Re-packaged Passengers
(highly recommended for my analog friends: we will soon meet in Hamburg, guys!)
If you are like me and haven’t thought about Passengers and Original Soundtracks 1 in a long time, now might be the time to revisit this fine “new” album. Hearing it on vinyl for the first time, the music opens up in a fresh manner, compared to the relatively sterile sound of the original 1995-era CD. I love having this music spread out across four album sides, which allows us to better appreciate the song sequencing without it all getting lost as a mushy, hour-long digital playlist. Stopping to flip each side gave my brain a chance to take it all in, and better appreciate what I just heard.
Sonics-wise, there is no contest compared to the CD — the new vinyl edition of Original Soundtracks 1 sounds bold, round, and punchy, with loads of low-end, subsonic-style dance-beat vibes percolating beneath without sounding tubby-thumpy flaccid. Yet it’s not all boombox-car low-end here, as there is lots of nice midrange and high-end sparkle.
In closing, I’ll summarize that this new 180g 2LP vinyl reissue is like hearing Passengers and their Original Soundtracks 1 anew for the first time. If you love Brian Eno and U2’s work together, you probably need this one in your vinyl collection, ASAP.
6 Kommentare
Norbert Ennen
U2 sucks.
flowworker
Not in this case.
It is an eno album with u2 musicians guesting.
It quite fantastic in every way, again imo.
flowworker
This is not an album that aims to please. It’s opaque, sometimes frustrating, often beautiful. For U2 fans, it’s a test of patience and open-mindedness. For Eno disciples, it’s a glimpse of what happens when a stadium band surrenders to texture and mood.
To really help the listener imagine how the song would be in a film, the inner sleeve contains liner notes that describe the plot of the “film” that the song is “from.” The “1” in Original Soundtracks 1 hints at a series that never came to be.
However, it is a satisfying window into the experimentation that happened between two of U2’s most divisive albums; Zooropa and Pop. It may not be a landmark in the classic sense, but Passengers is a rewarding detour—enigmatic, atmospheric, and unlike anything else in U2’s canon. The remastering on this reissue sounds fantastic…
Glide Magazine
Norbert Ennen
OK. I’ll give it a try. Ich sollte relativieren. Bono sucks,
flowworker
Ich habe in der Zeit, als das Album der Passengers erschien, Brian in Berlin getroffen und interviewt. Leider finde ich den Artikel nicht in einer alten Ausgabe der Jazzthetik. IDEAS OF INFINITY AND FALLING APART.
Allerdings ging es da nur recht kurz um dieses feine Album. Ich habe es in den Klanghorizonten damals vorgestellt.
Und nicht immer schneiden LPS im Vergleich zu CDS besser ab. Das will ich gar nicht vertiefen.
Aber in diesem Fall ist, 30 Jahre später, kann ich sagen: das Remaster ist der Hammer! Mark Smotroff hat Recht! 😅
flowworker
“Wenn es Nacht wird, geht der Igel auf die Jagd. Seine feine Nase ist sein wichtigstes Sinnesorgan und hilft ihm in der Dunkelheit bei der Suche nach kulinarischen Leckereien.“
Norberts Vorschlag: 1. Mai, Golden Igel, ein Tisch für vier Personen. 17 Uhr.
Aber haben die am Tag der Arbeit überhaupt auf, fragt Michael.