Dire Straits Communique Mobile Fidelity 2 x 180G 45rpm

Reference-Level Detail, Depth, Soundstaging, Balance, and Presence: Communiqué Has Never Sounded Better

The performances on Dire Straits‘ Communiqué are so smooth and effortless, they were originally criticized for replicating the blueprints of the band’s breakout debut. Time, however, has a way of changing perspectives and exposing the truth. More than 35 years after its original release in June 1979, Communiqué rightfully takes its place as the group’s most underrated record – a nine-track set spiked with engaging storytelling, relaxed vibes, and deceiving simplicity.

Mastered from the original master tapes and pressed at RTI, Mobile Fidelity’s 180g 45RPM 2LP set of Communiqué elevates Dire Straits‘ sophomore album to an even higher plane. Recorded in the Bahamas by Muscle Shoals veterans Barry Beckett and Jerry Wexler, the songs benefit from a laidback approach that makes guitarist/vocalist Mark Knopfler and company’s stellar playing seem even more fluent – particularly when experienced on this collector’s 45RPM version, on which the wider grooves allow for more detail retrieval and deeper musical insight.

Knopfler’s mesmerizing guitar textures and composed vocals appear as if they’re right in front of you, holding court amidst expansive soundstages and deep-black backgrounds. Details, imaging, and presence are on a level associated with the finest audiophile recordings. You’ll be hard-pressed to find another LP with cleaner, pinpoint-accurate tones. Mobile Fidelity’s LP also brings into transparent view Knopfler’s seemingly perfect intricate lines as well as the simpatico accompaniment from his band mates. Whole, lively, and balanced, the bass and drums arrive with a solidity rarely heard on albums of this era. Communiqué has truly never sounded better.

Of course, the audiophile sonics mean little if the artistic content is lacking. Needless to say, Dire Straits‘ technical perfectionism and creative elan prevail throughout. Knopfler’s penchant for sketching cynical characters is further developed on moody tracks like „Where Do You Think You’re Going“ and „News,“ while Wexler’s presence at the boards ensures the band keeps the rhythms extra tight. The quartet’s low-key blues and swampy, Southern-styled grooves turn every song into an exercise in understated virtuosity.

Refusing to give into excess, magnetic tunes such as „Lady Writer“ and „Angel of Mercy“ split a fine line between insinuating and insisting. The group shows off a combination of control, virtuosity, and tunefulness that harkens back to a rock n‘ roll’s classic period while also pointing the way ahead. Need indisputable evidence of Dire Straits‘ compositional strengths? Cue up the closing „Follow Me Home“ on this pressing and get lost amidst the peacefulness of the gentle surf and chirping crickets that frame the song. Heavenly.

Artykuł Dire Straits <br />Communique <br /> Mobile Fidelity 2 x 180G 45rpm <br /> Dieses Produkt ist nicht aktionsberechtigt. pochodzi z serwisu Cleartone.

Numbered Limited Edition Mini-LP Style Packaging!

Quintet’s Fifth Album Features Gorgeous Layered Harmonies „Ophelia,“ „It Makes No Difference,“ and „Acadian Driftwood“

The Band’s Northern Lights-Southern Cross is, in nearly every respect, the group’s studio swan song. The group’s fifth album is also one of its finest works, a finely textured collection that at the time of its 1975 release marked the quintet’s first album of new material in four years. And what songs they are. Anchored by the standards “Acadian Driftwood,” “Ophelia,” and “It Makes No Difference,” the set finds the collective in peak form, the absorbing music a result of both guitarist Robbie Robertson’s unflappable songwriting and a fortunate confluence of creative factors.

“It was the first time in a while that I felt we had locked in again in a certain kind of way. We were really having enjoyable times together both musically and hanging out. We had a great time going out and playing with Bob, the new environment was refreshing and I think musically we were hungry.  You put all these bits and pieces together and it adds up to something.“
–Robertson, as told to Rob Bowman

As Robertson recalls, the Band had been rejuvenated after touring with Bob Dylan and reconnecting with the same muse responsible for inspiring its landmark debut. In addition, the group came to the realization that it worked better when operating outside of traditional recording studios. Akin to Music From Big Pink (also available on Mobile Fidelity Hybrid Stereo SACD) and The Band, sessions for Northern Lights—Southern Cross occurred within a clubhouse-like atmosphere—specifically, a converted Malibu ranch/bordello they called Shangri-La.

There, with the pressure off, the Band was able to relax, think, and take their time. The situation also fostered a new approach to recording. Due to Shangri-La’s dimensions and myriad windows, the Band overdubbed all of the vocals, ensuring unrivaled smoothness and fluidity. In addition, the group embraced the then-new technology afforded by recording on a 24-channel console, allowing for multiple layering of keyboards and overlapped harmonies.

Mastered from the original master tapes, Mobile Fidelity’s numbered limited-edition hybrid SACD brings the beauty, intellect, and contours of Northern Lights—Southern Cross to life as never before. Particularly compelling is the priceless “Acadian Driftwood,” on which you can hear the oddly tuned fiddling of bluegrass virtuoso Byron Berline seamlessly mesh with Garth Hudson’s bagpipe and Richard Manuel’s piccolo with unparalleled transparency. Blending Quebecois, Cajun, and country, the song is one of the greatest compositions in the American songbook—and now, even better.

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Get Let in on a Secret: Legendary Quintet’s 1971 Album an Overlooked Gem
Historically overlooked, Cahoots stands as one of The Band’s finest efforts and includes contributions from iconic pianist/arranger Allen Toussaint and Irish bard Van Morrison, whose feverish duet with Band vocalist Richard Helm on “4% Pantomime” is the equivalent of two poker players trying to outsmart one another. A similar carnivalesque spirit infuses the entire set. If you’re missing this album or simply never heard it, you’re in for a treat.
And there’s never been a better opportunity to experience Cahoots. Remastered from the original master tapes by Mobile Fidelity’s expert engineers, the record sounds more open, detailed, warm, and revealing than ever before. This Hybrid SACD version is guaranteed to bring you right into the Bearsville studio where it all went down.

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One of rock’s true masterpieces, this stunning sophomore effort was released in September, 1970 to unanimous accolades and went to Number One on the Billboard Pop Album chart. Utilizing the studio more in overall production than on their debut (especially in mixing and using cross-fades) the band and producer Fred Catero (Janis Joplin, BS&T, Chicago) still maintained the street energy and ethnic roots, while elevating Carlos’ guitar passages to god-like status; resulting in the pinnacle of their album output. Wicked re-worked arrangements of songs as dichotomatic as the connecting of Peter Green’s „Black Magic Woman“ with Gabor Szabo’s „Gypsy Queen“ in medley, followed directly in sequence on side one with Tito Puente’s „Oye Como Va“ (charting at #13), was both brilliant and on-par with anything going down in music at the time, period.

Muzycy:
Carlos Santana – vocals, guitar
Gregg Rolie – vocals, keyboards
Michael Shrieve – drums
Dave Brown – bass instrument
Michael Carabello – congas
Jose Areas – congas, timbales

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Lavish Packaging Includes Opulent Box, Foil-Stamped Jackets, and SuperVinyl LPs: Deluxe Audiophile Pressing Strictly Limited to 9,000 Hand-Numbered Copies

Ranked #16 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, Includes „Tangled Up in Blue“ and „Simple Twist of Fate“: Dylan Pours Out Scarred Emotion, Opens His Veins, and Bleeds

Bob Dylan was at several crossroads in the mid 1970s. Artistically, he was largely written off as being past his prime. Emotionally, he was suffering through a painful divorce from his then-wife Sara Lowndes. Creatively, he appeared at a stalemate, his previous decade’s unprecedented run of transformational brilliance finished. Then came Blood on the Tracks. A start-to-finish cycle that documents a lover’s pursuit of, entanglement with, and loss of a woman, the bracingly intimate 1975 effort remains one of the most encompassing break-up albums ever made and ranks as the most personal statement of the Bard’s career.

Presenting the record’s acoustic and band-supported songs with the utmost transparency, dynamics, presence, immediacy, spaciousness, and imaging, Mobile Fidelity’s opulent UD1S (UltraDisc One-Step) box set makes Blood on the Tracks reach three-dimensional sonic and emotional heights never before attained. Strictly limited to 9,000 numbered copies and pressed at RTI on SuperVinyl, this ultra-hi-fi collector’s edition shines a high-powered light on the fluid vocal phrasing, timbral shifts, functional rhythms, and inward-looking strumming crucial to the album’s aura. You’ll enjoy deep-black backgrounds, boundless soundstaging, pointillist details, staggering dynamics, and arguably, the most lifelike tonalities and nuances ever committed to vinyl. Every note, breath, and movement is reproduced with exquisite accuracy, wowing clarity, and impeccable balance.

The lavish packaging and beautiful presentation of Mobile Fidelity’s Blood on the Tracks UD1S pressing befit its extremely select status. Housed in a deluxe box, the collectible version contains special foil-stamped jackets and faithful-to-the-original graphics that illuminate the splendor of the recording. Aurally and visually, it exists a curatorial artifact meant to be preserved, poured over, touched, and examined. It is made for discerning listeners that prize sound quality and creativity, and who desire to fully immerse themselves in the art – and everything involved with the album, from the images to the textures and liner notes.

Ranked 16 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and replete with existential thought, piercing directness, raw singing, and majestic arrangements, Blood on the Tracks remains a soul-exposing confessional. To hear it is to experience the agony, frustration, trauma, highs, lows, confusion, sadness, and, ultimately, requisite redemption associated with intimate relationships gone astray. Dylan maintains it’s a work of fiction, but the evident close-vested autobiographical premise is what helps make it universal: It’s the icon singing through tears, going out of his mind, battling hallowing emptiness, firing shots across the bow, and accepting culpability. Blood on the Tracks serves, in short, as a consummate expression of love’s darker sides and the consequences of what happens when dreams unravel.

For all the melancholic pain, unresolved questions, shattered memories, wasted times, unrequited dialogs, and weary regret within, Blood on the Tracks remains as daring as it is reflective. Rather than follow for a monotone caustic vibe, Dylan’s songs burrow into the subconscious for the manners in which they are even-keeled, mellow, and occasionally, even peaceful. Dignity, honor, poignancy, and fairness – all traits uncommon in any situation in which partners dissolve histories, change hearts, and attribute blame – instill the record with equilibrium on par with the consistency of the flowing melodies.

Throughout, tunes come on and proceed as if they could continue forever, Dylan spinning poetic verses and conversations amidst finely tied knots of acoustic notes, chords, and fills, the deceivingly simple architecture conjuring the intertwined refractions of a bezeled jewel, various angles, colors, and textures conjoining into a gorgeously inseparable whole. Backed by Tony Brown’s flexible albeit subtle bass, Buddy Cage’s country-streaked pedal-steel guitar, and Paul Griffin’s soul-baring organ – an instrument used to shadow, tuckpoint, and illuminate here as effectively as any time in rock history – Dylan pours out scarred emotion, open his veins, and bleeds.

More About Mobile Fidelity UltraDisc One-Step and Why It Is Superior:
Instead of utilizing the industry-standard three-step lacquer process, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab’s new UltraDisc One-Step (UD1S) uses only one step, bypassing two processes of generational loss. While three-step processing is designed for optimum yield and efficiency, UD1S is created for the ultimate in sound quality. Just as Mobile Fidelity pioneered the UHQR (Ultra High-Quality Record) with JVC in the 1980s, UD1S again represents another state-of-the-art advance in the record-manufacturing process. MFSL engineers begin with the original master tapes and meticulously cut a set of lacquers. These lacquers are used to create a very fragile, pristine UD1S stamper called a „convert.“ Delicate „converts“ are then formed into the actual record stampers, producing a final product that literally and figuratively brings you closer to the music. By skipping the additional steps of pulling another positive and an additional negative, as done in the three-step process used in standard pressings, UD1S produces a final LP with the lowest noise floor possible today. The removal of the additional two steps of generational loss in the plating process reveals tremendous amounts of extra musical detail and dynamics, which are otherwise lost due to the standard copying process. The exclusive nature of these very limited pressings guarantees that every UD1S pressing serves as an immaculate replica of the lacquer sourced directly from the original master tape. Every conceivable aspect of vinyl production is optimized to produce the most perfect record album available today.

MoFi SuperVinyl: The World’s Quietest Surfaces and Cleanest Grooves:
Developed by NEOTECH and RTI, MoFi SuperVinyl is the most exacting-to-specification vinyl compound ever created. Analog lovers have never seen (or heard) anything like it. Extraordinarily expensive and extremely painstaking to produce, the special proprietary compound addresses two specific areas of improvement: noise floor reduction and enhanced groove definition. The vinyl composition features a new carbonless dye (hold the disc up to the light and see) and produces the world’s quietest surfaces. This high-definition formula also allows for the creation of cleaner grooves that are indistinguishable from the original lacquer. MoFi SuperVinyl provides the closest approximation of what the label’s engineers hear in the mastering lab.

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Looking for something „different?“ Then EXPERIENCE the 23-minute title track, which has reedman, Sonny Fortune, playing flute, bassist, Calvin Hill, playing reeds, and drummer Alphonse Mouzon employing a variety of percussion effects. If all this isn’t enough, on „Valley of Life,“ Tyner picks up a kyoto and produces a gentle, hypnotic impressionistic sketch, aided again by Fortune on flute. On Sahara, the musicians weren’t afraid to wail spontaneously, yet Tyner maintains a clear focus on the effort and in doing so expanded the very definition of jazz itself. Mission accomplished.

Personnel:
McCoy Tyner (piano, koto, flute, percussion);
Sonny Fortune (soprano & alto saxophones, flute);
Alphonse Mouzon (trumpet, reeds, drums, percussion);
Calvin Hill (reeds, bass, percussion).

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Artykuł RAVEL <br />Daphnis Et Chloe / Ma Mere l’Oye <br />Stanislaw Skrowaczewski <br />Minnesota Orchestra pochodzi z serwisu Cleartone.

– „Pictures At An Exhibition“ remains one of classical music most popular, colorful, and enduring works as does what is usually viewed as a companion piece, the orchestral version of „Night On Bald Mountain.“ This historic Vox recording of Leonard Slatkin conducting the Saint Louis Symphony is a bold, stellar recording of both these pieces. The tonality of the instruments is mesmerizing-excellent and, even in stereo, the same of space is nothing less than amazing. Slatkin also brings to life the famous ballet „Dance of the Persian Slaves“ from Mussorgsky’s opera, „Khovanschina“. For the original 1975 sessions, specifically mic’d for surround, Slatkin also put his distinctive stamp on Borodin’s „In The Steppes Of Central Asia.“ Each piece, be it joyously melodic or darkly menacing, is the result of maestro and ensemble working perfectly together.

Maintaining the resounding success of its debut surround series, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab maintains the resounding success of its debut surround series with this jewel from the illustrious Vox catalog on its critically-acclaimed Ultradisc UHR SACD. The full sonic spectrum of this recording masterpiece is finally unveiled as four channels of stunning detail, life-like imaging, and in-depth ambient information that enables listeners to experience the producers original sonic intention for the first time. Mobile Fidelity’s GAIN 2™ (Greater Ambient Information Network) mastering process enables the maximum amount of musical information to be extracted from an ORIGINAL MASTER RECORDING and delivered to classical aficionados and high resolution surround enthusiasts alike as a dual layer hybrid SACD. This Ultradisc UHR SACD features 4.0 surround sound and a new illustrated booklet with the original liner notes written by Richard Freed plus additional technical information.

Artykuł MUSSORGSKY <br />Pictures At An Exhibition <br />Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra <br />Leonard Slatkin pochodzi z serwisu Cleartone.

Presence, Immediacy, Naturalness, Realism in Spades: Mobile Fidelity Reissue Makes Blood on the Tracks Among Most Lifelike-Sounding Albums You’ll Ever Hear

Songs Flow Like Rivers, Acoustic and Electric Elements Merge Like Bezels on a Diamond

Ranked 16 on Rolling Stone’s List of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time

Includes “Tangled Up In Blue,” “Simple Twist of Fate,” “Idiot Wind,” “Buckets of Rain”

Bob Dylan was at several crossroads in the mid-1970s. Artistically, he was largely written off as being past his prime. Emotionally, he was suffering through a painful divorce from his then-wife Sara Lowndes. Creatively, he appeared at a stalemate, his previous decade’s unprecedented run of transformational brilliance finished. Then came Blood on the Tracks.

A start-to-finish cycle that documents a lover’s pursuit of, entanglement with, and loss of a woman, the bracingly intimate 1975 effort remains one of the most encompassing break-up albums ever made and ranks as the most personal statement of the Bard’s career. To hear it is to experience the agony, frustration, trauma, highs, lows, confusion, sadness, and, ultimately, requisite redemption associated with intimate relationships gone astray. Dylan maintains it’s a work of fiction, but it’s evident close-vested autobiographical premise is what helps make it universal: It’s the icon singing through tears, going out of his mind, battling hallowing emptiness, firing shots across the bow, and accepting culpability. It is, in short, a consummate expression of love’s darker sides and the consequences of what happens when dreams unravel.

As part of its Bob Dylan catalog restoration series, Mobile Fidelity is thoroughly humbled to have the privilege of mastering the iconic LP from the original master tapes and making it available on hybrid SACD. Fantastically presenting both the solo acoustic and band-supported songs with the utmost clarity, dynamics, presence, immediacy, spaciousness, imaging, and balance, this version shines a high-powered light on the fluid vocal phrasing, timbral shifts, functional rhythms, and inward-looking strumming that contribute to every song here serving as a wound-exposing confessional.

For all the melancholic pain, unresolved questions, shattered memories, wasted times, unrequited dialogs, and weary regret within, Blood on the Tracks remains as daring as it is reflective. Rather than follow for a monotone caustic vibe, Dylan’s songs burrow into the subconscious for the manners in which they are even-keeled, mellow, and occasionally, even peaceful. Dignity, honor, poignancy, and fairness—all traits uncommon in any situation in which partners dissolve histories, change hearts, and attribute blame—instill the record with equilibrium on par with the consistency of the flowing melodies.

Throughout, tunes come on and proceed as if they could continue forever, Dylan spinning poetic verses and conversations amidst finely tied knots of acoustic notes, chords, and fills, the deceivingly simple architecture conjuring the intertwined refractions of a bezeled jewel, various angles, colors, and textures conjoining into a gorgeously inseparable whole. Backed by Tony Brown’s flexible albeit subtle bass, Buddy Cage’s country-streaked pedal-steel guitar, and Paul Griffin’s soul-baring organ—an instrument used to shadow, tuckpoint, and illuminate here as effectively as any time in rock history—Dylan pours soulful emotion, open his veins, and bleeds.

Ranked 16 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and replete with existential thought, piercing directness, raw singing, and majestic arrangements,

Artykuł Bob Dylan <br />Blood on the Tracks pochodzi z serwisu Cleartone.

Dylan’s Second 1964 Album Expands Songwriting Themes and Adds Levity. Recorded in One Day: Whimsical Feel, Surrealist Lyrics, On-the-Fly Fluidness Grace the Bard’s Loosest 1960s Effort. Includes “I Shall Be Free No. 10,” “It Ain’t Me Babe,” “My Back Pages,” “Chimes of Freedom”.

The ever-evasive Bob Dylan never explicitly stated exactly what represented the “another side” of himself referenced in the title to his second 1964 record. Yet the whimsical moods, hallucinogenic prose, humorous angles, transparent mistakes, and noncommittal themes give a pretty clear idea at what the Bard hinted as he emerged from being labeled as a reluctant generation spokesperson and folk savior after releasing two highly intellectual, socially pioneering sets replete with protest songs. Dylan needed to take a breath, step back from the drama, and reevaluate his surroundings. Another Side of Bob Dylan is all that and more.

As part of its Bob Dylan catalog restoration series, Mobile Fidelity is thoroughly humbled to have the privilege of mastering the iconic album from the original master tapes and making it available on hybrid SACD. The end result is the very finest, most transparent digital edition of Another Side of Bob Dylan ever produced. Be there as the Minnesota native spends the evening of June 9, 1964 in Columbia’s Studio A and, displaying an openness he’d never before revealed in a formal environment, lays down the songs that compromise his fourth album.

Featuring minimal editing, Another Side of Bob Dylan is naked, truthful, and whimsical. Mobile Fidelity’s reissue illuminates the artist’s condition—he laughs in the midst of songs, experiences a few false starts, hits a couple of bum notes, occasionally sings as if he’s stumbling down a Manhattan sidewalk after having one too many at a smoky pub, prizes rawness over perfection—with microscopic accuracy. Indeed, Dylan’s slightly woozy and completely playful state related to his having downed a handful of bottles of Beaujolais during the sessions.

The uninhibited joie de vive is discernable in the rattling piano lines on “Black Crow Blues,” seemingly subconscious ramble of the hysterical folk rhyming of “Motorpsycho Nightmare,” bluesy dream sequencing throughout “I Don’t Believe You,” and intentionally out-of-tune yodeling during “All I Really Want to Do.” On a majority of the prized set, Dylan lets his guard down, but does so in clever manners that speak to his surrealist imagination and biting wit. He possesses the rare ability to make planned strategies appear spontaneous, to challenge audiences with stinting wordplay and minimalist melodies that provide a deceptive false security.

And so the apparently autobiographical and self-aware “My Back Pages,” one of the earliest examples of Dylan’s immersion into symbolist prose and abstract metaphor, remains controversial for its on-the-surface denouncement of his earlier condemnations of social institutions and injustices. Peeled back, the tune is a brilliant release—an essential escape hatch for Dylan to both relieve himself of unneeded pressures and distance himself from pundits. As an indelible piece of art, it succeeds in masquerading obvious meaning while simultaneously forcing listeners to question their own actions. Quintessential Dylan.

As is the trifecta of relationship-themed compositions that closes the record, as well as the eternal “Chimes of Freedom,” the standard that journalist Paul Williams dubbed Dylan’s “Sermon on the Mount.” Its inseparable conjunction of apocalyptic imagery, personal emotion, allusive lyricism, balladic alliteration, and inclusive sympathy signaled that, having already eviscerated the rules associated with pop and folk music, Dylan had just begun his assault on our consciousness, making Another Side of Bob Dylan that much more mysterious, unequivocal, and requisite.

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