The Moody Blues - Collection of the Remasters (7x SACD, 1967-1972/2006) [MCH PS3 ISO + Hi-Res FLAC]

The Moody Blues are an English rock band formed in Birmingham in 1964, initially consisting of keyboardist Mike Pinder, multi-instrumentalist Ray Thomas, guitarist Denny Laine, drummer Graeme Edge, and bassist Clint Warwick. The group came to prominence playing rhythm and blues music. They made some changes in musicians but settled on a line-up of Pinder, Thomas, Edge, guitarist Justin Hayward, and bassist John Lodge, who stayed together for most of the band's "classic era" into the early 1970s.



The Moody Blues’ 1967 concept album set a new standard for symphonic rock, marrying the band’s early R&B stylings with lush orchestral sounds, complex songforms, and epic interludes by the London Festival Orchestra. This hi-definition release adds even more depth to this essential, brilliantly recorded album.

This album marked the formal debut of the psychedelic-era Moody Blues; though they'd made a pair of singles featuring new (as of 1966) members Justin Hayward and John Lodge, Days of Future Passed was a lot bolder and more ambitious. What surprises first-time listeners – and delighted them at the time – is the degree to which the group shares the spotlight with the London Festival Orchestra without compromising their sound or getting lost in the lush mix of sounds. That's mostly because they came to this album with the strongest, most cohesive body of songs in their history, having spent the previous year working up a new stage act and a new body of material (and working the bugs out of it on-stage), the best of which ended up here. Decca Records had wanted a rock version of Dvorak's "New World Symphony" to showcase its enhanced stereo-sound technology, but at the behest of the band, producer Tony Clarke (with engineer Derek Varnals aiding and abetting) hijacked the project and instead cut the group's new repertory, with conductor/arranger Peter Knight adding the orchestral accompaniment and devising the bridge sections between the songs and the album's grandiose opening and closing sections. The record company didn't know what to do with the resulting album, which was neither classical nor pop, but following its release in December of 1967, audiences found their way to it as one of the first pieces of heavily orchestrated, album-length psychedelic rock to come out of England in the wake of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's and Magical Mystery Tour albums. What's more, it was refreshingly original, rather than an attempt to mimic the Beatles; sandwiched among the playful lyricism of "Another Morning" and the mysticism of "The Sunset," songs like "Tuesday Afternoon" and "Twilight Time" (which remained in their concert repertory for three years) were pounding rockers within the British psychedelic milieu, and the harmony singing (another new attribute for the group) made the band's sound unique. With "Tuesday Afternoon" and "Nights In White Satin" to drive sales, Days of Future Passed became one of the defining documents of the blossoming psychedelic era, and one of the most enduringly popular albums of its era.

Tracklist:

01. The Day Begins
02. Dawn: Dawn Is A Feeling
03. The Morning: Another Morning
04. Lunch Break: Peak Hour
05. The Afternoon
06. Evening
07. Nights In White Satin

The 2006 Deluxe Edition researched, compiled and produced by Mark Powell.
Album Stereo mix remastered from the original master tapes by Alberto Parodi and Justin Hayward at Logical Box studios, Genova, Italy.
5.1 Surround Sound mix manipulated from the original Quadraphonic Masters by Paschal Byrne and Mark Powell at The Audio Archiving Company, London.
Original 1972 Quadraphonic mixes produced by Tony Clarke and engineered by Derek Varnals.


Uncompressed SACD ISO size > 2,47 GB

In Search of the Lost Chord is the album on which the Moody Blues discovered drugs and mysticism as a basis for songwriting and came up with a compelling psychedelic creation, filled with songs about Timothy Leary and the astral plane and other psychedelic-era concerns. They dumped the orchestra this time out in favor of Mike Pinder's Mellotron, which was a more than adequate substitute, and the rest of the band joined in with flutes, sitar, tablas, and cellos, the playing of which was mostly learned on the spot. The whole album was one big experiment to see how far the group could go with any instruments they could find, thus making this album a rather close cousin to the Beatles' records of the same era. It is all beautiful and elegant, and "Legend of a Mind"'s chorus about "Timothy Leary's dead/Oh, no – he's outside, looking in" ended up anticipating reality; upon his death in 1996, Leary was cremated and launched into space on a privately owned satellite, with the remains of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry (another '60s pop culture icon) and other well-heeled clients.

Tracklist:

01. Departure
02. Ride My See-Saw
03. Dr. Livingstone, I Presume?
04. House of Four Doors
05. Legend of A Mind
06. House of Four Doors, pt.2
07. Voices in the Sky
08. The Best Way To Travel
09. Visions of Paradise
10. The Actor
11. The Word
12. Om

2006 Stereo mix remastered from the original master tapes by Alberto Parodi & Justin Hayward at Logical Box Studios, Genova, Italy.


Uncompressed SACD ISO size > 733 MB

On the Threshold of a Dream was the first album that the Moody Blues had a chance to record and prepare in a situation of relative calm, without juggling tour schedules and stealing time in the studio between gigs – indeed, it was a product of what were almost ideal circumstances, though it might not have seemed that way to some observers. The Moodies had mostly exhausted the best parts of the song bag from which their two preceding albums, Days of Future Passed and In Search of the Lost Chord, had been drawn, and as it turned out, even the leftover tracks from those sessions wouldn't pass muster for their next long-player project – but those albums had both been hits, and charted well in America as well as England, and had overlapped with a pair of hit singles, "Nights in White Satin" and "Tuesday Afternoon," on both sides of the Atlantic. Their success had earned them enough consideration from Decca Records that they could work at their leisure in the studio through all of January and most of February of 1969; what's more, with two LPs under their belt, they now had a much better idea of what they could accomplish in the studio, and write songs with that capability in mind. Equally important, they'd just come off of an extensive U.S. tour (opening for Cream) and had learned a lot in the course of concertizing over the previous year, achieving a much bolder yet tighter sound instrumentally as well as vocally, and they could now write to and for that sound as well. So this album is oozing with bright, splashy creative flourishes in two seemingly contradictory directions that somehow come together as a valid whole. On the original LP's first side (which was the more rock-oriented side), the songs "Lovely to See You," "Send Me No Wine," "To Share Our Love," and "So Deep Within You" all featured killer guitar hooks (electric and acoustic) and fills by Justin Hayward; beautiful, muscular bass from John Lodge; and vocal hooks everywhere. It's also a surprisingly hard-rocking album considering the amount of overdubbing that went into perfecting the songs, including cellos, wind and reed instruments, and lots of vocal layers – yet it even found room to display a pop-soul edge on "So Deep Within You" (a number that the Four Tops later recorded).

Side two was the more overtly ambitious of the two halves – after a pair of songs dominated by acoustic guitar and heavy Mellotron, "Never Comes the Day" and "Lazy Day" (the latter a piece of social commentary showing that Ray Thomas, at least, still remembered his roots in Birmingham), the remainder of the record was devoted to the most challenging body of music in the group's history. Justin Hayward's deliberately archaic "Are You Sitting Comfortably?," a piece that sounds almost 400 years out of its own time, evokes images out of medieval and Renaissance history laced with magic and mysticism, all set to Hayward's acoustic guitar and Thomas' flute, leading into Graeme Edge's poetic contribution, "The Dream," accompanied by Mike Pinder's Mellotrons in their most exposed appearance to date on a record. And all of that flows into Pinder's three-part suite, "Have You Heard, Pt. 1"/"The Voyage"/"Have You Heard, Pt. 2," a tour de force for the band – check out Edge's and Lodge's rock-solid playing on "Have You Heard" – and for Pinder, whose Mellotrons, in conjunction with Thomas' flute and supported by some overdubbed orchestral instruments, push the group almost prematurely into the realm of progressive rock. This synthesis of psychedelia and classical music, including a section featuring Pinder on grand piano, may sound overblown and pretentious today, but in 1969 this was envelope-ripping, genre-busting music, scaling established boundaries into unknown territory, not only "outside the box" but outside of any musical box that had been conceived at that moment – perhaps it can be considered rock's flirtation with the territory covered by works such as Alexander Scriabin's Mysterium, and if it overreached (as did Scriabin), well, so did a lot of other people at the time, including Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, the Who, et al. To show the difference in the times, The Moodies even brought this extended suite successfully to their concert repertory, and audiences devoured it at the time. Amazingly, On the Threshold of a Dream was their first chart-topping LP in England, and remained on the charts for an astonishing 70 weeks, a feat made all the more remarkable by the fact that the accompanying single, "Never Comes the Day" b/w "So Deep Within You," never charted at all.

Tracklist:

01. In The Beginning
02. Lovely To See You
03. Dear Diary
04. Send Me No Wine
05. To Share Our Love
06. So Deep Within You
07. Never Comes The Day
08. Lazy Day
09. Are You Sitting Comfortably
10. The Dream
11. Have You Heard – Part 1
12. The Voyage
13. Have You Heard – Part 2
14. In The Beginning (Full Version) [Bonus Track - Stereo only]
15. So Deep Within You (Extended Version) [Bonus Track - Stereo only]
16. Dear Diary (Alternate Vocal Mix) [Bonus Track - Stereo only]
17. Have You Heard (Original Take) [Bonus Track - Stereo only]
18. The Voyage (Original Take) [Bonus Track - Stereo only]
19. Lovely To See You (John Peel’s ‘Top Gear’) [Bonus Track - Stereo only]
20. Send Me No Wine (John Peel’s ‘Top Gear’) [Bonus Track - Stereo only]
21. So Deep Within You (‘The Tony Brandon Show’) [Bonus Track - Stereo only]
22. Are You Sitting Comfortably (‘The Tony Brandon Show’) [Bonus Track - Stereo only]

The 2006 Edition researched, compiled and produced by Mark Powell.
Album Stereo mix remastered from the original master tapes by Alberto Parodi and Justin Hayward at Logical Box studios, Genova, Italy.
5.1 Surround Sound mix manipulated from the original Quadraphonic Masters by Paschal Byrne and Mark Powell at The Audio Archiving Company, London.
Bonus tracks remastering by Paschal Byrne at the Audio Archiving Company, London, U.K.
Original Quardophonic Mix Produced by Tony Clarke Recording Engineer: Derek Varnals.


Uncompressed SACD ISO size > 2,72 GB

The band's most personal album, although the difference is less dramatic than on the other classic seven albums, and fans may miss the lyrics that were formerly included. Oddly enough, this was also the group's poorest-selling album of their psychedelic era, taking a lot longer to go gold – for all of their presumed connection to their audience, the band was perhaps stretching that link a little thinner than usual here. The material dwells mostly on time and what its passage means, and there is a peculiar feeling of loneliness and isolation to many of the songs. This was also the last of the group's big "studio" sound productions, built up in layer upon layer of overdubbed instruments – the sound is very lush and rich, but proved impossible to re-create properly on-stage, and after this they would restrict themselves to recording songs that the five of them could play in concert. There are no extended suites on this album, but Justin Hayward's "Watching and Waiting" and "Gypsy" have proved to be among the most popular songs in the group's history. The notes in the new edition also give a good account of how and why the Moody Blues founded their own Threshold label with Children's Children and their growing estrangement from Decca Records.

Tracklist:

01. Higher And Higher
02. Eyes Of A Child (I)
03. Floating
04. Eyes Of A Child (II)
05. I Never Thought I'd Live To Be A Hundred
06. Beyond
07. Out And In
08. Gypsy
09. Eternity Road
10. Candle Of Life
11. Sun Is Still Shining
12. I Never Thought I'd Live To Be A Million
13. Watching And Waiting

The 2006 Deluxe Edition researched, compiled and produced by Mark Powell.
Album Stereo mix remastered from the original master tapes by Alberto Parodi and Justin Hayward at Logical Box studios, Genova, Italy.
5.1 Surround Sound mix manipulated from the original Quadraphonic Masters by Paschal Byrne and Mark Powell at The Audio Archiving Company, London.
Original 1972 Quadraphonic mixes produced by Tony Clarke and engineered by Derek Varnals.


Uncompressed SACD ISO size > 2,39 GB

The Moody Blues' first real attempt at a harder rock sound still has some psychedelic elements, but they're achieved with an overall leaner studio sound. The group was trying to take stock of itself at this time, and came up with some surprisingly strong, lean numbers (Michael Pinder's Mellotron is surprisingly restrained until the final number, "The Balance"), which also embraced politics for the first time ("Question" seemed to display the dislocation that a lot of younger listeners were feeling during Vietnam). The surprisingly jagged opening track, "Question," recorded several months earlier, became a popular concert number as well as a number two (or number one, depending upon whose chart one looks at) single. Graeme Edge's "Don't You Feel Small" and Justin Hayward's "It's Up to You" both had a great beat, but the real highlight here is John Lodge's "Tortoise and the Hare," a fast-paced number that the band used to rip through in concert with some searing guitar solos by Hayward. Ray Thomas' "And the Tide Rushes In" (written in the wake of a fight with his wife) is one of the prettiest psychedelic songs ever written, a sweetly languid piece with some gorgeous shimmering instrumental effects. The 1997 remastered edition brings out the guitar sound with amazing force and clarity, and the notes tell a lot about the turmoil the band was starting to feel after three years of whirlwind success.

Tracklist:

01. Question
02. How Is It (We Are Here)
03. And The Tide Rushes In
04. Don’t You Feel Small
05. Tortoise And The Hare
06. It’s Up To You
07. Minstrel’s Song
08. Dawning Is The Day
09. Melancholy Man
10. The Balance
11. Mike’s Number One [Bonus Track - Stereo only]
12. Question (Alternate Version) [Bonus Track - Stereo only]
13. Minstrel’s Song (Original Mix) [Bonus Track - Stereo only]
14. It’s Up To You (Original Mix) [Bonus Track - Stereo only]
15. Don’t You Feel Small (Original Mix) [Bonus Track - Stereo only]
16. Dawning Is The Day (Full Original Mix) [Bonus Track - Stereo only]

The 2006 Edition researched, compiled and produced by Mark Powell.

The final chapter of the story of "A Question of Balance" took place in 1972. With the invention of Quadraphonic amplifiers and long playing records, Decca were keen to remix suitable rock albums in this new four channel format As audio excellence was the hallmark of the Moody Blues recordings and as one of Decca's biggest selling acts, the band's catalogue was an obvious choice for this treatment. Tony Clarke and Derek Vamals revisited the original January 1969 master tapes of the album and remixed the album for release in Quadraphonic. Despite the excellence of the mix, the Quadraphonic SQ system was not a successful medium and within six years the format had been discontinued. Over thirty years later, with the advent of the SACD and its capabilities as an excellent reproducer of digital 5.1 Surround Sound audio, Tony Clarke's original Quadraphonic master tapes have been enhanced into a 5.1 Surround mix approved by Justin Hayward and John Lodge.


Uncompressed SACD ISO size > 2,63 GB

The Moody Blues' first real attempt at a harder rock sound still has some psychedelic elements, but they're achieved with an overall leaner studio sound. The group was trying to take stock of itself at this time, and came up with some surprisingly strong, lean numbers (Michael Pinder's Mellotron is surprisingly restrained until the final number, "The Balance"), which also embraced politics for the first time ("Question" seemed to display the dislocation that a lot of younger listeners were feeling during Vietnam). The surprisingly jagged opening track, "Question," recorded several months earlier, became a popular concert number as well as a number two (or number one, depending upon whose chart one looks at) single. Graeme Edge's "Don't You Feel Small" and Justin Hayward's "It's Up to You" both had a great beat, but the real highlight here is John Lodge's "Tortoise and the Hare," a fast-paced number that the band used to rip through in concert with some searing guitar solos by Hayward. Ray Thomas' "And the Tide Rushes In" (written in the wake of a fight with his wife) is one of the prettiest psychedelic songs ever written, a sweetly languid piece with some gorgeous shimmering instrumental effects. The 1997 remastered edition brings out the guitar sound with amazing force and clarity, and the notes tell a lot about the turmoil the band was starting to feel after three years of whirlwind success.

Tracklist:

01. Procession
02. The Story In Your Eyes
03. Our Guessing Game
04. Emily’s Song
05. After You Came
06. One More Time To Live
07. Nice To Be Here
08. You Can Never Go Home
09. My Song
10. The Story In Your Eyes (Original Version) [Bonus Track - Stereo only]
11. The Dreamer [Bonus Track - Stereo only]

The 2007 Edition researched, compiled and produced by Mark Powell.
Album Stereo mix remastered from the original master tapes by Alberto Parodi and Justin Hayward at Logical Box studios, Genova, Italy.
5.1 Surround Sound mix manipulated from the original Quadraphonic Masters by Paschal Byrne and Mark Powell at The Audio Archiving Company, London.
Bonus tracks remastering by Paschal Byrne at the Audio Archiving Company, London, U.K.


Uncompressed SACD ISO size > 2,37 GB

Despite the presence of a pair of ballads – one of them ("New Horizons") by Justin Hayward the latter's most romantic number since "Nights in White Satin" – Seventh Sojourn was notable at the time of its release for showing the hardest-rocking sound this band had ever produced on record. It's all relative, of course, compared to their prior work, but the music is comparatively stripped down here, and on a lot of it Graeme Edge's drumming and John Lodge's bass work comprise a more forceful and assertive rhythm section than they had on earlier records, on numbers such as "Lost in a Lost World," "You and Me," and "I'm Just a Singer (In a Rock & Roll Band)." The latter, authored by Lodge, was – along with Lodge's "Isn't Life Strange" – one of two AM radio hits that helped drive the sales of this album, issued in early November of 1972, past all previous levels. Indeed, it was with the release of this album that the Moodies achieved their great commercial success in America and around the world, with a "Grand Tour" that kept them on the road for much of the year that followed. The irony was that it was all about to end for them, for years to come, and the signs of it were all over this record – Seventh Sojourn took a long time to record, and a lot of the early work on it had to be junked ("Isn't Life Strange" was one of the few early songs to get completed); it was clear to all concerned except the fans that, after six years of hard work in their present configuration, they all needed to stop working with each other for a time, and this was clear in the songs – many have a downbeat, pensive edge to them, and if they reflected a questioning attitude that had come out on recent albums, the tone of the questioning on songs like "Lost in a Lost World," "You and Me," and "When You're a Free Man" had a darker, more desperate tone. Perhaps the group's mostly youthful, collegiate audience didn't notice at the time because it fit the mood of the times – the album hit the stores in America the day before Richard Nixon's landslide presidential re-election victory (the culmination of events behind the scenes that would subsequently drive him from office). But the members were not working well together, and this would be the last wholly successful record – difficult as it was to deliver – that this lineup of the band would record, as well as the last new work by the group for over five years. And oddly enough, even amid the difficulties in getting it finished, Seventh Sojourn would offer something new in the way of sounds from the group – Michael Pinder, in particular, introduced a successor to the Mellotron, with which he'd been amazing audiences for six years, in the form of the Chamberlain, which is all over this album.

Tracklist:

01. Lost In A Lost World
02. New Horizons
03. For My Lady
04. Isn't It Strange
05. You And Me
06. The Land Of Make Believe
07. When You're A Free Man
08. I'm Just A Singer (In A Rock And Roll Band)
09. Isn't Life Strange (Original version) [Bonus Track - Stereo only]
10. You And Me (Bechthorns backing track) [Bonus Track - Stereo only]
11. Lost in a Lost World (Instrumental demo) [Bonus Track - Stereo only]
12. Island [Bonus Track - Stereo only]

The 2007 Edition researched, compiled and produced by Mark Powell.
Album Stereo mix remastered from the original master tapes by Alberto Parodi and Justin Hayward at Logical Box studios, Genova, Italy.
5.1 Surround Sound mix manipulated from the original Quadraphonic Masters by Paschal Byrne and Mark Powell at The Audio Archiving Company, London.
Bonus tracks remastering by Paschal Byrne at the Audio Archiving Company, London, U.K.
Original LP Produced by Tony Clarke Recording Engineer: Derek Varnals Recorded at Tollington Park Studios, London.


Uncompressed SACD ISO size > 2,66 GB
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