The Pleasure Principle – The First Recordings [VINYL]

Vintage Gary Numan remastered and compiled with great care and attention to detail. I'll court heresy and say this 40th Anniversary double vinyl is as good or better than The Pleasure Principle original seminal album.The sound quality is superb. It's hard to believe these songs are 40 years old.The orange vinyl looks beautiful with no skips, jumps, or distortion. You could not ask for more. The song choices are perfect and this is a fine complimentary companion to the original album. It includes demos, previously unreleased tracks, and John Peel sessions on side 4. Some of the demos (such as Films) sound better than the original versions.Note1: the double vinyl does not include album download coded.Note2: Because of 1 I also bought the double CD. Sound quality is amazing in the car. I don't regret getting this album on vinyl and CD.Gary and his production team really got it right with this vinyl masterpiece.

The first thing that I want to highlight in this review is the quality of the vinyl pressing. It's clean. It's rich. It's just about as good as it gets these days! I say this because I have bought quite a lot of re-issued vinyl lately (as well as several new releases) and it's quite surprising just how wide the range of (sound) quality is. Many 180g platters look clean, feel heavy and yet arrive full of dust and charged with static - the result, pops, clicks and a lot of floor noise :-( . The pressings for this release play flawlessly (as far as any 'mechanical' medium can) and deliver a warm and punchy rendering of those gorgeous analogue synth sounds. Personally, I think that analogue synths sound their best when heard on the vinyl format - better even than 'real' instruments come across! But that's another can of worms.In fact, the only time that 'the image breaks down' (from a sound quality point of view) is when you get to the second side of the first LP and hear some tracks that were recorded with a degree of analogue hiss ('Tracks' even sounds as though it may even have been recorded from a vinyl master(?). The CD won't sound any cleaner here though.On top of the way it sounds, the sumptuous, orange vinyl also looks good enough to lick (which is definitely not recommended, unless you have gargled with record cleaning fluid beforehand ... and even then ....). You get the idea. The sleeve design (with the deep cut-outs that resemble the outer case of a reel-to-reel audio tape) and the inner sleeve prints that also encompass that reel-to-reel vibe, are nicely executed and the fact that you get all of this great packing around a double vinyl LP for only 25% more cost than the average single LP makes the whole package a well-priced purchase (in my opinion).As for the music contained on those LPs, well, that's very subjective indeed and I haven't heard them enough times to make a balanced judgment on them as yet. Suffice to say that the recording quality on most of the tracks is the same as that found on the official release of, "The Pleasure Principal" and that the only difference is in the amount of (mixing desk) tracks used to record it and the amount of effects applied to the vocals (in particular) and some of the synth sounds. Think of it more like a 'remix album' and less like a 'demos and bootlegs' album and you won't go far wrong. That said, there are a number of tracks, which have a more 'pirated' quality to them, but they are in a minority.All in all, I think that buying this version of the album (and not a re-release of the standard one) was a good move on my part. It's not 'just for collectors' in my opinion (as some here have suggested). It's easily good enough to stand on its own two feet as a 're-imagining' of the album that Numan and his band released to the world all those years ago.A five-star purchase for sure. The only downside is that I now feel compelled to go and spend the same amount of money again on the "Replicas - First Recordings" LP and will then be even more obliged to buy the "Telekon" version (if and when that is ever released). First World problems, eh!?

I bought this double album and Replicas for the coloured vinyl and album artwork. I'll be getting Telekon next year?

Ordered on CD, after the vinyl came damaged twice, CD was packed properly and is great

J'avais possédé l'album initial il y a près de 40 ans. Cette édition est encore mieux, avec des versions inédites ou rares. Je conseille vivement à ceux qui aiment ce type de musique.