The Moody Blues – Seventh Sojourn (1972) [2007 Remaster]
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DST64 2.0 & 5.1 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 39:10 minutes | Scans included | 2,68 GB
or FLAC 2.0 Stereo (converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | 63:25 mins | Scans | 1,22 GB
Remastered Reissue 2007 | Features 2.0 Stereo & Surround Mix, manipulated from original Quadrophonic Master

Despite the presence of a pair of ballads — one of them (“New Horizons”) by Justin Hayward the latter’s most romantic number since “Nights in White Satin” — Seventh Sojourn was notable at the time of its release for showing the hardest-rocking sound this band had ever produced on record. It’s all relative, of course, compared to their prior work, but the music is comparatively stripped down here, and on a lot of it Graeme Edge’s drumming and John Lodge’s bass work comprise a more forceful and assertive rhythm section than they had on earlier records, on numbers such as “Lost in a Lost World,” “You and Me,” and “I’m Just a Singer (In a Rock & Roll Band).” The latter, authored by Lodge, was — along with Lodge’s “Isn’t Life Strange” — one of two AM radio hits that helped drive the sales of this album, issued in early November of 1972, past all previous levels. Indeed, it was with the release of this album that the Moodies achieved their great commercial success in America and around the world, with a “Grand Tour” that kept them on the road for much of the year that followed. The irony was that it was all about to end for them, for years to come, and the signs of it were all over this record — Seventh Sojourn took a long time to record, and a lot of the early work on it had to be junked (“Isn’t Life Strange” was one of the few early songs to get completed); it was clear to all concerned except the fans that, after six years of hard work in their present configuration, they all needed to stop working with each other for a time, and this was clear in the songs — many have a downbeat, pensive edge to them, and if they reflected a questioning attitude that had come out on recent albums, the tone of the questioning on songs like “Lost in a Lost World,” “You and Me,” and “When You’re a Free Man” had a darker, more desperate tone. Perhaps the group’s mostly youthful, collegiate audience didn’t notice at the time because it fit the mood of the times — the album hit the stores in America the day before Richard Nixon’s landslide presidential re-election victory (the culmination of events behind the scenes that would subsequently drive him from office). But the members were not working well together, and this would be the last wholly successful record — difficult as it was to deliver — that this lineup of the band would record, as well as the last new work by the group for over five years. And oddly enough, even amid the difficulties in getting it finished, Seventh Sojourn would offer something new in the way of sounds from the group — Michael Pinder, in particular, introduced a successor to the Mellotron, with which he’d been amazing audiences for six years, in the form of the Chamberlain, which is all over this album.

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The Moody Blues – Long Distance Voyager (1981) [Japanese SHM-SACD 2014]
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 46:32 minutes | Scans included | 1,89 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Full Scans included | 937 MB

Progressive rock bands stumbled into the ’80s, some with the crutch of commercial concessions under one arm, which makes the Moody Blues’ elegant entrance via Long Distance Voyager all the more impressive. Ironically enough, this was also the only album that the group ever got to record at their custom-designed Threshold Studio, given to them by Decca Records head Sir Edward Lewis in the early ’70s and built to their specifications, but completed while they were on hiatus and never used by the band until Long Distance Voyager (the preceding album, Octave, having been recorded in California to accommodate Mike Pinder), before it was destroyed in the wake of Decca’s sale to Polygram. In that connection, it was their best sounding album to date, and in just about every way is a happier listening experience than Octave was, much as it appears to have been a happier recording experience. While they may steal a page or two from the Electric Light Orchestra’s recent playbook, the Moodies are careful to play their game: dreamy, intelligent songs at once sophisticated and simple. Many of these songs rank with the band’s best: “The Voice” is a sweeping and majestic call to adventure, while the closing trio from Ray Thomas (“Painted Smile,” “Reflective Smile,” and “Veteran Cosmic Rocker”) forms a skillfully wrought, if sometimes scathing, self-portrait. In between are winning numbers from John Lodge (“Talking Out of Turn,” the pink-hued “Nervous”) and Graeme Edge (“22,000 Days”), who tries his hand successfully in some philosophizing worthy of ex-member Mike Pinder. Apart from the opening track, Justin Hayward furnishes a pair of romantic ballads, the languid “In My World” (which benefits greatly from a beautiful chorus heavily featuring Ray Thomas’ voice), which distantly recalls his Seventh Sojourn classic “New Horizons,” and the more pop-oriented, beat-driven romantic ballad “Meanwhile.” In typical Moodies fashion, these songs provide different perspectives of the same shared lives and observations. “Gemini Dream,” which was a big hit in the U.S., does sound dated in today’s post-Xanadu landscape, but never does the band lose the courage of their convictions. Although the title and the cover art reference the then-recent Voyager space probe, only half of the songs have a “voyager” connection if you apply it to touring on the road; apologetic love songs consume the other half. Still, not everything has to be a concept album, especially when the songs go down this smooth. This album should make anybody’s short list of Moodies goodies. And, yes, that’s Patrick Moraz who makes his debut here in place of original member Mike Pinder.

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The Moody Blues – In Search Of The Lost Chord (1968) [2006 Deluxe Edition]
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DST64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 42:17 minutes | Scans included | 697 MB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Scans included | 836 MB

In Search of the Lost Chord is the album on which the Moody Blues discovered drugs and mysticism as a basis for songwriting and came up with a compelling psychedelic creation, filled with songs about Timothy Leary and the astral plane and other psychedelic-era concerns. They dumped the orchestra this time out in favor of Mike Pinder’s Mellotron, which was a more than adequate substitute, and the rest of the band joined in with flutes, sitar, tablas, and cellos, the playing of which was mostly learned on the spot. The whole album was one big experiment to see how far the group could go with any instruments they could find, thus making this album a rather close cousin to the Beatles’ records of the same era. It is all beautiful and elegant, and “Legend of a Mind”‘s chorus about “Timothy Leary’s dead/Oh, no — he’s outside, looking in” ended up anticipating reality; upon his death in 1996, Leary was cremated and launched into space on a privately owned satellite, with the remains of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry (another ’60s pop culture icon) and other well-heeled clients.

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The Moody Blues – Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1971) [2007 Remaster]
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DST64 2.0 & 5.1 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 39:47 minutes | Scans included | 2,4 GB
or FLAC 2.0 Stereo (converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | 47:25 mins | Scans | 917 MB
Remastered Reissue 2007 | Features Stereo & Surround Mix, manipulated from original Quadrophonic Master

The Moody Blues’ first real attempt at a harder rock sound still has some psychedelic elements, but they’re achieved with an overall leaner studio sound. The group was trying to take stock of itself at this time, and came up with some surprisingly strong, lean numbers (Michael Pinder’s Mellotron is surprisingly restrained until the final number, “The Balance”), which also embraced politics for the first time (“Question” seemed to display the dislocation that a lot of younger listeners were feeling during Vietnam). The surprisingly jagged opening track, “Question,” recorded several months earlier, became a popular concert number as well as a number two (or number one, depending upon whose chart one looks at) single. Graeme Edge’s “Don’t You Feel Small” and Justin Hayward’s “It’s Up to You” both had a great beat, but the real highlight here is John Lodge’s “Tortoise and the Hare,” a fast-paced number that the band used to rip through in concert with some searing guitar solos by Hayward. Ray Thomas’ “And the Tide Rushes In” (written in the wake of a fight with his wife) is one of the prettiest psychedelic songs ever written, a sweetly languid piece with some gorgeous shimmering instrumental effects. The 1997 remastered edition brings out the guitar sound with amazing force and clarity, and the notes tell a lot about the turmoil the band was starting to feel after three years of whirlwind success.

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The Moody Blues – Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1971) [Japanese Limited SHM-SACD 2010 # UIGY-9025]
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 40:10 minutes | Scans included | 1,62 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Scans included | 785 MB

Features the 2010 DSD remastering. Reissue features the high-fidelity SHM-SACD format (fully compatible with standard SACD player, but it does not play on standard CD players). DSD Transferred by Hitoshi Takiguchi.

The best-realized of their classic albums, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour was also the last of the group’s albums for almost a decade to be done under reasonably happy and satisfying circumstances — for the last time with this lineup, they went into the studio with a reasonably full song bag and a lot of ambition and brought both as far as time would allow, across close to four months (interrupted by a tour of the United States right in the middle). Virtually everywhere you listen on this record, the lush melodies and the sound of Michael Pinder’s Mellotron (augmented here by the Moog synthesizer and a brace of other instruments) just sweep over the music, and where they don’t, Justin Hayward’s guitar pyrotechnics on pieces like “The Story in Your Eyes” elevate the hard rocking side of the music, in tandem with John Lodge’s muscular bass work — which still leaves plenty of room for a cello here, and a grand piano there, on top of Ray Thomas’ flute, and Graeme Edge’s ever more ambitious percussion. “Emily’s Song.” “Nice to Be Here,” and “My Song” are among the best work the group ever did, and “The Story in Your Eyes” is the best rock number they ever cut, with a bracing beat and the kind of lyrical complexity one more expected out of George Harrison at the time. Sad to say, the group would never be this happy with an album again — at least not for a lot of years — or with their commitment to being a group, though they would leave one more highly worthwhile album before taking a hiatus for most of the rest of the 1970s.

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The Moody Blues – A Question Of Balance (1970) [2006 Remaster]
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DST64 2.0 & 5.1 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 38:36 minutes | Scans included | 2,7 GB
or FLAC 2.0 Stereo (converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | 63:53 mins | Scans | 1,28 GB
Remastered Reissue 2006 | Features 2.0 Stereo & Surround Mix, manipulated from original Quadrophonic Master

The Moody Blues’ first real attempt at a harder rock sound still has some psychedelic elements, but they’re achieved with an overall leaner studio sound. The group was trying to take stock of itself at this time, and came up with some surprisingly strong, lean numbers (Michael Pinder’s Mellotron is surprisingly restrained until the final number, “The Balance”), which also embraced politics for the first time (“Question” seemed to display the dislocation that a lot of younger listeners were feeling during Vietnam). The surprisingly jagged opening track, “Question,” recorded several months earlier, became a popular concert number as well as a number two (or number one, depending upon whose chart one looks at) single. Graeme Edge’s “Don’t You Feel Small” and Justin Hayward’s “It’s Up to You” both had a great beat, but the real highlight here is John Lodge’s “Tortoise and the Hare,” a fast-paced number that the band used to rip through in concert with some searing guitar solos by Hayward. Ray Thomas’ “And the Tide Rushes In” (written in the wake of a fight with his wife) is one of the prettiest psychedelic songs ever written, a sweetly languid piece with some gorgeous shimmering instrumental effects. The 1997 remastered edition brings out the guitar sound with amazing force and clarity, and the notes tell a lot about the turmoil the band was starting to feel after three years of whirlwind success.

(more…)