All eight Roxy Music albums have been reissued as half-speed masters and are available for the first time as individual albums. They were pressed on 180-gram vinyl in Germany at Optimal. The albums all come in poly-lined sleeves and include the original album sleeves. Miles Showell cut the previous discs at half speed in 2016, but these new cuts were done on upgraded equipment. For our purposes here, we only have access to Roxy Music, Flesh + Blood, and Avalon.
The group’s self-titled debut in 1972 was a groundbreaking work. Coming right in the middle of the late ’60s/early ’70s hippie days, the album was like a musical visitor from outer space. The initial lineup, which included Bryan Ferry, Phil Manzanera, and Andy MacKay, has remained intact right up until the group’s most recent tour this year. The rhythm section for the album was Paul Thompson and Graham Simpson. Thompson would last all the way through until Siren, and Simpson would leave after the group’s debut.
A rotating cast of bass players followed on the group’s next seven releases. More significantly, the group’s debut and second album included Brian Eno. Eno would of course leave the group after its second album and pursue ambient music, collaborate with Robert Fripp and David Byrne and, more significantly, become an in-demand and highly successful record producer.
Even 50 years later the album is a jarring and garish mix of styles and attitude. This is the height of DIY art rock. The album has touches of glam, glitter, or prog and the group dipped far back to mix in old jazz, cabaret, musique concrete, and the influences of crooners on Ferry’s vocals. The packaging includes a gatefold jacket, original sleeve, and the album in a poly-lined sleeve. The pressing is excellent and the sound is natural, with only the limitations of the original recording taking away from the overall sound.
The album really captured a unique group style that, while highly ambitious, successful, and influential, was still not fully formed. The experimentation, brashness, and almost careless naivete, are part of the album’s endless charms. The group’s latter albums would become an audiophile’s dream as sound quality and studio perfection would become a hallmark of the band just before and as the digital CD era was being born.
Flesh + Blood, from 1980, is one of the albums in the Roxy Music catalog that sometimes gets overlooked by its masterful swansong Avalon, from 1982. Flesh + Blood shares a similar musical identity with Avalon and, like that album, has some of the group’s most accessible and well-known music. It is very much the middle album of the group’s latter career trilogy that began with Manifesto (1979).
The album has a very atmospheric, synth vibe, but with subtle rhythms, as well as Phil Manzanera’s distinctive and tasty British guitar god riffs and Andy McKay’s lilting brass. Unlike much of the popular music of that early ’80s era, this album is timeless. This new cut sounds very natural and smooth. This reissue highlights one of the characteristics of these Abbey Road remasters: a natural, smooth sound that isn’t harsh.
Avalon, released in 1982, would be Roxy Music’s final album. In ten years, the group went from being one of the most underground major label bands in the world to international blockbuster stardom. Its sound and style were also clearly influential on many of the successful mainstream new wave bands of the era. Avalon was and still is an audiophile’s dream.
Recorded at the legendary Compass Point studios in the Bahamas and mixed at the equally legendary Power Station in New York, the album boasted a smooth-as-silk production that fits the music and the times as perfectly as one of Bryan Ferry’s well-tailored designer suits. The album would be a huge seller and, like Electric Ladyland, Abbey Road, Bridge Over Troubled Water, and Synchronicity, would stand as one of the great final studio albums from a legendary group.
The album is the perfect candidate for the Abbey Road half-speed master treatment. It came out at the end of the analog age and benefitted from the final advances of the pre-digital age. It was recorded and mixed at two studios that reflected the unique stamp that was put to albums worked on at the time.
