Icicle Works reissue terrible

[budaniel]

Well, Cherry Red has again messed up horribly, this time on the reissue of "If You Want to Defeat Your Enemy Sing his Song." This is my short but to the point review on amazon:

Well, as always, Cherry Red either gets it so right or totally wrong...in this case it's TOTALLY wrong. When I began playing CD1, I was sure some settings must have changed on my stereo...but nope, they were the same as always. This mastering is dull and muddy and muffled. I even popped in my original Beggars Banquet CD for side-by-side comparison. The BB versions is crystal clear. Tragic. And what's more tragic is, the muffled mastering carries over to the great second disc of bonus tracks (I don't care personally about the 3rd live CD). For me, it's nice to have the CD of bonus tracks, but I'm still bummed that it sounds bad. And yes, I WILL be keeping my beggars banquet CD as well.

[StevieP]

I've bought both this reissue and the "Small Price" one on the strength of repeated listens to them on Spotify, where they sound fine to me. I haven't done an A-to-B comparison with the original versons just yet, but if time allows, I will if only to see how obvious it is to me. I notice that the reissue of "Small Price" has had a bad review for its sound quality as well, which is a shame.

I'm just happy to hear "Waiting in the Wings" again and the sound quality isn't bad enough to spoil my enjoyment of it.

[budaniel]

now I did a side by side of "small price" as well, and that CD does not sound significantly different to me--but again, I opted to keep my BB pressing to be on the safe side in case I notice it somewhere down the line.

[budaniel]

if anyone else gets their hands on these, let us know what you think of the sound quality on the discs.

[moni]

I have both Small Price and If You Want to Defeat Your Enemy and though the bonus discs sound quite good the main albums sound like shit and the originals sound much better especially If You Want to Defeat Your Enemy and why they had to use the original vinyl tracklisting for that is a pile of crap as it doesn't flow as well the original CD does. I imagine with Blind being next we can expect the same crap quality[:(]

[StevieP]

First of all, I don't have an audiophile stereo system, my ears are 40-odd years old and the speaker placement and room acoustics are far from perfect, but the remaster of "If You Defeat Your Enemy..." FLAC-ed and played through a Squeezebox doesn't sound terrible to me at all, even when the volume is nicely cranked up. There is a definite difference in tonal balance, which is noticeable even when listening on crappy headphones on Spotify, but the detail is still there and I'll quite happily listen to it again. Listening to the original CD also reveals flaws, so without going back to the original multitracks and getting a very expensive mix engineer to remix them, I'm not sure what more Cherry Red could have done apart from maybe stick with the original EQ settings and leave people like me to turn down the treble!

As for the tracklisting, I would guess that if you'd bought the vinyl first, you might prefer it's running order. I only bought the CD, so the restoration of the LP running order threw me a bit as well.

I've also compared the original and remaster of "Small Price" and they are virtually identical, but if I'm brutally honest the original is far from perfect - probably about par for the course for Beggar's Banquet records of that time. It hasn't put me off listening to the album over the years, so it won't put me off now.

I'm not so sure whether I'll bother with "Blind". While it's my favourite Icicle Works album, I've got most of the B-sides on CD already on the "Best Kept Secrets" CD that came with the "best-of" compilation. The only tracks that might be of interest are the remixes of "The Kiss Off".

[jaybag]

I don't own the originals of Enemy or Bicycle, only these new versions. I've only listened to Enemy but my first thought was "those vocals sounds awfully muddled". Not clear at all. I take it they're much better on the originals? That's the only thing I really noticed but it was enough to turn me off to the album. I'll have to seek out the original BB disc.