Ok, gave
Drastic Plastic in 5.1 two thorough listens and, before I get into the details, color me impressed. I essentially stopped listening to Be-Bop post
Live In The Air Age!, so I never actually heard
Drastic Plastic until now. It totally eradicated my expectations of a non-guitar centered electronic outing. This is an excellent New Wave ilked album that mostly rocks nicely while featuring excellent ballads when it doesn't. Bill Nelson's guitar work is, as usual, superlative throughout.
I decided to jot notes during my 2nd listen to better justify my final score. I judged each song's surround mix, with a '10' being a perfect score. Of the original album's 11 cuts, 4 scored a '10'; 5 scored a '9', and 2 scored an '8'. I have to say that one of the highlights of the entire album is
how great Simon Fox's drums sound. They have a fantastic level of presence and heft which really adds fantastic propulsion to the album.
The '10's:
Electrical Language, New Precision, Panic In The World, Superenigmatix
The '9's:
New Mysteries, Love In Flames, Dangerous Stranger, Visions Of Endless Hopes, Islands Of The Dead
The '8's:
Surreal Estate, Possession
I really loved the very active rear speaker engagement and especially the swirling synths in
Electrical Language.
New Precision again features very active surrounds with synths and effects ever present. Bill's guitar solo is fantastic!
Panic In The World isolates a chugging rhythm guitar in the left rear with some awesome panning synths moving between the two rear speakers.
Superenigmatix features a great intro in surround and very nice acoustic guitar and piano accents in the rears for the remainder of the song.
New Mysteries features some very good atmospheric surround action.
Love In Flames captures the very cool & cheesy Elvis Costello-ish keys in the rears and some awesome front-to-rear drum rolls.
Dangerous Stranger has rhythm guitar and some very nice vocal accents in the rears.
Visions OF Endless Hopes features a very beautiful and open sound throughout its brief run with mandolin and synth swells in the rears.
Islands Of The Dead allows the rears to create a massive and spacious sound that fantastically compliments the front soundstage/mains.
I won't go into individual song details, but the Singles & EP tracks fare even better in surround IMHO: 5 of the 8 merit a '10' mix-wise. Oddly, I noticed that these tracks were about 2-3dB lower in volume than the main album tracks.
Although fidelity was excellent overall, especially since we're dealing with a lossy format, I did feel that the mastering was slightly compressed yielding a level of fatigue at my usual -85dB volume listening level, but this is generally a full and rich sounding release the belies its age.
Final Score
Content: 10 x .3 = 3
Mix: 9 x .3 = 2.7
Fidelity: 9 x .3 = 2.7
Package/Extras: 10 x .1 = 1
TOTAL = 9.4; which rounds down to a 9, but this is a very deserving and high level
9
Thanks for another great Be-bop mix,
@Stephen W Tayler! I was very critical of your work on Futurama but your efforts on the other 4 albums have been great-to-fantastic and I really appreciate that such a fantastic band is receiving this treatment!
