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I still remember many years ago as a tween when I first heard "New Life" off their debut album on my radio on the BBC Top of the Pops program late at night and it just blew my mind! For a kid just getting interested in pop music and who was fortunate enough to begin his long and fruitful journey into music appreciation at the beginning of the New Wave aka Second British Invasion it was simply a very exciting time to be a pop music fan. Despite the genre itself being fairly short lived my love for many of the bands from that period certainly wasn't and has endured to this day. While many early 80s albums fail to stand the test of time and age well thankfully Depeche Mode's early work i.e. "Violater" and earlier for me still have me raving after all these years. I first had this their sixth album on cassette all those years ago and I wore that sucker out. The whole album has a very nice flow to it as well.
Imagine my joy when finally after so many years we now have this great album in mini-lp replica sleeve (mlps) format which while is not among the best mlps releases that I've seen is still pretty good by collector standards and includes a 16-page booklet containing all the lyrics as well as an essay on the album in Japanese and another glossy colour 16-page booklet containing the same (essay by Daniel Miller) in English.
While the original recording was pretty well mastered they decided to do a remaster here which sounds to me like just some upward compression which leads to bass that sounds just about to get muddy but thankfully not too much so. When will this stupid loudness wars end? Overall the volume levels are louder but the sound quality in general is no significant improvement over the original cassette and cd that I had years ago. Still for fans and mlps collectors this release is still worth the wait.
Recommended!
