The faithful repress of Patti Smith's 1975 full length debut Horses takes the prize. The original audio has been tastefully remastered and finds itself now pressed to high-grade, medium-weight vinyl just for RSD. The last US vinyl pressing of Horses was in 1977, so this was long overdue. The remaster was performed with a great attention to detail; we get a bit more bass and the upper midrange distortion has been nearly eliminated. Because we also still get a little bit of the hissing S's, it tells me that rather than risking over-processing the original masters things were performed with a fairly light touch and a devotion to maintain the character of original recording. Arista also did a great job of keeping the classic look and feel of the record with detail right down to the labels on the disc. It has a sweet retro flavor, and I love it.
Be sure to look for Patti's new record, BANGA, due out this June!
When I first read the RSD 2012 list I thought someone may have made an error: a Mastodon/Feist split? Indeed, the Feistodon 7" just seemed too cool to be true yet here it is in my hand. Side A contains Mastodon's cover of Feist's A Commotion, from Metals:
Side B contains Feist's cover of Mastodon's Black Tongue, from The Hunter:
I rather enjoy when a cover is adapted into the performing artist's style and these two are great examples of just that. Here's to hoping that next year we see more interesting titles and/or limited represses of hard-to-find gems. Thank you to Patti, Leslie, and the men of Mastodon for making my RSD 2012 experience worth it, and thank you to Eric and Megan of Toadstool Sounds.
