Friday 16 October 2015

Bowie-2015 remastered cds part II

I did pick up the issues of David Bowie, The Man Who Sold the World, Hunky Dory and Pin Ups off which were actually remastered this year by Ray Staff.
As with all the post 1990 issues they keep the original lp sleeves rather than 1972's RCA era re-issue sleeves that used Ziggy era pictures to resell these to the 'glam rock' audience which to me always was a misleading as these albums are more hippy folk/rock albums.
Having listened to them all I can say they sound better than the West German RCA using better tapes and having good tone balance decisions when it comes to equalizing to make the most of the tapes with wide dynamic ranges.
If you have the RCA's you may be satisfied with them but there's no need for younger fans to go hunting for expensive very long out print cds for these four titles.

Diamond Dogs Redux
My main copy on cd of this dystopian musical creation based on George Orwell's 1984 is the West German RCA cd from around 1984/5 and is the home of such 45's as Rebel Rebel, 1984 and Diamond Dogs. It also was the first album without the Spiders from Mars.
The description of how this cd sounds on music forums is 'dark', I'd say it was the sound of significantly high frequency loss with some alignment errors leaving it sounding 'lumpy'.
There isn't a universally approved later edition although the Japanese for US cd is much brighter although the other big difference is the West German breaks the songs into the groupings of the original UK lp and the Japanese cd all all others makes every song and intro a separate 'track'.
The Hifi people like the Japanese RCA but then at over £30 per copy as and when you see one, it's quite expensive.
It's been several years-make that over a decade-since I heard the 1990 remaster in it's UK form, a good number of which are equalized different compared to the Ryko versions and picked up a mint copy to demo.
This copy has much better high frequencies and is clear is from a much better tape and while being a bid midrange centred does have reasonable bass that those with tone controls can add  by a slight boost if you find yourself wanting deeper bass.
It certainly is more musically involving to listen to and will be my main listening copy until the next phase of the Bowie remastered campaign is released.

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