XTC's Andy Partridge: Your copy of 'Skylarking' sounds wrong

Apparently all previous pressings, including the MoFi gold disc, sound "wrong" because of a studio error...

XTC reissuing ‘Skylarking’ on double vinyl ‘as it was intended to sound, but never has’

 

Words fail me...

 

This will be awesome!

 

Holy. Freaking. Smokes.

 

"a vinyl reissue of the Todd Lundgren-produced Skylarking" Maybe they should get a proof reader.

 

Beat me to it. How ridiculous.

 

So, a polarity reversal on a current issue should yield some results as well, yeah?

 

I think I just did. Thanks for catching that...

 

That's what I was thinking. Reversing the polarity isn't really going to make a difference. It'll still sound like a Todd Lundgren production.

 

No, it's the little-known version produced by Dolph Lundgren's brother. Hideously rare!

Seriously, I wonder how many folks, after the new version comes out, will continue to swear by the old "wrong" version since that's what they've heard all these years...

 

I'm STUNNED by this, seriously.

Has he never listened to a single copy of this to notice in all these years?!?

 

Oh my, two LPs -- that sounds like a 45 RPM version. Be still my heart.

 

I was just planning to buy this album (it's one of the XTC recordings I don't have yet). Sounds like I should wait for some more news about it...

 

Wow, I'm seriously disappointed!

I thought this was going go be some serious mastering error that would now open up the music, but reversed polarity? I highly doubt that it's going to sound that different.

I'll try it out with Audacity tonight on my original UK cd, but I doubt it's going to yield any sonic revelations.

 

Reversed it through my DAC. No difference in sound. Perhaps presale hype?

 

Slicing Eyeballs is a great, great blog but I do wish we could get short articles posted directly, pretty please.

Anyway, sounds like Ape just wants to make sure they sell some records. Ape doesn't have rights to a CD issue. It was reported/implied that EMI would be handling that... sometime in 2010?

Maybe the two records is to keep the price up and because the original was tight? Maybe they're adding Dear God on to help sales?


Here's the article:

Hey XTC fans, Andy Partridge has some news for you: That copy of Skylarking you’ve come to know and love sounds “…how shall we put this?… wrong,” thanks to a heretofore undiscovered studio flub.

That’s the word from Partridge’s Ape House Records, which today announced plans to reissue the 1986 album on double vinyl “as it was intended to sound, but never has due to human error.” No release date has been announced, nor plans for another CD reissue.

According to Ape House, mastering engineer John Dent was working on a vinyl reissue of the Todd Rundgren-produced Skylarking — which the band long had felt “sounded a little too thin and bass light” — when he discovered that all previous vinyl and CD editions (including the pricey Mobile Fidelity gold CD) were manufactured with the sound polarity reversed.

For the casual fan, Ape House explains, that means “sound waves that should be pushing out from your speakers are actually pulling them back and projecting from the rear,” resulting in music that sounds “distant and thinner” than it should.

Dent reports that the “original tapes appear in very good condition,” and Ape House now plans “to present to you shortly a splendid double deep vinyl cut of this classic XTC album as it was intended to sound.” More information is promised “shortly.”

 

Well, if it's always been wrong, they owe us a cd reissue, don't they? It seems to me that, if MFSL used the Original Master Tapes as indicated on the packaging, the sound polarity wouldn't have been reversed unless it was so on the original tapes...

 

Right, this doesn't make sense, unless every released version has been made from a safety copy or something, and that safety copy was done improperly. Does this mean the actual master tape was done wrong?

 

Correct polarity should improve imaging and bass no doubt.

 

ya know what sounds 'wrong' about it to Andy? The $$ he's made from it, this re-issue is an attempt to fix that 'wrong'

 

Ding Ding Ding we have a Winner!

Where's the gang that constantly whines like little children about hyperbole? They can have a tantrum over this as it's legitimately up their alley.

 

Hmmm, Curious. But then again, we are talking Andy Partridge here.

 

I have said this before but I appreciate the Slicing Eyeballs posts in this forum and if he wants to post a link to drive up traffic to his own site I say that is the least he deserves. It is all definitely on topic and relevant. I hope his site is doing well.

That being said I am not really interested in this - although I am hoping to snag one of those unlistenable sound sculptures Andy is working on.

 

Here are two AIFF samples of "Earn Enough For Us" from the UK cd (CDV2399) of Skylarking. I inverted one of them with Audacity and the other is untouched. I'm not sure if I could hear a difference. I'm not saying which is the inverted one yet:

Sample A

Sample B