Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Roxy Music Available Now
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 anything.
The typical domestic pressing is flat, bass-shy and opaque, sounding more like compressed cardboard than analog vinyl.
Unsurprisingly, the CD, whether imported or produced domestically, is clean and clear and tonally correct but lacks the warmth and richness of the better vinyl pressings.
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Robert Brook runs a blog called The Broken Record, with a subtitle explaining that the aim of his blog is to serve as:
…the 7 Hot Stampers records i have bought from Better Records in the past, (albums I know well all my life, and that I have already had many versions, incl. OG’s 1st, and “audiophile” versions) are some of the best sounding records in my collection.
They have helped improve my listening skills enormously; not just “listening”, but 100% enjoy and appreciate the music. Seeking out for my “own” hot stampers now, is what really makes this hobby so interesting! (for example: Roxy Music Avalon, after buying and comparing 5 copies, incl. UK 1st Arun cut, I now have “my” best sounding one, and indeed it is a reissue (vintage, not modern “audiophile”)¨! Denis Blackham (BilBo) did a very good job on this one…
I replied:
Yes, the Bilbo cutting of Avalon can be very good, something we know from having played them by the dozens.
It has been many years, more than a decade I should think, since a Bilbo cutting won a shootout. Still, they can be very good, probably falling somewhere in the 1.5+ to 2+ range, but if you want to, you can certainly do a lot better, which is the kind of thing you learn when you have piles and piles of clean British pressings to play.
We stopped buying the Bilbo pressings many years ago, and they no longer show up in our stamper sheets these days. Why spend the money for them when something better is just as easy to find?
Nevertheless, Bilbo is a great mastering engineer and his work is worth seeking out, even though he did not knock Avalon out of the park.
On another note:
If modern engineers are so good at their jobs, as so many on this thread keep implying, where are the records they’ve made that can compete with Bilbo’s cuttings from the old days?
Please name them. I know of none, and I am hoping someone will take pity on a poor fool such as myself and help enlighten me.
Based on the vitriol I am reading, the consensus is that my benighted ravings are shameful and outlandish.
If anyone needs a clue, it’s pretty obvious I do.
Please help me understand what I have been missing for the last few decades, decades in which I was playing tens of thousands of records, listening to them critically and posting my thoughts about them in the
50006000 listings found on my blog. (If indeed I am wrong about all this, I’m sure wrong a lot!)