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Pitchfork’s Review of the 2012 Roxy Music CD Box Set

More of the Music of Roxy Music

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Roxy Music

Tom Ewing has written a beautiful piece here about one of my favorite bands of all time.

This career-spanning box set to mark Roxy Music’s 40th anniversary is often startling, usually wonderful, and more affecting than expected. It’s also fascinating as the story of a gradual hardening of an elegant, enigmatic persona, of Bryan Ferry’s transformation from art-school pop star to self-made sphinx.  

In their 1970s heyday, Roxy Music enjoyed enormous critical and commercial success, but even so, they and their art-school rock were admired more than trusted. American critics snipped at leader Bryan Ferry’s arch romanticism, while the Brit press considered the models Ferry squired and the suits he doffed and dubbed him “Byron Ferrari”. Almost everyone affirmed that the band were great, while disagreeing as to when, exactly. For some, the great achievement was 1982’s farewell, Avalon– impeccably designed pop for weary grown-ups. Others went a decade further back, to the early, playfully experimental albums Roxy released when Brian Eno was in the band, playing androgyne peacock to Ferry’s tailored lothario. Whether you see their development between those points as progress or cautionary tale, it’s easy to let this contrast define the band.

This box set of remasters to celebrate the band’s 40th anniversary– not lavish, but thorough and reasonably priced– is an opportunity to break free of narrative and see what sets every phase of Roxy Music apart. The answer is Bryan Ferry, one of rock’s great, sustained acts of self-definition. In classic 70s style, like Bowie or Bolan, Ferry invented a pop star. A sybarite with a plummy, awkward croon, gliding through his own songs like they were parties he’d forgotten arriving at. A flying Dutchman of the jet set, doomed to find love but never satisfaction. Having worked his way into character over an album or two, he simply never left it, becoming more Bryan Ferry with every record and every year, whether performing or not.

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How Good Is the Bilbo (Dennis Blackham) Cutting of Avalon?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Roxy Music Available Now

An erstwhile customer wrote this on Reddit (I think that’s where I found it) a few years ago:

…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 5000 6000 listings found on my blog. (If indeed I am wrong about all this, I’m sure wrong a lot!)

Of course I did not get an answer to that question, and doubt I ever will.

All that would be needed is the name of one specific pressing, mastered by one specific person or company, and released on one specific label with a specific catalog number.

How is it possible that the fans of these Heavy Vinyl records cannot name one good one?

I know how it is possible. The reason no one can name any of the great records being made these days is that no such records are being made these days.

It is our strongly held belief, backed up by mountains of evidence, that there is simply no one alive today making records as good as the ones Bilbo and other mastering engineers have ben making starting all the way back in the 50s and continuing through the 80s and beyond.

This blog is a testament to that fact, as are the Hot Stamper pressings we offer at Better Records.

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Roxy Music – Avalon

More of the Music of Roxy Music

  • An Avalon like you’ve never heard, with superb Double Plus (A++) sound throughout this vintage UK pressing – 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.”
  • These are the stampers that always win our shootouts, and when you hear them you will know why – the sound is big, rich and clear like no other
  • We’ve discovered a number of titles in which one stamper always wins, and here are some others

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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Roxy Music, Rhett Davies, Yanick Etienne and the Making of Avalon

Hot Stamper Pressings of Roxy Music’s Albums Available Now

I consider Roxy Music to be one of the greatest Art Rock bands in the history of music.

The general public and most audiophiles would no doubt cast their vote for Avalon as the band’s masterpiece, but I much prefer their eponymous first album, along with Stranded, Country Life and Siren to the more “accessible” music found on Avalon.

To be fair, that’s splitting hairs, because any of those five titles are absolute Must Own albums that belong in any serious popular music collection.  

Roxy Music’s “Avalon”

By Rick Clark

When asked in 1982 about the concept of Avalon, Ferry responded, “I’ve often thought I should do an album where the songs are all bound together in the style of West Side Story, but it’s always seemed like too much bother to work that way. So instead, I have these 10 poems, or short stories, that could, with a bit more work, be fashioned into a novel.

“Avalon is part of the King Arthur legend and is a very romantic thing,” Ferry added. “When King Arthur dies, the Queens ferry him off to Avalon, which is sort of an enchanted island. It’s the ultimate romantic fantasy place.”

Regardless, the entire album sustains a cohesive mood that isn’t just a product of Ferry’s lyrical thematic vision. It was a product of the process that Davies and the band employed in laying down grooves and having players interact with them, and then shaping those performances in a way that would ultimately inspire Ferry to articulate his melodies and words.

“We were creating tracks back then,” Davies says. “We didn’t have the songs. The songs were virtually the last things to go on there. We were very much creating a musical atmosphere that we wanted the musicians to respond to.

“In those days, Bryan and Roxy would have a musician in for a day or two and they would want that musician to play on all the songs and see what came out of that,” Davies continues. “I would have to be able to throw the tracks up pretty quickly and they had to sound the same every time. Rather than spending half-an-hour putting the track up and then another half-an-hour getting the bass sound, we wanted to work fast. In the initial stage of throwing a track at somebody, it was always that first response that you got when someone was fresh that was very important. Then we would spend days and weeks agonizing over it and fiddling around with it,” he adds with a laugh. “But the initial process we wanted to keep fast.” (more…)

Listening in Depth to Avalon

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Roxy Music Available Now

The best British original Super De Luxe pressings of Avalon are sweet and silky, big and lively, with the kind of sound that drives us audiophiles wild — which of course is the main reason this album was on Extra Heavy Rotation at most stereo stores back in the day.

It’s records like this that get people (otherwise 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.

This album rewards a stereo with the qualities that audiophiles prize most highly when selecting equipment — spaciousness, transparency, clarity, detail, depth, soundstaging, speed, high frequency extension, and the like. Those qualities are important but not enough for big speaker rock and roll guys like us here at Better Records, but on this record they are key to reproducing the best of what Avalon has to offer.

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.

That said, the copies that are exceptionally open, clear and big are the ones that do a better job of presenting this music the way we think it was meant to be heard.

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 in which so many instruments and sounds can fit comfortably.

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Avalon – A Simply Vinyl Mastering Success? Or Is It?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Roxy Music Available Now

UPDATE 2020

These notes were written many years ago, which means that we ourselves may not agree with some or all of the commentary you see below.

Sonic Grade: B (I’m guessing)

This version just plain KILLS most domestic copies and probably quite a few Brit ones too. Simply Vinyl did a superb job here.

Correction: an unnamed mastering engineer at the label did a superb job. Simply Vinyl isn’t in the business of mastering ANYTHING. They leave that up to the pros at the record labels. Sometimes those guys screw it up and sometimes they get it right.

This pressing sounds just like the last import version I had, which sounded great but unfortunately went out of print in the mid-nineties as I remember. Might be mastered by the same guy using the same tape on the same cutter for all I know.

Take it from me, this pressing gets this music right in a way that will not leave the listener wanting more. It really delivers. The sound is superb — sweet, open, with punchy bass and extended highs.

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