Seems to be contradictory, but it isn’t. Snap with a finger, it’s the end of October, 2015, sunny day here in Germany, blink with the eye, and you know exactly (vagueness included) how it has been when you first heared „Penny Lane“ in your life. Yes, that Beatles song. It wasn’t just there. It might have „attacked“ you via Radio Caroline, and maybe, you’ve heard it so often that the first encounter may have been blurred by time’s running in circles on 45rpm forever and a day.
Now, autumn is a good time for another endless Indian Summer – musicwise – the colourful reappearance of awesome music that soundtracked our lives. It’s a memory game, it’s an adventure play, and you have to make your choices. „Excellent remastering“ may be the key expression for illuminations. Sheding new lights. Old stuff can now sound so much better than ever, but there is no real replacement for our hungry, desperate and weird teenage years. The first kiss, the first Kinks single, the first Talking Heads record, the first cut is the deepest. Whatever, here are some wonderfully restored and remastered sounds from the past that still have the power to drive you crazy, to put a big smile on your face, to send shivers down your spine, to make you dance, sing or anything.
There is Van Morrison’s „Astral Weeks“, Gentle Giant’s „Octopus“, Neil Young sitting in the „Blue Note Cafe“, Underworld’s „Second Toughest In The Infance“ (yep, with Karl Hyde), the boxed set of the „Faces“ with young Rod Stewart, there is the No. 1 – collection of the Beatles (with great film footage, sensurround etc. – Richard Williams singing his praise in Uncut’s December edition), there is the merciless box of the the early nightmares of Pere Ubu, XTC going psychedelic on „Oranges and Lemons“ – there are fantastic vinyl remasters of the two best Peter Gabriel albums ever („3“ and „4“, also called „Melt“ and „Security“), there is the „Harmonia“ vinyl box set, there is that condensed beauty of Arvo Pärt’s „Musica Selecta“, and there is King Crimson’s THRAK BOX, an unsurpassable edition of refinement, reinvention and remastering. As I said, you have to make your choices, and these are mine.