Search - Ten Years After :: Cricklewood Green

Better than the MoFi Gold!

charlesn | New York, NY | 04/11/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Before I get to this review, in which I'll focus on the sonics of the remastered Cricklewood Green, here's a plea to Amazon: please keep reviews for remastered versions of CDs limited to the remaster! Anyone interested in buying a remaster already knows the merits of the musical content, or they wouldn't want to buy a remastered version. So we don't need reviews of old versions of the CD telling us how good the music is. The most important question to be answered in any review of a remaster is how it compares to the original version. Buyers want to know if the sonics really make it worth the money to buy it again, and yet so few reviews of remasters ever answer the question.



Now, as for my review of the Cricklewood Green remaster: If you're a fan of this disc (and you should be) then just stop reading and click the Buy button now. I have owned Cricklewood Green (and the earlier Ssssh) on the original vinyl, the first CDs, the MoFi Gold CD containing both albums, and now this remaster, which sonically blows all previous versions away.



My vinyl grooves are practically worn flat, so I can't speak to its sonic quality any longer. The first CDs of these albums were atrocious--the combo of '60s-era rock engineering and the harshness of the digital mastering rendered them almost unlistenable. The MoFi Gold CD, which I compared to this remaster directly, is certainly much better than the early CDs, but finishes second by a wide margin to this new version.



Overall, the instruments and vocals on this remaster have more weight and presence and are more clearly defined in the soundfield. I don't mean this in that etched, artificial sort of way that you hear on some remasters--no, I've bought my share of those, and this ain't one of 'em, thankfully! What you get here is sound that sounds totally natural, while still sounding better than you've ever heard it before. Once you've heard this version, the MoFi, by comparison, sounds flatter and far less dynamic, with vocals and instruments lacking that three dimensional sound.



The limiting factor at this point is the original quality of the engineering on the master tapes, which is very good but not great. So, four stars."