roxy and their engineers and producers manage to capture a keyboard sound on their first two albums that few bands in the history of the world can lay claim to. I love the band’s later albums, but none of them sound like these two. The closest one can get is Stranded, their third, but it’s still a bit of a step down. (more…)

David Bowie – Years Ago We Foolishly Thought a Domestic LP Could Beat the Brits

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More Hot Stamper Pressings that Sound Better on the Right Reissue

This shootout listing was written sometime around 2008. 

In 2008 we hadn’t discovered the right imports for this album yet — that would not happen for many more years, hence the error we made in thinking that some especially good sounding domestic copies could win a shootout.

Back then they could, but with the right pressings in the mix there is not a chance in the world that would happen now.

Just another case of live and learn. By the way, Low has much in common with another Bowie record we struggled with for years.

To be fair, some domestic pressings do end up having low-level (1.5+) Hot Stampers, but they’re rare. Our best Brits just kill ’em. We haven’t bothered with the domestic pressings in more than a decade, and why would we? The reissue imports we sell now are just too good.

Our Old Hot Stamper Commentary

This is the first Hot Stamper copy of Low to ever hit our site, and it’s a darn good one — especially on side one, where all the “pop” songs are found. We just had a huge shootout for this album featuring all the copies we’ve picked up over the years, and this domestic (!) pressing shocked us by blowing away our Brit copies on side one.

If you aren’t interested in the instrumental Bowie/Eno synth-heavy soundscapes that fill side two, this is THE copy to own.

I’ve said it on the site numerous time, but I spent a good portion of the 70s playing ar rock records like Taking Tiger Mountain, Crime Of The Century and Deceptive Bends.

I remember being blown away when Low came out, and it was a blast to hear how good a Hot Stamper pressing can sound on a highly-evolved stereo system today. [Maybe not so highly evolved!]

Side one of this album features the more traditional (not really the right word, but I digress) Bowie rockers like Sound and Vision and Be My Wife, while side two sounds more like the instrumental synth music of Kraftwerk or Eno. (more…)

Phil Manzanera – Astonishingly Good Sound on the Right Island Pressing

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The wind is at your back here because this is one seriously well-recorded album. If this copy doesn’t wake up your stereo nothing will.

Like its brother, 801 Live, this album is an amazing sonic blockbuster, with sound that positively leaps out of the speakers. Why shouldn’t it? It was engineered by the superbly talented Rhett Davies at Island, the genius behind Taking Tiger Mountain, the aforementioned 801 Live, Avalon, Dire Straits’ first album and many many more.

If we could regularly find copies of this audiophile blockbuster (and frankly if more people appreciated the album) it would definitely go on our Top 100 Rock and Pop List. In fact, it would easily make the Top Twenty from that list, it’s that good.

Looking for Tubey Magic? Rhett Davies is your man. Just think about the sound of the first Dire Straits album or Avalon. The best pressings of those albums — those with truly Hot Stampers — are swimming in it.

Big Speakers Wanted

This isn’t known as an audiophile album but it should be — the sound is GLORIOUS — wall to wall, floor to ceiling, and as rich and dynamic as it gets. It’s also a big speaker album. Play this one as loud as you can. (801 Live is exactly the same way and needs high volumes to come to life.)

A Personal Favorite

This album basically became the set list for 801 Live, the concert collaboration between Eno, Manzanera and their fellow travelers. That album is one of my all time favorites too, and a Must Own for anyone who likes British Art Rock from the ’70s.

What both of these albums share is amazing guitar work. Manzanera was the guitarist for Roxy Music, and this album can be enjoyed simply as an exercise in hearing every possible kind of sound the guitar can make. It also helps to have Eno doing electronic treatments for the instrument and coming up with a whole new sound.

One listen to a song like Diamond Head is all it should take to make you a fan. If that song doesn’t do it for you, the rest of the album won’t either, but I can’t imagine how that could be.

Looking at the Hot Stamper checklist below, it occurs to me that the best copies of this album excel in every area we mention. It’s energetic, dynamic, the sound just jumps out of the speakers, there’s tons of bass, it’s smooth — in short, it’s doing it all.

What to Look For

Domestic pressings suck. German pressings too. Don’t waste your money. We’ve never heard a good one. (And most of the British pressings you can find won’t hold a candle to this one.)

Please note that many of our Hot Stamper pressings are only available as imports. It has been our experience that the domestic pressings of these albums are simply not competitive with the better imports.

To see more reviews and commentaries for titles that we think sound their best on imported vinyl, please click here.

Want to avoid having to pay our admittedly high prices and find a top quality copy for yourself?

Consider taking our moderately helpful advice concerning the pressings that most often win our shootouts.

In the case of Diamond Head, we like it best this way:

  • On the right early pressing
  • On the right UK Island pressing

Stereo Love

It’s clear to us that our stereo system just loves this record. Let’s talk about why we think that might be.

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801 – 801 Live

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More Live Recordings of Interest

  • 801 Live rocks as hard as ever on this original UK Island copy boasting outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER from start to finish – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • We shot out a number of other imports and this one had the presence, bass, and dynamics that were missing from most of what we played, not to mention that live rock and roll energy that old records have and new records don’t
  • Recorded at Queen Elisabeth Hall in September 1976 – one of only three gigs the group (a side project of Roxy Music’s Phil Manzanera) did over a two-month period
  • 4 1/2 stars: “This album marks probably one of the last times that Eno rocked out in such an un-self-consciously fun fashion, but that’s not the only reason to buy it: 801 Live is a cohesive document of an unlikely crew who had fun and took chances. Listeners will never know what else they might have done if their schedules had been less crowded, but this album’s a good reminder.”
  • If you’re an Eno fan, or perhaps more a fan of mid-70s Art Rock, this title from 1976 is surely a Must Own.

801 Live has some of the biggest, boldest sound we have ever heard. It may not be seen as an audiophile album but it should be, if you have the system to play it. The sound is glorious — wall to wall, floor to ceiling, and as rich and dynamic as it gets.

It’s clearly a big speaker demo disc. Play this one as loud as you can. The louder you play it, the better it sounds.

It’s also transparent, with a large, deep soundfield that really allows you to hear into the music and the space of the venue in which it was recorded.

The real kicker is the amount of energy and musical drive that these two sides have going for them.

This is what the master tape is really capable of — mind bogglingly good sound.

Top of the List

801 Live ranks near the top of the list of my All Time Favorite Albums — a desert island disc if ever there was one.

I stumbled across it decades ago and have loved it ever since. (It started when a college buddy played me the wildly original “Tomorrow Never Knows” from the album and asked me to name the tune. Eno’s take is so different from The Beatles version that I confess it took me an embarrassingly long while to catch on.)

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Listening in Depth to Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy

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Presenting another entry in our extensive listening in depth series with advice on what to listen for as you critically evaluate your copy of Taking Tiger Mountain.

Here are some albums currently on our site with similar track by track breakdowns.

This album is all about sound, pure sound itself if you will: the sound of the instruments, their textures, and the textures of the soundscape Eno has created for them.

With the subtle harmonics of Eno’s treated sounds captured onto vinyl intact, the magic of the experience far exceeds just another batch of catchy songs with clever arrangements. It truly becomes an immersive experience; sounds you’ve never heard in quite that way draw you into their world, each sound more interesting than the next.

Only these British originals sound like they are made from fresh master tapes on rich, sweet tubey-magical, super high resolution cutting equipment.

Engineering

Rhett Davies was behind the board for Tiger Mountain. He’s one of our favorite producers and recording/mixing engineers. Click on the link to find our in-stock Rhett Davies engineered or produced albums, along with plenty of our famous commentaries.

The man may be famous for some fairly artificial sounding recordings — Eno’s, Roxy Music’s and The Talking Heads’ albums come to mind — but it’s obvious to us now, if it wasn’t before, that those are entirely artistic choices, not engineering shortcomings.

Rhett Davies, by virtue of the existence of this album alone, has proven that he belongs in the company of the greatest rock and pop engineers of all time, right up there with the likes of Bill Porter, Ken Scott, Stephen Barncard, Geoff Emerick, Glyn Johns and possibly one or two others found on this list.

Side One

(Which, by the way, is BRILLIANT from the opening guitars of Burning Airlines to the never-ending chirping crickets of The Great Pretender. I mean that literally: on these early British pressings the run-out groove has the sound of the crickets embedded in it so that the crickets chirp until you pick up the arm, much in the same way that Sgt. Pepper has sound in the run-out groove at the end of A Day In The Life.)

Burning Airlines Give You So Much More

Pure Pop for Now People. Listen to all those multi-layered harmonies! They’re sweet as honey, and only the best British copies get them to sound that way. You can make out practically every voice. This is what we mean by Midrange Magic.

Back in Judy’s Jungle

This track has a BIG BASS DRUM that will rattle the walls and threaten to bring your house crashing to the ground if you are not careful with the volume. Love that whistling too — genius!

The Fat Lady of Limbourg

This song is so good I found the lyrics on the web and have included them for your edification below. Once you fit the words to the melody you will no doubt be as convinced as I am as to the brilliance of Eno’s songwriting skills.

Mother Whale Eyeless

The high pitched chorus about the man without his raincoat in the body of the whale can be a bit much on the copies that are not cut cleanly. Those kinds of high frequencies at loud levels are hard to cut and hard for your arm/cart to track.

The Great Pretender

Pure Eno magic to finish out the side on a high point; it doesn’t get much better than this! Listen to those sustained lower piano notes — on the best copies they are deep and powerful and keep resonating seemingly forever. It’s one of the most interesting sounds on an album that’s full of NOTHING BUT interesting sounds.

Side Two

Note that on most copies side two is cut a db or two lower than side one. Please increase your volume level accordingly when playing side two.

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Brian Eno – Rules Are Made to Be Broken

More of the Music of Brian Eno

Hot Stamper Pressings of Art Rock Recordings Available Now

The domestic pressings of Before And After Science are typically grainy, low-rez and hard sounding — they’re simply not competitive with the smoother British Polydors.

But our best Hot Stamper pressing isn’t an import; it was made right here in the good old US of A.

Say what? Yes, it’s true. We were SHOCKED to find such hot stamper sound lurking in the grooves of a domestic Eno LP. It’s the One and Only.

In thirty plus years of record playing I can’t think of any domestic Eno LP that ever sounded this good.

Now hold on just a minute. The British pressings of Eno’s albums are always the best, aren’t they?

For the first three albums, absolutely. But rules were made to be broken. This pressing has the knockout sound we associate with the best British originals of Eno’s albums, not the flat, cardboardy qualities of the typical domestic reissue.

Kinda Blind Testing

Since the person listening and making notes during the shootouts has no idea what the label or the pressing of the record is that he is evaluating — this is after all a quasi-scientific enterprise, with blind testing being the order of the day — when that domestic later label showed up at the top of the heap, our jaws hit the floor.

Both sides have that rare combination of silky highs and deep low end that make any record magical. Side one, the rock side, strongly relies on its deep punchy bass to make its material come to life and rock (or should we say art rock?). Eno’s vocals are clear and present with virtually no strain. Phil Collins’ drumming (how did these guys get together? We forget that Collins was in the proggy Brand X) is energetic and transparent and perfectly complemented by Percy Jones’ simultaneously acrobatic and hard-driving bass work.

Common Problems

This album typically suffers from a severe case of rolled-off highs, compounding the problems in the midrange, which are easily recognized as veiled and smeary vocals.

The average copy is thick, muddy and congested, lacking the kind of transparency and clarity that makes it possible for the listener to hear into Eno’s dense mixes and make musical sense of them.

Partly this is Eno’s fault. He overloads his recordings. Played The Joshua Tree lately? It has some of the same sonic shortcomings, (exacerbated by Direct Metal Mastering).

Critical Listening Exercise

The test for how good this record can sound when it’s not too dense is the song Energy Fools the Magician. It’s clear and open the way nothing else on side one is. It almost sounds as if there is a room full of musicians (magicians?) playing live.

Take special note of the bell in the left channel; it’s key to the sound of the whole side. If you have a few copies, listen to the bell on each of them (after a good cleaning of course). The presence and harmonics of that bell will never be exactly the same on any two copies. We played many more than that and every time the sound of the bell was clearly different.

A Real Desert Island Disc

This is one of my all time favorite records — a real Desert Island disc. Before and After Science and Taking Tiger Mountain are Must Own albums for those of us who grew up on and still appreciate the best Art Rock of the 70s (Roxy Music, 10cc, Talking Heads, etc.).

Side One has the more uptempo tunes that really rock, while Side Two is very ethereal. “Julie With…” is one of my all-time favorite Eno tracks. It’s one of the most sublimely hypnotic songs I have ever heard in my thirty-plus years of serious record listening. It alone is worth the price of the album. If you like this album, be sure to check out the early Roxy Music pressings and 801 Live, which are also masterpieces.

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Brian Eno – A Big Speaker Tour De Force

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Hot Stamper Pressings of Art Rock Recordings Available Now

If you have a big speaker and the kind of high quality playback capable of unraveling the most complex musical creations, with all the weight and power of live music, this is the record that will make all your audio effort and expense worthwhile.

Repeat As Necessary

Like Roxy Music’s first album, this is a powerhouse that not only rewards repeated listenings but requires them. Music like this simply cannot be digested at one sitting. Like the Beatles said, It’s All Too Much. But the more you hear it the more you will be able to understand it and appreciate it and, if you’re like me, really start to love it (I hope).

I’ve been listening to this album since the mid-70s and in all that time I have never tired of it. To me it’s the very definition of a Desert Island Disc: a record that knocks me out every time I play it and never wears out its welcome. It’s still fresh and “cutting edge” (if I can use that term) forty odd years after its release. (801 Live from 1976 is the same way.)

The Sound

This album is all about sound, pure sound itself if you will: the sound of the instruments, their textures, and the textures of the soundscape Eno has created for them. Much of that information is lost or perverted on the LP reissues and of course the CD. Only these British originals sound like they are made from fresh master tapes on rich, sweet tubey-magical, super high resolution cutting equipment.

With the subtle harmonics of Eno’s treated sounds captured onto vinyl intact, the magic of the experience far exceeds just another batch of catchy songs with clever arrangements. It truly becomes an immersive experience; sounds you’ve never heard in quite that way draw you into their world, each more interesting than the next.

Brian Eno and other Art Rockers of the period were clearly dedicated to making higher quality recordings, recordings that could only come to life in the homes of those with the most advanced audio equipment. Credit the work of the amazing Rhett Davies for some of the best albums of the 70s: this one, 801 Live, Diamond Head, Dire Straits’ first album, and more.

My system was forced to evolve in order to reproduce the scores of challenging recordings issued by Eno in the 70s. The love you have for your favorite music has to be the driving force of your progress in audio if you want to achieve world class sound.

Other records that helped me advance in audio can be found here.

Taking Tiger Mountain checks off a few of our favorite boxes:

The Fat Lady of Limbourg

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Brian Eno / Taking Tiger Mountain Is a Masterpiece

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  • An original UK Island import pressing of Eno’s Art Rock Masterpiece with an INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side one
  • Side two of this copy resolves the subtle harmonics of Eno’s treated sounds better than all others we played – here is a truly immersive Art Rock experience like no other
  • Only these British originals ever win shootouts – their superior sound comes as the result of their being transferred from fresh master tapes, using the highest resolution cutting equipment available, onto to the best storage medium to ever exist: the British vinyl LP
  • This copy has been in my personal collection for the last twenty years or so, and I hope it goes to a good home, the kind of home where it will be played regularly and not just “collected”
  • “The songs…are as inventive and appealing as their treatments, and make for Eno’s most solid–and experimental–pop album. This LP holds up magnificently, even years on in the artist’s brilliant career.”

This is Brian Eno’s Masterpiece, as well as a Personal Favorite of yours truly.

On the right pressing this is a Twisted Pop Demo Disc like nothing you have ever heard. If you have a big speaker and the kind of high quality playback that is capable of unraveling the most complicated musical creations, with all the weight and power of live music, this is the record that will make all your audio effort and expense worthwhile.

That’s the kind of stereo I’ve been working on for forty years and this album just plain kills over here.

Art Rock

That being said, it may not be the kind of thing most music loving audiophiles will be able to make much sense of if they have no history with this kind of Art Rock from the 70s. I grew up on Roxy Music, 10cc, Eno, The Talking Heads, Ambrosia, Supertramp, Yes and the like, bands that wanted to play rock music but felt shackled by the chains of the conventional pop song. This was and still is my favorite kind of music.

When it comes to the genre, I put this album right at the top of the heap along with several other landmark albums from the period: More Songs About Buildings and Food, Roxy Music’s first, Sheet Music, Crime of the Century, Ambrosia’s first two releases, The Yes Album, Fragile and perhaps a handful of others, no more than that.

Repeat As Necessary

Like Roxy Music’s first album, this is a powerhouse that not only rewards repeated listenings but requires them. Music like this simply cannot be digested at one sitting. Like the Beatles said, It’s All Too Much. But the more you hear it the more you will be able to understand it and appreciate it and, if you’re like me, really start to love it (I hope). I’ve been listening to this album since the mid-70s and have never tired of it. To me it’s the very definition of a Desert Island Disc: a record that knocks me out every time I play it and never wears out its welcome. It’s still fresh and “cutting edge” (if I can use that term) nearly fifty years after its release.

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I Misunderstood – Clarity Was Never the Point

Hot Stamper Pressings of Live Recordings Available Now

Reviews and Commentaries for 801 Live

Some audiophiles get worked up listening for details in their favorite recordings. I should know; I was as guilty as anyone of that behavior.

But is that where the music is – in the details? Lots of details come out when one copy is brighter than another. Brighter ain’t necessarily better. Most of the time it’s just brighter. 

Listening for the details in a recording can be a trap, one that is very easy to fall into if we are not careful or don’t know better.

801 Live isn’t about clarity. It’s about the sound of a Rock Concert. It’s about the raw power of one of the most phenomenal rhythm sections ever captured in performance on analog tape.

That’s what makes it a Good Test Disc. When you play the hardest rocking tracks, the harder they rock, the better.

Next time you try out some audiophile wire or a new tweak, play this record to make sure you haven’t lost the essential energy, weight and power of the sound. This album doesn’t care about your love of detail. It wants you to feel the energy of the band pulling out all the stops. If the new wire or the new tweak can’t get that right, it’s not right and it’s got to go.

The commentary you see below for 801 Live circa 2007 marked another milestone in the history of Better Records.

This is a one of my All Time Favorite records — a Desert Island Disc if there ever was one. I treasure this album. And I just now finally figured out how to tell the good ones from the not-so-good ones. I confess I was listening for the wrong things in the shootouts I was doing over the last few years, and in that I have the feeling I was not alone. I think this is a fairly common Major Audiophile Pitfall that we all get stuck in on occasion.

In this case I was trying to find a more transparent copy, one with more shimmer to the cymbals and air around the instruments. The first track is a little opaque and I wanted to be able to hear into the music better. I tried many import and domestic copies, but none of them seemed to have the particular qualities I was looking for. They all sounded different, but I could not for the life of me find one that sounded clearly better.

Eventually I came to realize I was using the wrong metric to judge the record. I was looking for something that I really should not have been looking for. In short, I was guilty of mistaken audiophile thinking.

This album isn’t about clarity. It’s about the sound of a live Rock and Roll concert. It’s about the raw power of one of the most phenomenal rhythm sections ever captured on tape.

I discovered that fact only a few days ago (03/07), [yes, this is a very old commentary, but it still holds up!] even though I have been listening to this album for 30 years. (It started when a college buddy played me the wildly original Tomorrow Never Knows from the album and asked me to name the tune. It’s so different from The Beatles version I confess it took me until the vocals came in and I recognized the lyrics.)

Having recently acquired another nice import, I cleaned it up and threw it on, just checking for condition and really not intending to get too involved in the sound. Immediately I was struck by how beefy the bass was. (The Legacy Focus’ speakers I currently audition with have three 12″ woofers that can really pump it out down low.)

I hadn’t played the record recently, not since the latest round of improvements, and I was hearing a solid bottom end that I never knew this record had. Was it a Hot Stamper? A magical copy?

Separating the Men from the Boys

I had to know, so it was shootout time. I won’t bore you with the details, but at some point I realized that what separates the men from the boys on this LP is bass. The copies with the most powerful, deepest bass, the stuff under 50 cycles, seem to get everything else right too. The bass is the foundation to the sound, and without it the guitars and voices don’t sound right. They sound relatively thin.

The bass-heavy copies are more dynamic too. They communicate the power of the music in a way that the leaner copies simply do not. With the leaner copies it’s a good album. With the bass-heavy copies YOU ARE THERE. (That’s assuming you play this record at the levels necessary for the suspension of disbelief effect to take hold, i.e., loud.)

I stumbled upon the secret to this album by accident. With all my training and all my effort over the years, I still wasn’t able to focus on the key elements in the music that needed to be reproduced properly for the music to work.

Brian Eno – Music for Films

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More Art Rock Records

  • Music for Films returns to the site on this original UK pressing with STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from first note to last
  • Rich, smooth, tonally correct, spacious, this collection of recordings made between 1975 and 1978 was compiled and transferred with consummate skill, ensuring that the highest fidelity was maintained – this pressing sounds right
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • “It is a conceptual work intended as a soundtrack for imaginary films, although many of the pieces had already appeared in actual films.”
  • 5 stars: “Eno’s analog music definitely benefits from presentation in the digital domain… it is essential Eno, and a landmark collection drawn from among his work.”

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