Product Description

From 1975's SIREN through the rest of Roxy Music's albums and his concurrent solo work, Bryan Ferry was leading up to AVALON. The last Roxy Music studio album (it was followed by numerous collections, both live and otherwise), it is the perfect culmination of Ferry's constant striving for the ultimate sophistication. On AVALON, the styles that the band had explored in the past--funk, jazz, and rock--come together tocreate a texture of remarkable subtlety. The title track isFerry's finest moment. His suave voice turns the romance all the way up, while the band plays in a smooth, light jazz-funk groove and guitar notes shimmer like the sun on water.
"While My Heart is Still Beating" features Andy Mackay's saxophone drifting in around Phil Manzanera's languid guitar lines. "True to Life", a ballad shot through with reverberation, is the kind of song aching to be played late at night with the lights off. From the almost jaw-dropping elegance ofthe opening track, "More Than This", to the closing "Tara",a sparse, evocative instrumental, AVALON is Roxy Music's masterpiece.

Track Listing

1. More Than This
2. Space Between
3. Avalon
4. India
5. While My Heart Is Still Beating
6. Main Thing
7. Take A Chance With Me
8. To Turn You On
9. True To Life
10. Tara
11. Always Unknowing

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #60927 in Music
• Released on: 2003-07-07
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: SACD

Customer Reviews

Good surround mix
One of the better SACD surround mixes.

Not in the league of DSOTM, but still clean, sharp and well-positioned.

Some material was originally mono, so they perform bit of 'ping-pong' at the rear channels, but it is brief and not annoying.

Roxy Music never sounded SO GOOD.
This is an absolute must buy even if you have the CD.
The multichanel mix is amazing. It is like the music is given an other dimention. I listen quit a lot to multichanel music and must admit that very few come even close to the quality of this one. Every time you listen to it, it just blows you away.

Puts the "Super" in "Super Audio Compact Disc (SACD)"
Superlatives have become such a way of life that it's easy to disregard anyone who resorts to using them. That would be a mistake here; this new SACD edition of "Avalon" is an incredible release that deserves nothing but the highest praise. It's so good in fact that it should single-handedly convince anyone who's been debating whether or not to invest in SACD to get off the fence and run to the store.

Because the original producer and engineer were able to utilize the original multi-track recordings, this release sounds incredibly fresh. The clarity of separation for instruments just HAS to be heard; it's so good it puts many other releases of more recent titles to shame. The 5.1 mix neatly utilizes every speaker in a natural style rather than resorting to gimmicky discrete channel effects. It's a completely natural mix and obscures the fact that the original recording is more than 20 years old!

This is a hybrid disc that will play in regular CDs (except for the bonus track "Always Unknowing", which is available only in the m/c version). But this surround mix is so amazing that you'd really be cheating yourself if you listened only to the stereo CD version! And to think that this is available (so far) only in Europe!