Top Artists – Brian Eno

Remain In Light on Ridiculously Bad Sounding Rhino Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Talking Heads Available Now

UPDATE 2026

We reviewed this awful pressing shortly after its release in 2006. More proof, as if more were needed, that Heavy Vinyl collectors have lost their minds.

A more accurate formulation might be that such collectors can’t tell a good record from a bad one. If they could, the number owning this pressing would be a fraction of that seen below, as would the number who want it. Let’s take a deeper dive into the actual evidence for its desirability:

More than 10,000 Discogs members have this album, almost two thousand would like to own it, and the consensus is that it is an outstanding reissue, having earned a grade of 4.66 out of 5 from 735 members. (Don’t worry, I won’t show you what they had to say about it, but you are welcome to go to Discogs and read it yourself.)

With an average price of 25 bucks, what is keeping those 1948 potential buyers from pulling the trigger? Seems affordable to me. Inflation has gone up 62+% since 2006, making the album cheaper now than if you had bought it when it came out.

Our 2006 Review

The Rhino Heavy Vinyl reissue of this album was deemed dead on arrival the minute it hit my turntable.

No top, way too much bottom, dramatically less ambience than the average copy — this one is a disaster on every level.

Rhino Records has really made a mockery of the analog medium. Rhino touts their releases as being pressed on “180 gram High Performance Vinyl.” However, if they are using performance to refer to sound quality, we have found the performance of their vinyl to be quite low, lower than the average copy one might stumble upon in the used record bins. 

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Years Ago We Foolishly Thought a Domestic LP Could Beat the Brits on Low

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of David Bowie Available Now

This shootout listing for Low 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.

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Talking Heads / Remain In Light

More of the Music of Talking Heads

  • Here is a vintage Sire pressing with solid Double Plus (A++) grades from start to finish – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Everything we were hoping for from this music is here and more — richness, sweetness, great energy, big time presence, weight down low, punchy drum sound and so on
  • Both of these sides are also open and transparent with lots of space around the different parts
  • The sonics have extraordinarily high-resolution, which lets you hear all the detail and texture of the crazy synths
  • 5 stars: “Even without a single, Remain in Light was a hit, indicating that Talking Heads were connecting with an audience ready to follow their musical evolution, and the album was so inventive and influential, it was no wonder.”

It takes an exceptional pressing to get all the elements correct — the funky bottom end; the processed, multi-tracked vocals; the Brian Eno production weirdness and so on.

This is a brilliant album but a typically problematic record. Most copies get some things right but fail in other areas. There are smeary copies that can’t deliver the punchy bottom you need, grainy copies that make the vocals painful to listen to, and plenty of copies that are just too dark or flat sounding for anyone to enjoy. Note that the first track on both sides will sound the worst. The sound gets better, though, as you get further into the album.

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Remain In Light Is One Tough Title to Reproduce

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Talking Heads Available Now

Remain in Light is a record that’s going to demand a lot from the listener, and we want to make sure that you feel you’re up to the challenge. If you don’t mind putting in a little hard work, here’s a record that will reward your time and effort many times over, and probably teach you a thing or two about tweaking your gear in the process (especially your VTA adjustment, just to pick an obvious area most audiophiles neglect).

A word of caution: Unless your system is firing on all cylinders, even our hottest Hot Stamper copies — the Super Hot and White Hot pressings with the biggest, most dynamic, clearest, and least distorted sound — can have problems . Your system should be thoroughly warmed up, your electricity should be clean and cooking, you’ve got to be using the right room treatments, and we also highly recommend using a demagnetizer such as the Walker Talisman on the record, your cables (power, interconnect and speaker) as well as the individual drivers of your speakers.

This recording ranks high on our difficulty of reproduction scale. Do not attempt to play it using any but the best equipment.

It took a long time to get to the point where we could clean the record properly, twenty years or so, and about the same amount of time to get the stereo to the level it needed to be.

It’s not easy to find a pressing with the low end whomp factor, midrange energy and overall dynamic power that this music needs, and it takes one helluva stereo to play one too.

As we’ve said before about these kinds of recordings — Ambrosia; Blood, Sweat and Tears; The Yes Album; Dark Side of the Moon, Led Zeppelin II — they are designed to bring an audio system to its knees.

If you have the kind of big system that a record like this demands, when you drop the needle on the best of our Hot Stamper pressings, you are going to hear some amazing sound .

Want to find your own killer copy?

Consider taking our moderately helpful advice concerning the pressings that tend to win our shootouts.

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Brian Eno / Before And After Science – The Last of the Must Own Eno Records, We Regret to Say

More Arty Rock Records

  • This vintage Island pressing boasts solid Double Plus (A++) sound from the first note to last
  • Even with so many quiet passages, this copy held up very well all the way to the end
  • Here you will find that rare combination of silky highs and deep low end, with huge amounts of space in the middle, three qualities among many that make this album an especially magical listening experience
  • I know whereof I speak – I must have played this album at least two hundred times in the 48 years that have passed since I first bought my copy
  • If you’re a fan of Art Rock or Prog Rock or just like something a little different, this is an album that belongs in your collection
  • 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
  • 5 stars: “Despite the album’s pop format, the sound is unique and strays far from the mainstream. The music on Before and After Science at times resembles Another Green World (“No One Receiving”) and Here Come the Warm Jets (“King’s Lead Hat”) and ranks alongside both as the most essential Eno material.”

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 is energetic and transparent and perfectly complemented by Percy Jones’ simultaneously acrobatic and hard-driving bass work. (more…)

For Your Pleasure Is That and a Lot More

Robert Brook runs a blog called The Broken Record, with a subtitle explaining that the aim of his blog is to serve as:

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

FOR YOUR PLEASURE is THAT and MORE

In 1975, after reading a rave review for Siren, their fifth album in Rolling Stone, I took the plunge, bought a copy at my local Tower Records and instantly fell in love with it. I was 21 at the time and that album completely knocked me out. I had never heard anything like it. I knew nothing about the band or their style of music, now known as Art Rock, but it quickly became my favorite genre, and still is.

Naturally I proceeded to work my way through their earlier catalog, which was quite an adventure. It takes scores of plays to understand where the band is coming from on the early albums and what it is they’re trying to accomplish. I spent years trying to get into For Your Pleasure (the lesser of the two albums with Eno in the band), but eventually I wrapped my head around it and learned to enjoy what it has to offer.

The first three albums are by far the band’s best sounding.

Now I listen to each of the first five releases on a regular basis, as well as Avalon, Viva! Roxy Music, a few later albums and many of the Ferry solo releases. It’s probably true that I play Roxy Music and Roxy Music-adjacent albums more than those of any other band. That might have something to do with the fact that even after more than fifty years, this band’s music never seems to get old.

Robert is correct when he points out that Roxy’s early work does not seem to find much favor with the record buying public these days, not even with audiophiles who, one would think, would be attracted to the phenomenal recording quality of the early albums.

As a lifelong fan I have put Better Records’ substantial resources to work in order to find, clean and play as many Roxy Music albums as we can find willing buyers for. There turn out to be fewer buyers than I would have liked, to be sure, but enough to keep their albums on the site and potentially create some new fans, which should be a lot easier now that we know which are the best sounding pressings for all their albums.

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Taking Tiger Mountain – An Art Rock Masterpiece

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Brian Eno Available Now

This is Brian Eno’s Masterpiece as well as a personal favorite of yours truly.

On the right pressing, this is a twisted pop Big Speaker 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 studio creations, with all the weight and power of live music at practically live levels, 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 fifty 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 sense of if they have no history with this kind of arty rock from the 70s. I grew up on Roxy Music, 10cc, Eno, The Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel, 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. Experts who study these things say that the music you discover between the ages of 17 and 23 stays with you for your entire life. For me that’s the music I fell in love from 1971 to 1977. I was 20 when this album came out.

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, Siren, The Original Soundtrack, Crisis? What Crisis?, Ambrosia’s first two releases, The Yes Album, 801 Live, A New World Order and plenty of others, many more than I have room to describe here.

It should be noted that most of these album don’t sell all that well. We do shootouts for them anyway, partly in the hopes that at least some of our more adventurous customers will get turned on to this music and have their lives changed in the same way mine was.

One difference I could be forgiven for pointing to in this regard is that I had available to me random copies of unknown quality, unlike our customers who get offered nothing but great sounding pressings.

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Phil Manzanera / Diamond Head (Polydor Pressing)

More of the Music of Roxy Music

  • With two outstanding Double Plus (A++) sides, this UK Polydor reissue is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other Diamond Head you’ve heard, assuming you do not have one of our Hot Stamper Island pressings – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Demo Disc quality sound barely begins to describe the size and power of this recording
  • This album is an amazing sonic blockbuster, with sound that will leap right out of your speakers like practically nothing you have every heard
  • A shockingly well-recorded album from the ultra-talented Rhett Davies – this is his engineering masterpiece
  • Our long-standing advice for Diamond Head had been to avoid UK Polydor reissues, so imagine our surprise when we found this one holding its own against some of the Island LPs that we thought were in a league of their own
  • The domestics still suck, by the way, and take comfort in the fact that will never change
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Phil Manzanera’s first post-Roxy foray into solo albums is a terrific all-star affair that still holds up enormously well. Calling on favors from Roxy members present and past, and those from the Cambridge/British art rock scene, Manzanera assembled a supergroup for every song.”

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 better pressings of those albums — those with truly Hot Stampers — are swimming in it.

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Roxy Music / Self-Titled

More of the Music of Roxy Music

  • This vintage UK pressing of Roxy’s amazing debut LP (one of only a handful of copies to hit the site in twenty-two months) boasts KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them throughout – this is some of the most dynamic sound the band achieved
  • Andy Hendriksen’s engineering (over the course of a week!) is superb in all respects – we think the best pressings of this first album reveal a recording that is superior to any other by the band
  • A Top 100 album, Roxy’s masterpiece, and a Must Own desert island disc of glamorous Arty Rock
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Falling halfway between musical primitivism and art rock ambition, Roxy Music’s eponymous debut remains a startling redefinition of rock’s boundaries. Simultaneously embracing kitschy glamour and avant-pop, Roxy Music shimmers with seductive style and pulsates with disturbing synthetic textures.”
  • When it comes to rock and pop music in 1972, our picks for the best of the best, numbering at the moment a mere 21 titles, can be found here
  • This link will take you to the Hot Stamper pressings of our hardest rockin’ albums currently available
  • Here are the titles that have earned a place on our none rocks harder list

Folks, this is a true Demo Disc in the world of Art Rock. It’s rare to find a recording of popular music with dynamics like these. The guitar solo at the end of “Ladytron” rocks like you will not believe.

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Key Sonic Elements for My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Talking Heads Available Now

If you like Remain in Light as much as we do here at Better Records, you will surely have a blast with this record.

I’ve been a big fan of the album since the day it came out.

As a bonus, it’s a much better recording than Remain in Light — sweet and spacious, not hard and brittle the way that can album can be, especially on the first track.

Rick Wright of Pink Floyd noted that the album “knocked me sideways when I first heard it – full of drum loops, samples and soundscapes. The way the sounds were mixed in was so fresh, it was amazing.”

Four, Maybe Five Key Elements

Here is a comprehensive breakdown of what we were listening for when evaluating My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.

Clarity and Presence

Many copies are veiled in the midrange, partly because they may have shortcomings up top, but also because they suffer from blurry, smeary mids and upper mids. Dull, dead sounding pressings can’t begin to communicate the musical values in this excellent recording.

With a real Hot Stamper the sound is totally involving. There is breath in the voices, the picking of the strings on the guitars — these things allow us to suspend our disbelief, to forget it’s a recording we’re listening to and not living, breathing musicians.

Top End Extension

Most copies of this album have no extreme highs, which causes instrumental harmonics to sound blunted and dull. Without extreme highs the percussion can’t extend up and away from the other elements. Consequently these elements end up fighting for space in the midrange and getting lost in the mix.

Transparency

Although this quality is related to the above two, it’s not as important overall as the one below, but it sure is nice to have. When you can really “see” into the mix, it’s much easier to pick out each and every instrument in order to gain more insight into the way the songs were arranged and recorded.

Seeing into the mix is a way of seeing into the mind of the artist. To hear the hottest copies is to appreciate even more the talents of all the musicians and producers involved, not to mention the engineers.

This is an area where Heavy Vinyl fails completely more often than not. Modern remastered records are just so damn opaque. That sound drives us to distraction, when it doesn’t bore us to tears.

Bass

No rock or pop record without good bass can qualify as a top quality Hot Stamper. How could it? It’s the rhythmic foundation of the music, and who wants a pop record that lacks rhythm?

Want to find your own killer copy?

Consider taking our moderately helpful advice concerning the pressings that tend to win our shootouts.

As of 2024, shootouts for this album should be carried out:

Nothing else will do for a big, dynamic, powerful recording such as this.

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