Needles & Grooves

I'm going to be so inevitably disappointed when I buy this album tomorrow.

Ah it’s fun! I’ve enjoyed spinning the first few ash albums since they were reissued over the last year.

Is totally fun but I honestly forgot that literally every single song is a angsty girl song and that tracks because they were literally a year younger than I was in first year uni when they recorded it.

Yeah from what I remember of all the way back then, I was 13 when it came out, they were only able to record and tour during their school holidays because their parents insisted they finished school before the tried to be a band. It really is an album that’s clearly been written by a 17/18 year old boy.

1000% How is the repress? Any huge GZ issues?

They opened up for Weezer on the Pinkerton tour and featured prominently on the Angus soundtrack, two huge pluses in my opinion.

It’s fine. No glaring pressing defects on any of the four albums I got. They aren’t close to audiophile, quite compressed sounding, but that’s likely the masters given they were produced by Owen “cocaine hoover” Morris who was famous for also producing the first 3 oasis albums.

Hahahaha yeah I streamed the hi res "remaster" and honestly it sounded identical to the older master, and yeah, sounds pretty much like I remembered, a muddy flat mess. My local has the OG UK but honestly I don't think it will sound any better and it's $85. So I'll likely go repress.

Yeah they sound almost identical to my original 90s and 00s CDs did so I think you’re pretty safe with that assumption.

The problem is, I got the OG Elastica UK last month and it sounds.... really good. And it totally surprised me and now I'm like "How much better could all these OTHER 90s albums sound?" In most cases the answer is probably "none better". BUUUUT MAYBEEEEEE

It’s kind of difficult with 90s uk becuade it largely depends on the producer. A lot of the britpop era bands were on indies and there weren’t many digital studios in the uk and they were expensive. Most of it was recorded on tape. But it was also the beginning of the loudness wars and generally dumb production and mixing.

So right band and producer and the OG or well remastered can sound great. Wrong one and even though it was on tape every dial on the board is turned to 11 to sound great on FM radio on car stereos.

Yeah it's definitely a bit of a minefield. I will say, and obviously different era here considering it's like 1977 but the repress of Wire "Pink Flag" is absolutely stellar. I was shocked at how good it sounds and how clean the pressing is.

Wistful idiot is an important developmental phase

Agreed.

Could be worse, 19-year-old LeSamourai was doing his first of two whole years of spending 12-hour days trying to get people to join a religion he couldn't actually bring himself to believe in, with no music allowed.

To be fair, there's not a lot of air on Mars so it's a tough sell.

Hey @Joe Mac (or anyone really) do you have the Manic Street Preachers Holy Bible repress? If so, how's it sound?

I do I have the big 20th anniversary box set and I have the US mix pic disc from RSD. Both are really nice remasters and presses.

As is the Everything Must Go 20th anniversary remaster from a couple of years later.