Top Artists – Phil Manzanera

Brian Eno / Taking Tiger Mountain Is a Masterpiece

More Brian Eno

More Art Rock Records

  • 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 was another Milestone Event 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.

This record is good for testing the audio qualities we have linked below:

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Phil Manzanera / Diamond Head

More Roxy Music

More of Our Best Art Rock Records

  • This original UK Island pressing of Phil Manzanera’s debut album ROCKS with superb Double Plus (A++) sound on both sides
  • 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
  • Don’t waste your money on the UK Polydor reissues or the domestic pressings, or anything else for that matter – the right UK Island pressings are in a league of their own
  • 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 – Import Vinyl? Not So Fast

More of the Music of Bryan Ferry

More of the Music of Roxy Music

Siren is one of our favorite Roxy albums, right up there with the first album and well ahead of the commercially appealing Avalon. After reading a rave review in Rolling Stone of the album back in 1975, I took the plunge, bought a copy at my local Tower Records and instantly fell in love with it.

As is my wont, I then 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 do. Now I listen to each of the first five releases on a regular basis.

Somehow they never seem to get old, even after more than forty years.

Of all the Roxy albums (with the exception of Avalon) this is probably the best way “in” to the band’s music. The earlier albums are more raucous, the later ones more rhythmically driven — Siren catches them at their peak, with, as other reviewers have noted, all good songs and no bad ones.

Imports? Not So Fast

The British and German copies of Siren are clearly made from dub tapes and sound smeary, small and lifeless.

To be fair, Siren has never impressed us as an exceptionally good sounding recording. Like other middle period Roxy, records such as Country Life and Manifesto (the albums just before and after), it simply does not have Demo Disc analog sound the way Avalon, Stranded or the Self-Titled albums do (the latter two clearly being the best sounding in their catalog).

One would be tempted to assume that the import pressings of Siren would be better sounding, the way the imports of the first four Roxy albums are clearly better sounding. (There has never been a domestic Hot Stamper pressing of any of those titles and, since we never buy them or play them, there probably never will be.)

But in the case of Siren it’s the imports that are made from dubs. It may be a British band, recorded in British studios with a British producer, but the British pressed LPs are clearly made from sub-generation tapes, whereas the domestic copies sound like they’re made from the real masters.

Go Figure. And another thing: when it comes to records, never assume.

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Roxy Music – The First Two Albums Are the Band’s Best Sounding

More of the Music of Roxy Music

More of the Music of Bryan Ferry

This album is a MASTERPIECE of Art Rock, Glam Rock and Bent Rock all rolled into one. AMG calls Roxy Music the “most adventurous rock band of the early ’70s” and I’m inclined to agree with them.

Spacious, dynamic, present, with HUGE MEATY BASS and tons of energy, the sound is every bit as good as the music. (At least on the best copies 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 first.

Siren, Avalon and Country Life are all musically sublime, but the first album and Pleasure 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.

Chris Thomas and John Punter

With all the latest technological advances in playback I can tell you that these records sound a whole lot better than I ever thought they could.

For Your Pleasure is an amazing recording. Chris Thomas produced side one; he produced the rest of their albums (and engineered The Beatles and Badfinger and mixed Dark Side of the Moon and on and on).

The album has many of his trademark qualities: an enormous, 3-Dimensional soundstage; tons of bass; tremendous dynamics; and energy to rival anything around. John Punter‘s engineering is superb in all respects — virtually faultless.

Big Rock Records with Big Rock Sound

Both of these albums are the very definition of Big Speaker albums. The better pressings have the kind of ENERGY in their grooves that are sure to have most audiophile systems begging for mercy.

This is The Audio Challenge that awaits you. If you don’t have a system designed to play records with this kind of SONIC POWER, don’t expect to hear them the way the band and those involved in their productions wanted you to.

This album wants to rock your world, and that’s exactly what our Hot Stamper pressings are especially good at doing.

Roxy Music is one of the most influential and important artists/bands in my growth as a music lover and audiophile, joining the ranks of Steely Dan, 10cc, Ambrosia, Yes, Bowie, Supertramp, Eno, Talking Heads, Jethro Tull, Elton John, The Beatles, Crosby, Stills and Nash, The Cars, Led Zeppelin, Cat Stevens and countless others, musicians and bands who dedicated themselves to making the highest quality recordings they could, recordings that could only come alive in the homes of those with the most advanced audio equipment.

My system was forced to evolve in order to reproduce the scores of challenging recordings issued by these groups in the ’70s.

It’s clear that these albums informed not only my taste in music, but the actual stereo I play that music on. It’s what Progress in Audio is all about. I created the system I have in order to play demanding recordings such as these, the music I fell in love with all those years ago.

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Roxy Music – For Your Pleasure

More Roxy Music 

More Brian Eno

  • 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.
  • The complete list of titles from 1973 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

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…)

801 Live – None Rocks Harder

A Member of the Prestigious “None Rocks Harder” Club

More Reviews and Commentaries for 801 Live

The best Island copies of this album ROCK HARDER than practically any record we’ve ever played. If you have the system for it, this one will bring a Live Art Rock concert right into your living room!

This is a Big Speaker record. It requires a pair of speakers that can move air with authority below 250 cycles and play at fairly loud levels. If you don’t own speakers that can do that, this record will never really sound the way it should.

It’s right at the top of the list of my Favorite Albums — a Desert Island Disc if ever there was one. I stumbled across it more thirty years ago and I’ve loved it ever since. It all 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.

Adventures in Music and Sound

Phil Manzanera and Brian Eno were founding members of Roxy Music.

AMG calls Roxy Music the “most adventurous rock band of the early ’70s” and I’m inclined to agree with them.

Roxy are certainly one of the most influential and important bands in my growth as a music lover and audiophile, joining the ranks of 10cc, Steely Dan, Yes, James Taylor, Peter Gabriel, David Bowie, America, Fleetwood Mac, Supertramp, Eno, Talking Heads, The Doors, Jethro Tull, Elton John, The Beatles, Santana, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Little Feat, Traffic, Nilsson, Elvis Costello, Sergio Mendes, Neil Young, The Eagles, Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd, Joni Mitchell, The Cars, Peter Frampton, Led Zeppelin, Cat Stevens and countless others.

These musicians and bands were clearly dedicated to making high quality recordings, recordings that could only come fully to life in the homes of those with the most advanced audio equipment.

My system was forced to evolve in order to reproduce the scores of challenging recordings issued by these groups in the ’60s and ’70s.

The love you have for your favorite music has to be the strongest driving force if you actually want to be successful in this hobby at the highest levels.

Some of the records that helped me advance in audio can be found here.

This record sounds best to us this way:

For more moderately helpful title-specific advice, click here.

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Roxy Music – Avalon

More Bryan Ferry

More Roxy Music

  • Boasting top quality sound throughout, this UK pressing is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other Avalon you’ve heard – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Copies that are exceptionally transparent, with three-dimensional depth and a wide soundstage, present this music the way it was meant to be heard
  • Credit Rhett Davies with creating the sonic space to allow the singers, instruments and subtle studio effects to be balanced and integrated from front to back, side to side and top to bottom
  • The sound may be a bit too heavily processed for some, but we find that on the best copies that sound really works for this music, some of the best ever produced by the band
  • 5 stars: “Ferry was never this romantic or seductive, either with Roxy or as a solo artist, and Avalon shimmers with elegance in both its music and its lyrics.”

Records like Avalon get people (often known as audiophiles) to spend wads and wads of money in pursuit of expensive analog equipment good enough to bring this wonderful music to life in their very own listening rooms.

The album rewards a stereo with many of the qualities that audiophiles prize most highly when selecting equipment — spaciousness, transparency, clarity, detail, depth, soundstaging, speed, high frequency extension and the like.

The mix is as dense as any we know. Only the best copies have the ability to show you everything that’s on the tape. Credit must go to the amazingly talented Rhett Davies for creating the space to put so many instruments and sounds in.

We would add to that list presence and energy, along with warmth, fullness, and lack of smear on the transients. Whomp and rock and roll power do not seem to play much part in separating the best from the rest, although it’s nice when the bottom end is big and solid.

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801 – 801 Live

More Brian Eno

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
  • Marks 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 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.”

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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Bryan Ferry – Let’s Stick Together

More Bryan Ferry

More Roxy Music

  • For material and sound I consider this to be the best of Bryan Ferry’s solo albums – it’s a blast from start to finish
  • The energy, presence, bass, and dynamic power (love that horn section!) place it well above his other side projects
  • 4 Stars: “The title track itself scored Ferry a deserved British hit single, with great sax work from Chris Mercer and Mel Collins and a driving, full band performance. Ferry’s delivery is one of his best, right down to the yelps, and the whole thing chugs with post-glam power.”
  • If you’re a Roxy fan, this title from 1976 is surely a Must Own
  • The complete list of titles from 1976 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here
  • We’ve recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” but with less of an accent on morbidity and more on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. Bryan Ferry’s third solo album is a good example of a record many audiophiles may not know well but should get to know better.

As for material, he covers some early Roxy songs (brilliantly I might add); Beatles and Everly Bros. tunes; and even old R&B tracks like ‘Shame, Shame, Shame.’ Every song on this album is good, and I don’t think that can be said for any of his other solo projects. Five stars in my book.

Let’s Stick Together checks off some important boxes for us here at Better Records:

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