shm cds verdict.

Has anyone sprung for the huge box set of Stones 60's albums?

Received "Harvest" and "After the Goldrush" on SHM cd today. They both sound terrific.

some nice sixties shm cd to come onut in march , 4 cd by dave dee ,dbm and tich ,around amen corner and the merseybeats 1st album , all in card sleeves .

I've been listening to Talking Heads SHMs in recent days.
They sound fantastic - much better then my standard CD copies!

mine due any day along with donald fagen .

Just had email from cdjapan announcing that the entire Gong back cataolgue is coming out in carboard sleeve SHM format. I have heard the odd track and saw them live a couple of times back in the day. Anyone go any recommendations for a couple of Gong "must-have" albums?

Well, here's an overview of the Gong-related albums coming out on SHM-CD. "Camembert Electrique" and "You" would be my picks, but see what you think! I've reviewed each album for music, sound quality and original packaging (as these are minisleeve reissues) to help you.

Gong: Magick Brother (1969)
Music: Quite tentative, compared to what followed. Odd mix of underground pop, acid-rock and electronic avant-gardism.
Sound: Poor, as it was apparently recorded on the sound tracks of a movie camera!
Packaging: Gatefold sleeve [Japanese issue had totally different cover, so SHM-CD could feature either, or both]

Gong: Camembert Electrique (1971)
Music: Their best - a joyous, raucous, crazy collision of progressive rock, punk, psychedelia, free jazz, pop and rap.
Sound: Good original recording, but all CDs to date have used second or third generation mastertapes (and I have my suspicions about the SHM-CD). Only way to hear this in high fidelity is to buy the original French album on BYG or the first UK pressing on Caroline.
Packaging: Gatefold sleeve, foldout lyric insert.

Gong: The Flying Teapot (1973)
Music: Much more spacious and refined than their earlier albums - brilliantly inventive and humorous progressive jazz/rock.
Sound: Good.
Packaging: Gatefold sleeve.

Gong: Angel's Egg (1973)
Music: Very similar to "The Flying Teapot", and equally as good.
Sound: Good.
Packaging: Gatefold sleeve, 30 page booklet [on first few hundred copies only, but hopefully the SHM-CD will reproduce this].

Gong: You (1974)
Music: Much more instrumental and less humorous: amazing funky, synthesised space-rock explorations.
Sound: Good.
Packaging: Standard sleeve, lyric insert.

Planet Gong: Live Floating Anarchy '77 (1978)
Music: Gong's punk offshoot - band leaders Daevid Allen and Gilli Smyth teamed up with anarchist festival band Here & Now to cut this. Great music, but not representative of their sound.
Sound: Average, as it's a live recording.
Packaging: Standard sleeve.

Gilli Smyth: Mother (1978)
Music: Scrappy mix of electronica, narration, acoustic guitar picking and excerpts from live Gong jams. Nice album, but probably for the completist more than the beginner.
Sound: Generally good.
Packaging: Standard sleeve.

Mother Gong: Fairy Tales (1979)
Music: Gilli Smyth narrates some stoned, surreal children's stories over delicate but complex progressive folk backing. Lovely stuff!
Sound: Good.
Packaging: Single sleeve.

By the way, if you like early seventies space-prog, are you familiar with Amon Düül II? Their six major albums come out on SHM-CD this week.

Thanks very much for that manxman.
I am going to try Camembert Electrique & I'll post what I make of it.

Thank you manxman. A really informative write up. On your advice I'll try Camembert too. David Aellen was playing on the live "Tubular Bells" which many of us enjoyed recently.

Received Derek and the Domioes "In Concert" and "Layla Sessions" today, after paying to my tithe towards the Royal mail pension fund shortfall.

The Sessions album playing now. Awesome sound.

received groovin by the young rascals, compared to the recent collectors choice issue which was very good this get you nearer the lp quality with a bit of tape hiss as well .royal mail getting a bit keener with there £8 pension tax .

Received the first 3 Rod Stewart albums in cardboard sleeves yesterday. Definitely Rod's finest hours!

And no pension fund contribution!

The first six albums by the brilliant German space rock band Amon Düül II have just come out on SHM-CD, and five of them arrived in the post this morning (I forgot to buy “Dance Of The Lemmings”). I’ve just compared them in detail against my original CDs, and here are my conclusions. Please note that all the SHM-CDs are minisleeve reissues, and all include black-and-white booklets in Japanese and obis, in addition to the packaging listed below. On the downside, the minisleeve approach means you don’t get the fascinating archive photographs and cuttings included in the German digipaks.

PHALLUS DEI (1969)
Music: Their most avant garde album – weird, clattering polyrhythms, flashes of acid guitars and gypsy violins, falsetto and operatic voices, unsettling lyrics (one track, in German, consists of a paedophile attempting to justify his existence to a baying mob preparing to burn him alive) and a side-long improvisation that goes way beyond “Saucerful Of Secrets”
Compared against: 2006 German CD on Revisited Records
Sound quality: SHM-CD wins hands down, with vastly improved clarity and presence
Tracklisting: Identical (both have a couple of long recently recorded bonus cuts)
Packaging: Follows the German original, with single sleeve and insert (the UK original had a different and much more psychedelic cover, whilst the UK reissue had a completely different sleeve again – I was hoping the SHM-CD might have included multiple minisleeves with all these variants)

YETI (1970)
Music: An epic double album – one of compositions and the other of improvisations. Much harder and more guitar-based: their finest album and an all-time Krautrock masterpiece.
Compared against: 2001 German CD on Repertoire
Sound quality: SHM-CD is much superior, with far greater clarity and power
Tracklisting: SHM-CD annoyingly omits the two bonus tracks from the Repertoire version (the non-album single “Rattlesnakeplumcake” and its B-side “Between The Eyes”). On the plus side, the SHM-CD includes the full-length version of “Pale Gallery” (whereas most previous CDs have substituted a short edit).
Packaging: Gatefold sleeve.
Special note: SHM-CD is a double CD, despite the album lasting little more than 70 minutes.

CARNIVAL IN BABYLON ( 1972)
Music: A very good but much more conventional album: for the first time, they start to sound like other artists (Renaissance on a couple of cuts, and Jefferson Airplane on one). However, this also includes probably their best-ever improvisation “Hawknose Harlequin”.
Compared against: 2007 German CD on Revisited Records
Sound quality: A tie. The SHM-CD has greater clarity and instrumental separation, but the German CD is livelier and punchier.
Tracklisting: Identical (both have a couple of long recently recorded bonus cuts)
Packaging: Gatefold sleeve.

WOLF CITY (1972)
Music: Their best after “Yeti” – mostly structured compositions, but incredibly varied and inventive, from space rock to ethnic ragas, acid-folk and a weird military march with barking German vocals.
Compared against: 2007 German CD on Revisited Records.
Sound quality: SHM-CD is extremely disappointing: quiet, muted and flat compared to the German CD. Crank up the volume and the results are less definitive, but this is a pretty poor release.
Tracklisting: Identical (both have a couple of long recently recorded bonus cuts)
Packaging: Gatefold sleeve.

VIVE LA TRANCE (1973)
Music: Amon Düül II starts to go commercial, with a couple of mediocre pop/rock tracks. Most of this is still excellent, though, with more of a West Coast feel.
Compared against: 2007 German CD on Revisited Records.
Sound quality: SHM-CD again isn’t great: clarity and instrumental separation are better, but the German CD is much more lively and exciting.
Tracklisting: Identical (both have a couple of long recently recorded bonus cuts)
Packaging: Single sleeve, no insert (which is odd, as I recall the original album as having one). In fact, the SHM-CD has no musician credits at all, whereas the old French CD on Mantra gave a track-by-track breakdown. A big black mark for the Japanese here!

I've not had any SHM CD duffers yet, but I understand your disappointment manxman.
On a positive note it's good news you've got two much improved records.
Where did you buy these from?
If it's CD Japan email them with your comments.
Their service is excellent so I'm sure they'll refund you.

A lot of people here seem to swear by CD Japan, but I wasn't that impressed by their stock when I visited their website, so I always purchase from HMV Japan. This is the first time I've encountered SHM-CDs that are inferior, but I've had several before that were identical to the standard European remaster (Jefferson Airplane's "Volunteers" springs to mind, as do the first three Velvet Underground albums).

Oh yes, definitely the SHM-CDs. There would have been little point in buying the standard Japanese CDs, as I already had the European remasters. (Though in the case of Jefferson Airplane, I almost wish I had purchased the non-SHM Japanese CD versions, as they come in beautiful replica minisleeves, whereas the SHM-CDs bizarrely replicate the packaging of the European issues.)

IME CD JPN have everything SHM that HMV does (although sometimes not listed as far in advance of release).
Do complain to HMV about the discs you are not happy with manxman,
as you've a good chance of a refund.

I think there is hope for those seeking quality CDs from Japan.
The audio quality was poor for the recent New Order Rhino expanded/re-mastered releases,
so the Japanese releases were cancelled!

I might well mention it to HMV. Seems very strange that "Wolf City" and "Vive La Trance" are so poor, when "Phallus Dei" and "Yeti" sound really breathtaking (I was listening to the latter this afternoon, and it's one amazing double LP). I wonder whether something went wrong during the mastering process?

I had a bit of Rod Stewart day yesterday. Listened to "Old Raincoat" "Gasoline Alley" "Every Picture" and "Dull Moment" at a decent volume. These SHM releases sound miles better than I ever the heard the originals, given the replay system I had in the early 70s, and the packaging is exemplary. Granted by "Dull Moment" I think his creative peak was past, but it is still a fine album. "Every Picture" does not put a foot wrong. Brilliant.

Well, here's my first foray into SHMs and one I think I can guarantee no-one else will be interested in!

After they'd had a good response to their excellent Spooky Two album, their next project was (allegedly) not going to be an official band release. Pierre Henry, French experimentalist and leading musique concrete bloke commissioned Gary Wright to write a rock mass which he would collaborate with. Wright wrote the piece, got Spooky Tooth to record it (minus Greg Ridley, who'd gone to Humble Pie) then sent the tape to Henry...

What came back was very very strange, even by late 60's standards. Over the traditional rock stuff (good but not exceptional) Henry had overdubbed various bits of primitive electronics, weird vocal yelps and cries and the liberal banging of anything that was lying about. The band were often submerged.

I believe they were somewhat underwhelmed by it but then outraged by Island's decision to release and promote it as the follow-up to Spooky Two. Guess what? It bombed, and was a contributing factor in the breakup of the band at that time. But I love it.

Anyway, it’s not had the re-master treatment from Repertoire (the German label that has done a spiffing job on all their other albums) and the way it was recorded means that it’s pretty strange-sounding anyway. And, of course all this is leading up to why I justified spending over £20 on a copy to myself.

I don’t have an ordinary CD to compare it to but it does sound pretty good and the cover’s pretty special in that paper-sleeve format too (you get the hand holding the hammer on the other half of the gatefold).



I can see the attraction of these things and if the SHM of Happy Trails had a paper sleeve I’d have plumped for it, but at the price…. Well I’m just managing to resist.

For now.

P.S. If any Riders are reading this, you might need to prepare yourselves for this on the next visit.

You guys know all those "Limited Edition" SHM cds we paid so much for? A lot of them are coming out again, as "Limited Editions". Am I missing something here?

quote:

Originally posted by Gary Shaw:
Well, here's my first foray into SHMs and one I think I can guarantee no-one else will be interested in!

After they'd had a good response to their excellent Spooky Two album, their next project was (allegedly) not going to be an official band release. Pierre Henry, French experimentalist and leading musique concrete bloke commissioned Gary Wright to write a rock mass which he would collaborate with. Wright wrote the piece, got Spooky Tooth to record it (minus Greg Ridley, who'd gone to Humble Pie) then sent the tape to Henry...

What came back was very very strange, even by late 60's standards. Over the traditional rock stuff (good but not exceptional) Henry had overdubbed various bits of primitive electronics, weird vocal yelps and cries and the liberal banging of anything that was lying about. The band were often submerged.

I believe they were somewhat underwhelmed by it but then outraged by Island's decision to release and promote it as the follow-up to Spooky Two. Guess what? It bombed, and was a contributing factor in the breakup of the band at that time. But I love it.

Anyway, it’s not had the re-master treatment from Repertoire (the German label that has done a spiffing job on all their other albums) and the way it was recorded means that it’s pretty strange-sounding anyway. And, of course all this is leading up to why I justified spending over £20 on a copy to myself.

I don’t have an ordinary CD to compare it to but it does sound pretty good and the cover’s pretty special in that paper-sleeve format too (you get the hand holding the hammer on the other half of the gatefold).



I can see the attraction of these things and if the SHM of Happy Trails had a paper sleeve I’d have plumped for it, but at the price…. Well I’m just managing to resist.

For now.

P.S. If any Riders are reading this, you might need to prepare yourselves for this on the next visit.

Gary

I bought that elpee when it first came out, but I really didn't like it very much so I passed it on to a school-friend in exchange for a Jefferson Airplane elpee IIRC (possibly, Bark). I probably lost out on that deal seeing the prices for Ceremony on CD let alone vinyl, but I did get a dustbin bag.

I love Spooky Two and still have my original vinyl copy; I like most of their other output too. Perhaps, I should listen to Ceremony again. I think I found Mr Pierre Henry's contribution bemusing, but perhaps least intrusive on Prayer, which is very listenable track. I noticed WiKipedia describe the genre (I know BigH and Munch love these classifications) as Gothic Sarcasm. However, as you say Messrs Wright, Harrison et al were not amused. It meant Gary Wright left and the band did an album of cover versions (The Last Puff). The reformed band did some good tracks such as Self Seeking Man on You Broke My Heart So I Busted Your Jaw, but it wasn't quite as magical as the wonderful Spooky Two.

Some of the pre-Spooky stuff is worth a listen too, especially when known as Art they recorded the 1967 elpee: Supernatural Fairy Tales. And of course, before that Sir Keith Emo Emerson was their keyboard wizard in the VIPs.

Thanks for another thought provoking and interesting post.

ATB Rotf

quote:

Am I missing something here?

The packaging is subtly different & reissues have different cat' numbers.

That would be "Less Limited Editions" then?