ambrolifeb

Ambrosia – Life Beyond L.A.

More of the Music of Ambrosia 

  • With superb Double Plus (A++) grades from start to finish, we guarantee you’ve never heard Life Beyond L.A. sound this good – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • These sides are dramatically bigger and richer, and have more vocal presence and hard-rockin’ energy, than a lot of the others we played in our most recent shootout
  • The sound is solid and rich, the vocals breathy and immediate, and you will not believe all the space and ambience – which of course are all qualities that Heavy Vinyl records have far too little of, and the main reason we have lost all respect for the bulk of them
  • “[The album] marked a bit of a move away from their lush arrangements and introduced a more raw, aggressive progressive rock / jazz influence.”

This Hot Stamper Ambrosia LP has the kind of sound you would never expect to find in the grooves of this album. It was a thrill to hear, especially at the volumes at which we played it! The transparency and openness were excellent. We’re big fans of this band here at Better Records — we love their take on complex, Big Production Arty Rock.

The Music

Life Beyond L.A. may not be especially well known in audiophile circles but it is certainly an album we know and love here at Better Records. I’ve been playing it regularly for decades. There’s so much good music on the album that, now that we can hear it right, we’ve come to appreciate it all the more. It rocks in a more straightforward manner compared to the first two albums. It’s still got plenty of proggy elements and breakdowns, but now there’s an entirely new jazz element introduced into the mix, which comes to the fore strongly on the wonderful “Apothecary.” Side one is exceptionally strong from first note to last.

Side two starts out brilliantly with the dynamic, energetic “Dancin’ By Myself,” a song that ranks with the best by the band. It’s followed by “Angola,” a tongue-in-cheek staple of their live act these days, and then on to the wonderful ballad “Heart to Heart,” pointedly reminiscent of “Holdin’ On To Yesterday,” right down to the violin solo. The last track is a bit of a downer, but everything before that is superb.

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Recent Revolutions in Audio Can Make a Huge Difference on Familiar Recordings

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Ambrosia Available Now

This White Hot Stamper Ambrosia LP from some years ago had the kind of sound you would never expect to find in the grooves of this album. It was a THRILL to hear it, especially at the volumes at which we were playing the record.

The transparency and openness were off the charts, and unmatched by any other copy in our shootout. We’re big fans of this band here at Better Records — we love their take on complex, big production arty rock.

It’s also yet another example of the value of taking part in the myriad revolutions in audio.

If you never want your prized but sonically-challenged records to sound any better than they do right now, this minute, don’t bother to learn how to clean them better, play them back better or improve the acoustics of your room.

No one can make you do any of those things. The only reason you might have for doing them is so that you can enjoy more of your favorite music with much better sound. 

Is that a good enough reason? If you’re on this site I’m guessing it is.

That’s the reason we do it. We want records like this one, which didn’t start sounding good until about 2005, and now sound much better than I ever thought they could, to keep getting better and better. Why shouldn’t they? Because some people think we’ve reached the point of diminishing returns in audio? Those people do not know what they are talking about.

(There is a reference to racing cars in the Washington Post article about Hot Stampers which is pure poppycock, or at least those of us who have been in audio for a long time know it is. Lap times are not a good analogy. We need to be thinking about immersive experiences being ten times more immersive for a hundred times as many recordings as was possible when I started.)

And these improvements we talk about have allowed us to enjoy records we could never fully enjoy before because they never really sounded all that good to us.

Now they do, and they will keep getting better, as more and more developments come along in all areas of analog reproduction.

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