From Japan and back

It was what some may say an important day in the year last week and I had some interesting cds which I'll spend a few worms on discussing.

In the weird corporate World of Japan few things are more revered than the super limited edition gone to it's gone and put back out in slightly different form product and somebody at Apple and Universal Japan decided it was those Moptops time for this treatment on December 14, 2014 when all the UK stereo studio album titles and the 2010 versions of the evergreen RED and BLUE compilations got issued in the latest wonder cd material SHM.
It's meant to produce less errors and so sound better.
Cue a howl from zeroes and ones are same regardless from digital theory purists and "Oh yes it does" from others on certain sites.

But anyway, I much much prefer the Mini lp style packaging these cds come in anyway replicating far better the feel of the parent lp records than the 2009 tri-fold digipak remasters we had and they match my much my much loved cd The Beatles in Mono box with its 11 mini lp mono cds
The covers are much nicer, a booklet with a potted history of the album in English are tuck in the rea of the acid free plastic wallet the cover is in and there's another booklet in Japanese with English lyrics to every song so we can song along to Polythene Pam

Plus the Let It Be, the album recorded before Abbey Road as both albums were the only Beatles studio albums mixed and mastered only to stereo and generally speaking I prefer the others in their  mono mixes.
Having played them through my all Rotel system they do sound a bit more open and less edgy compared to my European 2009 copies.
Meanwhile in Cat in the Hat land...

I got finally the 2013 two cd deluxe re-issues of the first three albums by England's great Jazz/funkers, Jamiroquai that mixes the original albums with a second disc of single 'b' sides and unreleased material.

I only had these albums on that Japanese centric MiniDisc format as I was in loved with it in the 90's and the older commerical downloads I heard sounded well, rough compared to them even though the discs didn't use  the later better sounding version of that formats encoding.
Thankfully these cds are  part of a rare breed of cd remasters that really do sound better than the originals and I was able to get them for a great price, cheaper actually than 'lossy' commercial downloads of them. 

This excellent album shows the packaging well with the tri-fold and disc holders and my home made copies for my Fiio X3 digital audio player sound superb outperforming my MiniDisc originals.
I'd strongly recommend these re-issues to an Jamiroquai fans for the extra material and sound quality.