Top Artists – Peter Gabriel

Peter Gabriel on Classic Records

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Peter Gabriel Available Now

Sonic Grade: D (or worse!)

An audiophile hall of shame pressing and another Classic Records rock album badly mastered for the benefit of audiophiles looking for easy answers and quick fixes.

We have a special section for bad sounding records that are marketed to audiophiles, and you can find that section here.

It currently has 281 entries, but if someone wanted to audition more of them — that person is definitely not me, although I cannot imagine anyone more qualified — the number could easily hit 500.

If one were to do just the Music Matters and Analogue Productions albums released to date, a thousand would be no problem.

And if one were simply to include vintage Japanese pressings, the kind many audiophiles regularly bought in the 80s and 90s for their quieter vinyl and supposedly higher quality mastering, our bad audiophile record section would contain multitudes. Multitudes I tell you!

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Unlike the First Three Albums, on Security You Can Forget the Brits

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Peter Gabriel Available Now

The basics notes here were written in 2009, about the time we finished our album by album auditions of his early catalog.

On this title, forget the Brits. Every British pressing we played was badly smeared and veiled.

This took us somewhat by surprise because we happen to like the British PG pressings, but remember, So on British vinyl is awful too, so it’s clear (to us anyway) that the later PG records are bad on British vinyl and the early ones are better.

We are limiting our comments here to albums up through So. Anything after that is more or less terra incognita for us simply because we don’t care for the music he was making after 1986.

Plays Live, from 1983, takes the dark, overly-rich, overly-thick and way-too-smooth sonics of Security and lathers it over the material he had previouly recorded up through then. Some of it works well enough I suppose, but in my experience it usually isn’t long before the monotony of this approach grows tiresome.

What We Listened For

The best copies have sonic qualities that are not the least bit difficult to recognize:

  • Presence, putting PG front and center;
  • Dynamics, both micro and macro;
  • Energy, allowing the rhythmic elements to bring out the life in the music;
  • Transparency, so that we hear all the way to the back of the studio (where some of the many musicians that play in the densest parts no doubt had to stand); and
  • Ambience, the air that surrounds all the players and what instruments they played.

And of course we played the album VERY LOUD, as loud as we could. It’s the only way to get the massive druming to sound right.

The Music

This is one of the most important records in the Peter Gabriel canon, groundbreaking and influential on so many levels. The entire album is a wonderful journey; anyone with a pop-prog bend will enjoy the ride. Just turn the volume up good and loud, turn off your mind, relax and float along with PG and the band. You’re in good hands.

I’ve listened to this one more than other PG albums with the only exception being his second release, the one produced by Robert Fripp. That one is still clearly my favorite of the lot. I play it to this day and have never tired of it since I bought it way back in 1978.

Naturally, I would have originally picked up the domestic pressing, which is clearly made from a dub tape, but in 1978 what did I know about master tapes and imported pressings?

I was still a big Mobile Fidelity fan at that time, which is a simple way of saying that it’s clear that I had a very long way to go in this hobby and a great deal left to learn!

Nothing Peter Gabriel released after So did much for me so I resigned myself to the first five albums. Five excellent albums from one artist is plenty in my book.

If you like the albums after So, to each his own and more power to you. It’s my opinion that their appeal is limited, such that doing a shootout for them is not likely to be in the cards.

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Listening in Depth to So

Hot Stamper Pressings of So Available Now

With a digital recording such as this, the margin for mastering error is very slim. Most copies just aren’t worth the vinyl they’re pressed on. They can sound harsh, gritty, grainy, edgy, and thin. We love this music and we know there are great copies out there, so we keep picking these up. More often than not, we’re left cold.

This is a digital recording, and most of the time it is BRIGHT, SPITTY and GRAINY like a typical digital recording, which plays right into our prejudices. After hearing a bad copy, what audiophile wouldn’t conclude that all copies will have these bad qualities? After all, it’s digital. It can’t be fixed simply by putting it on vinyl.

Ah, but that’s where the logic breaks down.

Proper mastering can ameliorate many if not most of a recording’s sins. When we say Hot Stampers, we are talking about high quality mastering doing exactly that.

Side One

Red Rain

Peter Gabriel’s soaring vocals here are a great test for transparency, especially during the last minute of the song when they really become more intimate, present, delicate and breathy.

Sledgehammer

Not unlike “Red Rain,” the flute intro here is a solid test for transparency and texture. But this moment passes quickly to make room for the huge horns that fire up the biggest hit on this album. The trumpets should have weight, dynamics, and texture. If they are smeary, blary or lifeless, you probably are listening to the typically compressed, low-resolution copy. (Side note: listen for the chatter before the singing begins – is someone talking on the phone? Last minute instructions from Peter? If you can figure out what they are saying we’ll give you this record for free!)

Don’t be alarmed at the veiled sound of the first two bars of vocals – it’s just the recording talking. When the verse comes in full swing, you’ll probably notice a little bit of spit, which is unavoidable here, especially on the super-sibilant “steam train” or “blue sky back”. However, the good copies make this problem non-offensive, and actually beneficial to the life of the music. The spit should not sound gritty or grainy; if it has a somewhat silky quality that’s a very good sign. But it has to be there if your copy is to have any life or presence in the midrange.

The backup singers that come in at the end of the first chorus should be subtle yet still present and clear. Also, pay attention to the reintroduction of the horns at the beginning of the second verse. The dynamic here is extremely important. The last note of their phrases should really swell up and make you appreciate what those guys are doing. (Maybe it’s Peter talking in the background, reminding the horn players not to forget to do that little dynamic trick.) (more…)

Peter Gabriel – So

More of the Music of Peter Gabriel

  • Here is an incredible copy of Gabriel’s breakthrough album from 1986 with Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sound from start to finish – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • Both of these sides are lively, solid and rich – drop the needle on any track and you’ll see what we mean
  • Great songs including “Don’t Give Up,” “Sledgehammer,” “Big Time,” “Mercy Street,” “Red Rain,” “In Your Eyes,” and more
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these Classic Rock records – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • 4 stars: “…[Gabriel’s] most accessible and…catchiest, happiest record he ever cut. “Sledgehammer” propelled the record toward blockbuster status, and [it] had enough songs with single potential to keep it there.”

Here is a copy of So with the Big and Bold Peter Gabriel sound we love. If you want your Art Rock to actually rock (as well as be arty), this is the copy for you.

It’s not a perfect recording by any means, but when it sounds this good you can easily forget its shortcomings and marvel at how consistently good the material and the production are.

No Mean Feat

It’s exceptionally hard to find good-sounding copies of this album, as you can read about below. With a digital recording such as this, the margin for mastering error is very slim. Most copies just aren’t worth the vinyl they’re pressed on. They can sound harsh, gritty, grainy, edgy, and thin.

We did a shootout years ago that taught us a few things. The most surprising finding? The Brit copy I had in my own collection sucked — how about that! As a rule, I like the Brit pressings best for PG, but that rule got broken after playing all these domestic copies, some of which really sound good, clearly better than the average Brit.

Recording Issues

This is a digital recording, and most of the time it is bright, spitty, and grainy like a typical digital recording, which plays right into our prejudices. After hearing a bad copy, what audiophile wouldn’t conclude that all copies will have these bad qualities? After all, it’s digital. It can’t be fixed simply by putting it on vinyl.

Ah, but that’s where logic breaks down. Proper mastering can ameliorate many if not most of a recording’s shortcomings. When we say Hot Stampers, we are talking about high-quality mastering doing exactly that.

Mass-Produced Plastic Problems

But of course the mastering is only one part of the puzzle. I have multiple copies with the same stampers. Some of them are terrible, some of them are wonderful — you just can’t rely on the numbers to guide you with a piece of mass-produced plastic like this. You have no choice but to play the record to know what it sounds like. (And that’s a good thing. Keeps you honest. There’s no “cheating” when you have nothing to go by but the sound.)

This album sold in the millions. They stamped it out until the metalwork was as smooth as a baby’s bottom. Those badly pressed copies are not going to have any high-frequency extension, which leaves them with all the harsh upper mids sticking out of the mix to peel the paint in your living room and make your ears bleed.

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Genesis – Foxtrot

More Genesis

More Prog Rock

  • Outstanding sound throughout this early Peter Gabriel-led Genesis album from 1972, with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades
  • One of the tougher Genesis albums to find with good sound – this British Charisma LP is much more impressive than most of what we played in our most recent shootout, and guaranteed to trounce any domestic or Heavy Vinyl pressing you may have heard
  • 5 stars: “Foxtrot is where Genesis began to pull all of its varied inspirations into a cohesive sound — which doesn’t necessarily mean that the album is streamlined, for this is a group that always was grandiose even when they were cohesive, or even when they rocked, which they truly do for the first time here. This is the rare art-rock album that excels at both the art and the rock, and it’s a pinnacle of the genre because of it.”

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Peter Gabriel – Self-Titled No. 1 (Car)

More Peter Gabriel

  • With two INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sides, this British pressing was giving us the sound we were looking for on Peter Gabriel’s solo debut album
  • Rich, smooth, sweet, full of ambience, dead-on correct tonality – everything that we listen for in a great record is here
  • Features his autobiographical lead single and radio staple to this day, “Solsbury Hill”
  • Clearly the hardest of the first five PG records to find with good sound and decent vinyl, which is why these seldom make the site
  • None of our top copies did not have condition issues or ticky vinyl – for this album it is best to assume the vinyl won’t be quiet; it helps to avoid some of the disappointment that inevitably comes
  • Speaking of which, there are some bad marks (as is sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs) on “Down the Dolce Vita,” but once you hear just how amazing sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and pops and just be swept away by the music
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…much of the record teems with invigorating energy (as on ‘Slowburn,’ or the orchestral-disco pulse of ‘Down the Dolce Vita’), and the closer ‘Here Comes the Flood’ burns with an anthemic intensity that would later become his signature in the 80s.”

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So at 45 RPM – One Side Bad, Another Awful, What’s a Mother to Do?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Peter Gabriel Available Now

In 2016 a version of So came out using this currently popular vinyl format:

2 180g discs / 45 RPM / Deluxe, Numbered, Limited Edition /Half Speed mastered

As of this writing, there are 15 copies on Discogs, the cheapest of them starting at $139.77.

Sounds like it must be pretty good for that kind of money!

This So release was mastered by a fellow named Matt Colton, who has been doing this kind of work for a very long time, judging by the fact that he has 3,775 technical credits under his name on Discogs.

That did not stop this particular 2 LP set from being one of the worst sounding albums we have played in quite a while.

Let’s take a closer look at the specifics. We played sides one and four of the two-disc, four-sided album. That was more than enough to evaluate the sound quality.

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Genesis / Selling England By The Pound

More of the Music of Genesis

  • An early UK Charisma pressing (only the second copy to hit the site in over three years) with two solid Double Plus (A++) sides
  • If you’re a fan of early Genesis, or 70s progressive rock in general, it’s hard to do much better than this outstanding import
  • One of the Must Own Genesis recordings but also one of the harder titles to find with the right sound and audiophile surfaces in our experience
  • Which we hope will explain the pricing – so many copies come with marks and other surface issues that it does indeed take us three years to get a shootout going
  • 5 stars: “… the album showcases the band’s narrative force on a small scale as well as large that makes this their arguable high-water mark.”

What do the better Hot Stamper copies give you? Remarkable dynamics and clarity, a huge, open soundstage and rich, full-bodied tonality.

It’s beyond difficult to find good sounding copies of the early Genesis albums, but we recently managed to pull together enough clean copies to get this shootout going again and came up with some real knockout sides! Anyone who has tried to find good sounding copies of this album knows what a tough task it can be. We’ve tried to do this shootout a number of times since 2005 and until 2012 had almost nothing to show for it. But Hot Stampers copies do exist, and this very one proves it!

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Letter of the Week – “It’s crazy that once upon a time I thought it sounded really great.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Peter Gabriel Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about a Hot Stamper pressing he purchased recently:

Hi Tom,
Just a note. I forgot I had Red Rain/Sledgehammer on a 45 rpm clarity vinyl from Classic.

So I compared them. What the fuck! It was absolutely, completely lifeless. I was amazed at how lifeless it was.

It’s crazy that once upon a time I thought it sounded really great.

The journey continues to amaze.

Take Care,
Michel

Michel,

Thanks for your letter. You are not the first person to notice that Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed mastered records do not hold up well when played head to head with the Hot Stamper pressings we offer.

Bernie Grundman has a fairly spotty record in the modern era. Starting with the work he did for Classic Records in the 90s, it’s hard to think of too many BG-mastered titles that sounded all that good to us. If pressed, I might be able to name five, but please don’t press me, coming up with five would be more work than I’d want to do.

The record you played probably sounded a lot like the pressing of So he remastered for Classic in 2002. We didn’t like it then and we doubt it has gotten better with age. Flat as a pancake and dead as a doornail are our go-to descriptions for the mostly irritating records that the various audiophile labels were putting out in those days, and not too surprisingly, the records they are making now are no better.

(To be honest, we were fooled plenty of times ourselves and have the embarrassing catalog entries to prove it.)

You were amazed by how lifeless it was, yet you used to like it.

Aren’t other audiophiles in exactly the same boat you were in until just a few days ago? Until you paid all that money to us for a copy that blew your Classic right out of the water?

Without knowing it, what you actually bought was a copy that sounded the way the Classic should have.

You thought you were getting top quality sound with Classic’s releases, especially when it has the advantage of being one song on a 12″ disc mastered at 45RPM. That record should have been killer, a Demo Disc of a great song guaranteed to blow your own as well as your audiophile friends’ minds.

Maybe it would have. Maybe, like you, they would think the Classic sounds amazing.

What’s amazing most of the time is just how relative “amazing” can be.

So, now you own the record that is a true Demo Disc, and one that can demonstrate not just top quality sound, but how inferior these modern-mastered titles really are up against the real deal — the real deal being a plain old mass-produced record that everybody and his uncle could have bought for relatively cheap in 1986. No fancy packaging, no high price tag, no virgin vinyl, just a record properly-pressed and properly-mastered. The world is full of them.

Audiophiles may be incredulous at the thought, but all it would take to show them how wrong their approach to collecting better pressings has been is the right pressing. Those are the ones we sell.

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Letter of the Week – “The real point for me is that I can keep enjoying these new listening experiences over and over again.”

More of the Music of Peter Gabriel

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Peter Gabriel

Our new customer Michel wrote to tell us how much he likes his Hot Stamper pressing of So.

Hi Tom,

Many of the BR titles I bought I had stopped listening to due to lack of engagement with the music. It just didn’t do it for me anymore. But then I’d buy one of your LPs… it would then destroy my other copies… and now I listen to that LP on a regular basis, enjoying music I love but had stopped listening to.

When I put on a BR record, I am engaged with the music… and of course I keep hearing new nuances, etc. with every play.

Why pay so much for an album?  Well if music floats your boat, then no explanation needed. Just bring your ears to my living room…then you’ll get it!

The real point for me is that I can keep enjoying these new listening experiences over and over again. It is an immeasurable joy really to hear beautiful music reveal itself in all its splendor.

How the f*** does yours sound so much better? Virtually as soon as the music began the difference was obvious.

I remember liking some aspects of the UK… and the same goes for the US… I liked the warmth and rolled back highs in comparison the UK, but it seemed muddy/veiled/mishmashy which was bothersome, so then I stopped listening.

The BR copy somehow has it all. It is by far the most listenable copy of this I’ve ever heard. It can be turned up all the way from start to finish without any worries about what you might hear.

Plenty of shrill-free highs, lots of killer bass… deep low tones with analog warmth, boomy wide room filling sound, etc, etc.  No muddiness in the presentation… clarity with warmth, nothing veiled.

Thank You!!
Michel

Michel,

You make a point that I have been banging on for years. Better sounding pressings are the only way to rediscover music that you’ve lost interest in because the copies you own didn’t have the sound you needed.

If your old copies of So had sounded better, you would have played them, but they didn’t, and so they sat on the shelf.

Knowing the sound was off, you simply stopped playing them. You lost track of So.

Hot Stamper pressings get played. They have the life of the music in their grooves and demand to be heard!

We say music does the driving in this hobby, but that’s not really the whole story for us audiophiles, is it?

Music with good sound is what really does the driving.

Joy to Your World

When you get hold of the pressing that presents the music the way you want to hear it, that’s the record that gets played beause that’s the record that brings joy to the listener.

The other pressings of So sit on the shelf, reminders that badly-mastered, badly-pressed records are the norm, not the exception.

The exceptional pressing is the one that can bring the music you love back from the purgatory of the overcrowded record shelf.

Think of the audiophiles that have thousands and thousands of records on their shelves and never find time to play them. Why is that?

Maybe it’s because there is nothing special about those pressings. Some collectors are so proud of having so many records — look at them all! — but what good are they? To our way of thinking, the man with ten or twenty exceptionally good records is far better off than than the one with a thousand or five thousand mediocrities.

If you want a powerful, immersive, thrilling musical experience, you will need a record that is powerful, immersive, and thrilling.

The thousands of records sitting on your shelf, the ones you haven’t played in years, are the silent reminders that they aren’t nearly as good as you think they are. If they were better, they would call out to you from that graveyard you call a record collection and fight their way back to your turntable.

So Is Back

Now, after all these years, you finally have a pressing of So that demands to be played.

If others of you out there haven’t played your copy of So in a long time, maybe there’s a reason for that.

Thanks for your letter.

Best, TP

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