One of the oddball, lesser-loved songs on the album, another being Ignoreland, it did mark the last time R.E.M. would attempt to be a little out of the ordinary. I do feel both songs add to what the album is, -a strange, moody, druggy ambiance.
Not really. My wife loved them up to Green or around there. Maybe she thinks that is their last college days album and after that they sold out. Certainly their music changed at that point. So she was a massive R.E.M. fan and loses interest even earlier. You may be in a minority, but it is bigger than you think. I Like Automatic for the People a lot and understand the early adopters eschewing the later productions, but there is a lot to commend this album. Thus my interest in the mastering and would love to have it on vinyl but won't pay for a sub standard product. Hell, I don't even like paying for a product that is better than what else is available but wasn't as good as they could have easily done with a modicum of effort. Here is to hoping this is cut better than Out of Time.
R.E.M.'s sound changed many times throughout their career. I imagine that this caused them to lose fans over the years, but to me it kept them fresh and interesting.
Well, that is a matter of opinion and perception. Even if you are right, when and how much matters to my original post. I see their first albums as being cut from the same swath. You may not and of course that is the crux of the argument. Out of Time start to see some changes, maybe Green which my wife sees as the break if memory serves (and it may not...). Automatic seemed quite different. Monster was most certainly an attempt at a new sound and perhaps searching for a new direction which is what made people's reactions to it so marked one way or the other. So I would say that if their sound ever changed that much it started and accelerated after the period in question anyway.
This is sort of like the Fleetwood Mac Mirage release in that I want the 3rd disc of demos, but I am not going to spend $60 ($85-$25) for the extra CD + BluRay. I will probably buy the 2-cd deluxe and download the demos from iTunes.
I love this album but I expect the remastering will be bad, therefore redundant. I would like the demos though. As they are only on the 3 disc version the minimum I have to pay to get them is £80. Nice job.
Just popped up on remhq. The 3 CD/Bluray (a player for which I do not own) has the demos as the 3rd disc, not the second. I already have 12 of the 13 tracks on the second disc, from the Complete Rarities: Warner Bros. 1988–2011 digital download. Grrrr. Me too, but I found them again just before they released Collapse Into Now. amplification: I really like New Adventures In Hi-Fi. They lost me when Berry retired.
Feeling conflicted about this release, as I expected to. I have dim hopes for the quality of the remaster, based on the "Out of Time' fiasco. But I'm oddly encouraged by the packaging of the 2-disc set, which returns the cards to the package, and which were unaccountably absent from the "Out of Time" 2 disc clamshell box. I see that the cover art reprises "Out of Time""s removal of the band name and title, but the result is improved here, as the absence of that banner from "Out of Time" left not much to look at, while that star thingy by itself captures the album just fine. All of which indicates that I'm in for t 2-disc. I have the DVD-A with the 5.1 surround mix; I don't have a 7.2 set up for the Dobly Atmos or whatever, and I'm also unclear if one's player must be equipped with the format for it to play the disc. I'm worried that lots of purchasers will discover they can't play the surround mix and have to settle for a hi-res version of the stereo. Maybe they threw in the standard Dolby as a fall back, but haven't seen any confirmation of that here. I also have the Automatic Box, which includes the B-Sides. But I'm also bewildered, somewhat, by the decision to include the live CD in the 2-disc version rather than the demos. They keep moving back and forth between live sets and demo discs on these releases. The following reissues had live sets as the bonus discs: Murmur, Reckoning, Document, Green. Conversely, Fables, Lifes Rich Pageant and Out of Time all featured demos. Wonder what the thinking has been on this score, if there HAS been any. From the look of the working titles on the demo disc, I'd speculate that these demos are much more rudimentary than in the case of "Fables" and "Lifes Rich Pagaent," where the demo versions represented already worked out tunes, in a live-in-the-studio context. So it might be that these demos really are as sketchy as the titles suggest--chord progressions with no vocals, just ideas later fleshed out in the studi0. Conversely, maybe the decision to include a live disc vs a demo disc is based on the quality of the live disc itself? In any case, the inconsistency is kind of annoying and shows little regard for die-hard fans, who might prefer a more uniform archival collection. Then again, R.E.M. were always insistent on doing things their way--not playing older hits on later tours and so on--which served them well when they were a working band trying to evolve and maintain their artistic freedom. So I guess these sets follow the same instinctive logic.
Just to be clear....New adventures in Hi-Fi is one of my favourites, I'm REALLY eager for this to be reissued. Anything after this I'm not bothered about so much...
Mike's Pop Song is good. A shame it was put aside for B-side consideration in lieu of live cuts ad nauseum.
I've got this German-pressed beauty: R.E.M. - Automatic For The People It is one of the best-sounding LPs I own. It is totally 'demo-disc' worthy & leaves my guests who hear it shaking their heads in wonder. Luckily I scored it at the drugstore a few years ago for $19. Here's hoping that this new LP does this magnificently recorded album the justice it deserves... Automatic For The People 25th Anniversary Vinyl
Why they can't do one affordable eco friendly Blu-ray release with all content in hi-res is beyond me. Like OOT this needed no remastering whatsoever. OOT was awful in that the loudness of the remastering not only obscured some details but it changed emphasis. The DVD-A there used the remix. AFTP used as far as I know a mix of analog and digital tape hence why the old DVD-A is 24/48. I'm really worried about the Atmos mix as I never thought that would be used for music in such a way for reissues. Many homes do not have overhead channels or capable equipment, and most films aren't even shown with their Atmos mixes. Heck, most professionals are still learning to use it. The new video clip shows a song in the graphic mixing program and you can see how elements are being placed around the room and airspace. While I'm excited to see new work being done, I'm also really afraid what it will do to the sound. I didn't like the Scheiner mix as I thought that was already too gimmicky. Dolby music modes have always been less about accuracy and more about playing with fake surround processing. Want to do a really exciting reissue? Just release a copy of the untouched original master in hi-res! The original CD is great. The DVD-A stereo slightly better and the Precision original US LP is the equivalent of the DVD-A roughly with both sounding excellent. The remaster will likely go right into the dump where it belongs. I'm a sucker in for the whole box-primarily just for the demo CD. Why does it have to be $30 more than the OOT set? (Atmos most likely)
"Star Me Kitten" and "Ignoreland" are maybe my favorite two songs on this album. My understanding is they actually hated "Ignoreland." I remember them bashing it in the press shortly after the album came out. I don't believe they ever played it live.
Awesome to see this getting a Dolby Atmos mix, no way it won't be compatible with 5.1 systems (core will probably be Dolby TrueHD 7.1) and so I'm excited for a new approach to the album in surround.
Not surprising R.E.M. fans often under-appreciate AftP because they completely shifted styles 180 degrees by trading the jangly alternative rock for orchestrated sophistipop. I just happen to think AftP is a masterpiece for completely different reasons than say, Murmur or Reckoning. I'm not sure there's another album I've heard that combines rock and strings as well as it does. And the songwriting is among their very best. It's really too bad it's mostly known for "Everybody Hurts" because even though I do like that song, it's definitely not the best and most representative song from the album.
I love this album. It's indeed different than what they did in their more 'progressive' period in the eighties, but in a good way. They could have made yet another up-beat 'Out Of Time'-like album, but they chose to go acoustic and reflective. Good move and totally out of time (pun intended) with what happend in music during 1992/93. The result is their best 'mainstream' album. I am not a R.E.M. fantatic, though. I like a good portion of their albums and are not into rarities and b-sides (yet?) The new edition looks great for big fans of the band, though Stephen Marcussen in the mastering department gets me a bit worried. I have always liked the pure sound of the original.
It's always seen as the "sad album." It's got these well-crafted somber tentpoles peppered with material that is the very much indicative of what R.E.M. was up to that point. Man on the Moon can be derived from Pageant, Fk Me Kitten from Murmur, Ignoreland from Document etc.
I agree both that in general the whole sound and thing of first half-decade REM was a more lasting and interesting contribution to rock, and sad they abandoned that feel entirely; yet also think that AUTOMATIC is a stand alone sui generis masterpiece of "sophistipop" as someone labeled it above, just a special magical misty offering utterly different from and above all the other things they did in all the other styles.
