HiRez Poll Nyro, Laura - ELI AND THE 13TH CONFESSION [SACD]

[Q-Eight]

Always looking forward to more of these quads, EARLY QUAD 60's wonders that recieved a mix and got shelved.
I know we can rely on those people involved to do their very best to continue to surprise us.

I'd wager there's quite a few from the 8-track era we never saw. I get the impression that Columbia tried to avoid using 8-track multitracks as much as possible. Most of the commercially available mixes are 16 track or better with the occasional 8-track song mixed in. Prime examples are some Blood, Sweat & Tears albums (BST II, Greatest Hits) and Sly & The Family Stone Greatest hits which all seem to be blends of 8 and 16 track masters.

Some of the unreleased Quads we've seen all stem from 8-track : Big Brother/Holding Co. , Child is Father to the Man, Johnny Winter Self-titled, Raiders/Hard & Heavy, Laura Nyro/Eli, Bookends, and so forth.

I have no idea if this edict was real, it just seems to me that while RCA went back into the archives using 3-track masters to create Quad, Columbia seemed hesitant to do the same. Shame though as they'd used 8-track as far back as 1965!

My one wish was that somebody had considered the Bobby Fuller Four for Quad. According to Mr. Hoffman, an awful lot of Bobby Fuller's material was recorded on then-experimental 10-track equipment. Imagine something from 1964 in very discrete Quad! Even listening to Bobby's stereo cuts, there's an awful lot going on in some of those mixes!

 

[fizzywiggs41]

Thanks for the quad info on mixing, Q-eight.

Well we know via a couple sources (Robin's & Reeves & Mowery's) that Columbia/CBS did start early on in the late 60's to experiment and catalogue some quad mixes.
Most were likely kept "in house" though, but slowly and surely a few crept out. And when the label went SQ matrix , the releases like these and others newly created (71/72) were made available for the consumer.

I agree that there are probably many Q8 consideration titles from all labels , mostly from the big labels of the day that were never released or in some cases limited.Given the Q8 startup date (1970) that is.

It would be a "quad sleuth's dream" come true to visit and peruse those dust covered, rapidly aging archives.Wonder what wonders we could be surprised by ?

 

[oxenholme]

I think Stephen Marsh has done an excellent job here. Sound quality is excellent, quad mix is excellent - 10 for both. Material is 7 for me, but by no means lacking. Giving a 9 overall.

 

[fizzywiggs41]

This gets an automatic high mark from me, as it's a quad mix that was shelved but now available to hear.

Love this aspect of old quads, hopefully more can occur.


For such an old recording 68 I believe, this sounds very good and I recommend it highly-such a rarity afterall.




Like her smooth vocals on this.


So for all those reasons I give it a TEN.

 

[par4ken]

I thought that I had voted on this already! It deserves at least a 9. Nice that they released a previously unreleased Quad album! Amazing the number of hits she wrote that were made famous by other artists. To round out my collection I also bought the Original Album Classics set, you get five CD albums in mini LP sleeves for about the cost of one CD!

 

[beerking]

An original from 1968!!

Not much to add to other glowing reviews.

She has a terrific voice.

The mix is cool.

Nothing unluckie in this purchase.

I confess it's a 9

 

[edisonbaggins]

I remember the drums sounding a bit hyper, for the music style. Will have to revisit. It's interesting, to say the least.
Not sure if it will ever be top-tier for me though.

 

[ar surround]

I just go this recently. Very nice quad mix and fidelity. I have to be in the mood for Nyro's vocal gymnastics...sounds cool when I am in the mood however. I wonder how unique this album may have been for 1968. Although this won't be a go-to album for me, I still have to rate it a 9.

 

[sjcorne]

I also picked this up recently- ElusiveDisc is/was blowing out this title for $15. It's an 8 from me.

I now have all of AF's quad releases except the Judy Collins.

Very cool that this is an unreleased title, and even cooler than it's an entirely different mix than either Robin Reel version. To me, this definitely sounds like the final version that would've worked on an SQ LP. Hard four-corner with nothing in the center except vocals, with drums in right rear and bass in left rear. It fits in perfectly with the other early Columbia quads from 8-track masters (Sly & The Family Stone, BS&T, Super Session, etc).

I can understand people being annoyed about those kind of mixes when the drums were recorded on multiple tracks (Tower of Power, Musicmagic, etc), but given that this is an 8-track recording the drums were likely recorded in mono, so it's more a fault of the technology of the time than the quad mixer.

Admittedly, I'm not the biggest fan of the content. Her version of "Eli" pales in comparison to Three Dog Night's, though I don't mind her take on "Stoned Soul Picnic". Maybe it will grow on me further...

 

[GOS]

I also picked this up recently- ElusiveDisc is/was blowing out this title for $15. It's an 8 from me.

I now have all of AF's quad releases except the Judy Collins.

Very cool that this is an unreleased title, and even cooler than it's an entirely different mix than either Robin Reel version. To me, this definitely sounds like the final version that would've worked on an SQ LP. Hard four-corner with nothing in the center except vocals, with drums in right rear and bass in left rear. It fits in perfectly with the other early Columbia quads from 8-track masters (Sly & The Family Stone, BS&T, Super Session, etc).

I can understand people being annoyed about those kind of mixes when the drums were recorded on multiple tracks (Tower of Power, Musicmagic, etc), but given that this is an 8-track recording the drums were likely recorded in mono, so it's more a fault of the technology of the time than the quad mixer.

Admittedly, I'm not the biggest fan of the content. Her version of "Eli" pales in comparison to Three Dog Night's, though I don't mind her take on "Stoned Soul Picnic". Maybe it will grow on me further...

I think I've played my copy once....enough to vote likely...but I never returned to it.

 

[kap'n krunch]

I remember the drums sounding a bit hyper, for the music style. Will have to revisit. It's interesting, to say the least.
Not sure if it will ever be top-tier for me though.

Well, the problem with us "younger folk" (and I dare to put myself in that category although I am older than you are! ) is "perspective"....who had done what she did before she did it? My guess is that basically nobody...that is why Laura Nyro was so special...

 

[4-earredwonder]

Well, the problem with us "younger folk" (and I dare to put myself in that category although I am older than you are! ) is "perspective"....who had done what she did before she did it? My guess is that basically nobody...that is why Laura Nyro was so special...

I guess you just had to be there when Laura Nyro's magnificent Eli and the Thirteenth Confession BURST onto the music scene. Sjcorne prefers Three Dog Night's version of ELI, but if you understood the lyrics, Eli's a womanizer and Laura is warning women about him and is therefore [from a woman's perspective] one bad dude. And Laura's MAGNIFICENT Poverty Train is, IMO, a tour de force......vocally astonishing! And the remix engineers have captured every nuance of her interpretation in ways the stereo version was unable.

Eli and the Thirteenth Confession is, in my mind and heart, a SOLID 10 if there ever was one. The Audio Fidelity QUAD SACD finally captures Nyro's album in absolutely stunning sonics and on my system sounds transcendent.

BTW, behold Elvis Costello and Sir Elton John praising Laura Nyro's artistry on an episode of SPECTACLE:

 

[humprof]

I also picked this up recently- ElusiveDisc is/was blowing out this title for $15. It's an 8 from me.

I now have all of AF's quad releases except the Judy Collins.

Very cool that this is an unreleased title, and even cooler than it's an entirely different mix than either Robin Reel version. To me, this definitely sounds like the final version that would've worked on an SQ LP. Hard four-corner with nothing in the center except vocals, with drums in right rear and bass in left rear. It fits in perfectly with the other early Columbia quads from 8-track masters (Sly & The Family Stone, BS&T, Super Session, etc).

I can understand people being annoyed about those kind of mixes when the drums were recorded on multiple tracks (Tower of Power, Musicmagic, etc), but given that this is an 8-track recording the drums were likely recorded in mono, so it's more a fault of the technology of the time than the quad mixer.

Admittedly, I'm not the biggest fan of the content. Her version of "Eli" pales in comparison to Three Dog Night's, though I don't mind her take on "Stoned Soul Picnic". Maybe it will grow on me further...

Laura Nyro is an acquired taste, for sure. Maybe not quite on the order of a Kate Bush, but in the same ballpark. A taste well worth acquiring, though, IMO--and, as Ralph's video suggested, in the opinion of plenty of other songwriters. The Best Of compilation is a good place to start. So is Billy Childs's tribute album of a few years ago, Map to the Treasure.

Your description of the mix is spot on, I think. There's something artificial-sounding (to my ears) about the underlying recording--not as tinny as, say, Carole King's Tapestry, but still midrange-heavy. I hear it especially in the harsh backing vocals. But AF warmed it up as much as they could.

 

[ashr1565]

10. I was gonna give it a 9 because it lacks the demos from the older CD, but what pushed it to a 10(aside from the lovely WIDE quad mix which I enjoy a lot) is that Audio Fidelity dug this out of the vaults and gave it the love it deserved. Your sleeves are still ugly but bang up job.

 

[Scott65]

Another disc I have had for some time but not rated. Wow! 10. Great content and mix. Another reminder that it is a pity that AF is no longer operating.

 

[Quadly McQuadmeister]

Got it. Love it. What a loss...she is missed...

 

[edisonbaggins]

The documentary Inventing David Geffen features Laura Nyro, rather prominently, near the beginning.

Including material from this record.

Check it out!

 

[Dynamic Editor]

I have no earthly idea why this quad mix is held in such high regard. It's literally just disparate elements panned exclusively to each speaker, with exception to one point where the mix swelled. If one is gonna engage in hard panning like this, there at least ought to be a sensible balance or a call-and-response among the instruments involved. Maybe I'm just not too familiar with quad mixes, but pushing an entire drum kit to a single speaker is a really bad idea.

As I definitely am in the minority here, I'm really curious to hear why you all were able to get so much out of the mix that I wasn't able to.

 

[sjcorne]

It's literally just disparate elements panned exclusively to each speaker...

It probably has to do with a combination of the multitrack being limited to begin with - the drum kit was likely committed to a single channel on the 8-track master - and CBS issuing their quad mixes on SQ matrix-encoded vinyl, so a lot of the earlier ones (Sly & The Family Stone's Greatest Hits is another good example) were intentionally made very 'four-corner' to get the most out of early hardware decoders that only produced like 3 dB of front-to-back seperation.

 

[Dynamic Editor]

It probably has to do with a combination of the multitrack being limited to begin with - the drum kit was probably committed to a single channel on the 8-track master - and CBS issuing their quad mixes on SQ matrix-encoded vinyl, so a lot of the earlier ones were intentionally made very 'four-corner' to get the most out of early hardware decoders that only produced like 3 dB of front-to-back seperation.

Alright. The big issue I have with the mix is not so much that I don't feel "surrounded" by it as much as the panning was nonsensical to me. It struck me as a potpourri of instrumentation rather than a presentation of an album. If the drum kit was presented in mono within the front two channels or the back two, I'd be a lot more forgiving. That would also give the bass the ability to balance the mix by placing it on the opposite side.

But then again, if you're talking about this SQ matrix thing, perhaps this mix just wasn't made to be quad in my eyes if it has that limitation.