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The early 1980's blinded music fans with the science
of sequencers, sythesizers, music videos and often soul
less vocals with a pathetic attempt at intelligent lyric
writing. Thomas Dolby flew north of the fray with intelligent,
insightful lyrics and a sound that echoed what Brian Eno
might have sounded like if his 70's masterpieces had dance
beats. ***
Exploding through the vapid music of the day like an
blasting cap through arctic tunda, Dolby's output was limited
(he only released five albums of original music not counting
his soundtrack compositions) before turning to his lucratice
business of composing music for videogames. His his single
"She Blinded Me With Science" suggested a wry, ironic intelligence
mixed with catchy melodies that his full length album "The
Golden Age of Wireless" delivered on. Although the sythesizer
effects on the album (the early use of Fairlight, sequences
and Roland sythesizers) may mark the album as being of its
time the content of the songs themselves and the dreamy
melodies ("Airwaves" was admired by Billy Joel and he liked
it so much he composed a song very similar to it on "The
Nylon Curtain") make it stand out as timeless. ***
The hit single is only, so to speaker, the tip of the
iceberg. Dolby himself points out that there have been numerous
permutations of the album (after its initial release in
the U.S. and U.K. the song line up was juggled to include
songs that had become radio hits and the cover changed for
the U.S. market from its original conception to a spooky
one suggesting an alchemist on stage bringing back the dead)
and while the early CD versions (there were two different
pressings with edited and lengthed versions of various songs
due to a mistake when pulling the mastertapes) also had
their variations, they were a bit closer to what Dolby had
intended with his original release but not quite perfect.
***
Dolby has gone back and restored the original sequencing
of the album for this reissue mastered by Peter Mew and
added as many bonus tracks as there were original songs
on the first release. The good news is that for fans of
the singles "Science" and "One of Our Submarines" (which
became with missed irony on the part of programmers a big
hit on Armed Forces Radio) is that both have been included
while also included tracks such as "The Wreck of the Fairchild",
"Urges" and "Leizpig" all of which were dropped or altered
for the later more popular versionof this album. Dolby has
also provided fans with notes on each song (although lyrics
have to be downloaded from his website at www.thomasdolby.com)
about their inspiration, recording, etc. and full performance
credits. We also get a vintage bonus DVD concert. ---
Sound & Image:
Peter Mew has taken hits from audiophiles over the
years for his overuse of noise reduction but he does a terrific
job here with the album. "Wireless" has a bit more midrange
and is a tad brighter than previous CD issues but since
midrange often was missing from albums of this era when
transferred to CD, that's a good thing. It's not overwhelming
although the bass IS a bit more prominent when compared
to the original CD version (that could be the case with
the master tape and the CD might just reflect that. It's
also possible the bass on the original CD version might
have been rolled off for some forgotten reason and this
might be a restoration of the bass to its original more
prominent spot in the mix). ***
Overall this is a strong, exceptional reissue particularly
in the era of compressed mp3-like CD mastering where dynamics
and subtly are sacrificed to make the albums loud and compressed
like other new releases. ***
The extra DVD is region 0 so can be played anywhere
and imports into the U.S. are NTSC while those for the UK
and Europe are PAL preventing the DVD from running at a
higher pitch for those in the U.S. which often result in
performers sounding like they sucked a bit of helium and
are doing Mickey Mouse impressions.
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