Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Greatest album ever made, 24 July 2008
Of course, Script of The Bridge is the greatest album ever made, just read the many 5 star reviews of the original releases on Statik and Dead Dead Good, my review will be about this reissue.
First disc 2, the first 3 tracks are supposed to be previously unreleased but they sound exactly the same as 3 tracks on "Here Today Gone Tomorrow" released on Imaginary in the 90s. The rest of disc 2 is a strong 1983 performance in front of a seated German audience whose passivity seems to frustrate the band towards the heights. Sound quality is remarkably good for it's age and fans will find it worth buying this release just for the live tracks.
Disc 1 is a remastered version of the classic album, and I have to take issue with the previous reviewer here. I agree that maybe somebody has gone a bit overboard with a hiss reduction tool and sucked a little of the air out of the music, but I'm far from convinced that the previous CDs represent what it was supposed to sound like. The old CD was about as thin, trebly hissy and splashy as any CD I've ever heard. How much of that was due to dodgy CD mastering, and how much due to the deteriorating studio it was recorded in I don't know, and without hearing the master tapes I never will. Compared to the old one this CD sounds harder, less trebly, has more rumble in the bass and has had all the loud tape hiss and a few unwanted crackles of distortion removed. It does sound a little muffled compared to the old CD, but given the nature of the original CD I think it's better and probably sounds more like it's supposed to. The only exception would be "A Person Isn't Safe" which is strangely subdued and sounds like it's been toned down from the old CD more than the rest of the album.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
 
|
|
|
|
|
|
13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best ever version of this classic 80's album, 10 May 2008
If ever a band deserved the tag "They should have been huge" it's the Chameleons. Emerging from the Western side of the Pennines in the early 1980s, they never reached the enormous world-wide audience their music deserved. However, two and a half decades after they released their first album, many people who have never heard of the Chameleons certainly own records that probably could not have existed without them. The Verve, Interpol, Editors, Bloc Party, the Wedding Present and Spiritualized are just some of the bands who include Chameleons fans in their line-ups and within whose music the sound they made reverberates to this day.
Their distinctive debut, Script Of The Bridge, from 1983, introduces what soon became Chameleons trademarks: Dave Fielding and Reg Smithies' hypnotically entwined, plangent guitars, and singer-bassist Mark Burgess's powerful lyrical themes: the yearning for lost innocence and the seductive but dangerous power of nostalgia. This is the sound of young men attempting to make sense of the world around them and within them, looking inwardly and outwardly and asking the Big Questions about life, the universe and everything and then documenting the results within waterfalls of guitars while the rest of us would settle for talking about it in the pub.
Their debut album is packed with instant classics, from powerful opener Don't Fall - Burgess in less regular role as out and out rocker, under attack by unseen enemies and screaming of "backs against the wall" - to the quietly hushed promise of Pleasure And Pain, or Fielding and Smithies' almost breathtakingly tear-jerking intro to Less Than Human.
But if there's one song that sums up Script - and possibly provides the highlight of their whole career - it's the six minutes and 51 seconds of almost hallucinatory perfection that make up Second Skin: a brilliant song about transient highs and illusory beauty with a melody to match Burgess's memorable chorus: "If this the stuff that dreams are made of, then no wonder I feel like I'm floating on air." In 1983, Second Skin tore up John Peel's Festive Fifty, the first signifier that among like-minded souls around the country - as they later would around the world - the Chameleons' songs were striking a chord.
And so here we are 25 years later, with the 25th anniversary edition of Script Of The Bridge that is appropriately the best version of the album ever released. For the first time, unlike any previous release, this is the sound the band themselves heard in the studio in those mythical, far off days. If this album were being recorded today it wouldn't sound at all out of place among the Bloc Partys and Interpols, although at 25 years and counting, will probably outlive them all.
Dave Simpson, March 2008
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
7 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing album, 10 May 2008
an absolute must have for any true music fan. the most underrated band and album ever!
Buy it - you won't be disappointed
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
