Your favorite sounding album?

Na-ah. "Earthbound", that piece of a#$ has the worst production. Having a guitar low in the mix is a bit of a turn-off, but the rest ... [kissing left thumb, index, and middle a-la culinary grand chef] sounds clean and loud enough to me.

sagichim wrote: Yeah especially The Fountain Of Salmacis's drum sound, it changes in the middle of the song and turns to a judge's gavel. Strange.

 ...  ... The drums sound good to me. Oh, well, I guess there is no way of bending our minds.

For me that album is like a soundtrack to nature and it would be one of the first human artifacts I would show to an intelligent alien race :3

 See, we need to clarify what we think 'favorite SOUNDING Album" means. Cause I love tresspass too but my original LP was great sounding only in composition... the actual sonics on it were pretty bad (to my ears). Although I have heard the English pressings were better. and beacuase Svetonio didnt calirfy I don't know what you are errrrming at.

The sound of it especially is something I hold very dear.

The combination of that dripping sequencer and the warm slithering synth landscapes is a true winner for me. Everything melts together but is somehow distinguishable and crystal clear. Mirage does this as well, but is has that icy serene coating as well. 

 

I'm not sure it's possible. (the choice!)

 

For many of us, it is not about choosing a favorite. I have too many! But as far as "experience" in the listening itself, those albums are tops.

 

I think, (let me say it again!) that I know why Vangelis' El Greco is not appreciated by many progressive fans ... it was recorded as a pice of classical music ... not as a piece of rock music ... and the detail and depth and intensity of the details help the music ... rock music, for the most part, tends to not be ablel to do this ... first of all in the old days, rock music was NOT taken seriously until folks like The Beatles and Rolling Stones and others broke the mold, and secondly, the recording of these "pop" or "rock" things, rarely has the depth and continuity that the classical piece tends to have. Thus, for the longest time, recording the man sing Brown Sugar instead of Pavarotti doing Tosca's arias, is a bit ... negligeable ... with the exception that rock music by then, was making 10 times to 20 times the money ... which had, by then ... become the LAW.

 

And it's been that for the last 40 years.

 

"El Greco", and its recording, from what I could see was a throw back to the old style  ... and it does marvellously, but in some ways I think that our ears are already tuned out of the orchestral recording with 120 microphones, to the rock concent recording with 10 microphones (well ELP had 43 of them!) ... so to speak! The simplicity of it does not make it better, but it does make it sound different.

 

I like the live in the studio feel in TFTO. I like the Concert House feel in El Greco. I like the very special feel of the art house in A Passion Play. And these are all very different. It helps make the music more "alive". I specially like the "white room" feel in Terje and David Darling's Eos ... which makes it sound so much like a Chamber Music concert ... and the only other thing I have ever heard that has that feel is ... Gryphon!

 

And this is the super hard part of this work and reviewing it!

 

Btw, compare this recording to Ryuichi Sakamoto's The Buddha soundtrack. Same thing, and he knows about recording and such!