Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band - Trout Mask Replica mp3 album

Packaging is nice, the pressing is on thick 180 gram vinyl. Some slight surface noise present in quiet parts of this album though. Overall sound of the recording sounds a little flat... Haven't heard the original, so I can't say if thats how this album sounds or not. Interested to find out if they used the original master tape for this reissue?

batteryt "Note: The years in storage in Warners were not kind to Trout Mask Replica. The masters suffer from oxide loss, primarily at the head of each of the four master reels. Fortunately, FZ had Dick Kunc make “safeties”. These actually sound better than the Originals and are in excellent condition but alas, incomplete. This edition of Trout Mask Replica is from the ZFT Vault protection copies, transferred at 96K 24B, except for Frownland and Hair Pie: Bake 2 which are from the original damaged master tapes transferred to direct stream digital at UMRK." That is in reference to the 2013 ZFT remaster, which to my knowledge hasn't been released on vinyl yet. These Scorpio vinyl pressings came out over a decade earlier and are allegedly derived from a lower-quality digital source - I'd think the 2013 remaster would be better, even though the tapes are in less-than-ideal shape. I'm pretty sure the Scorpios weren't made with the Zappa estate's involvement. My guess is that the forthcoming Third Man Records reissue would be the first vinyl pressing to be actually derived from the 2013 remaster.

"Note: The years in storage in Warners were not kind to Trout Mask Replica. The masters suffer from oxide loss, primarily at the head of each of the four master reels. Fortunately, FZ had Dick Kunc make “safeties”. These actually sound better than the Originals and are in excellent condition but alas, incomplete. This edition of Trout Mask Replica is from the ZFT Vault protection copies, transferred at 96K 24B, except for Frownland and Hair Pie: Bake 2 which are from the original damaged master tapes transferred to direct stream digital at UMRK."

Trout Mask Replica is Captain Beefheart's masterpiece, a fascinating, stunningly imaginative work that still sounds like little else in the rock & roll canon. Given total creative control by producer and friend Frank Zappa, Beefheart and his Magic Band rehearsed the material for this 28-song double album for over a year, wedding minimalistic R&B, blues, and garage rock to free jazz and avant-garde experimentalism. Atonal, sometimes singsong melodies; jagged, intricately constructed dual-guitar parts; stuttering, complicated rhythmic interaction — all of these elements float out seemingly at random, often without completely interlocking, while Beefheart groans his surrealist poetry in a throaty Howlin' Wolf growl. The disjointedness is perhaps partly unintentional — reportedly, Beefheart's refusal to wear headphones while recording his vocals caused him to sing in time with studio reverberations, not the actual backing tracks — but by all accounts, the music and arrangements were carefully scripted and notated by the Captain, which makes the results even more remarkable. As one might expect from music so complex and, to many ears, inaccessible, the influence of Trout Mask Replica was felt more in spirit than in direct copycatting, as a catalyst rather than a literal musical starting point. However, its inspiring reimagining of what was possible in a rock context laid the groundwork for countless future experiments in rock surrealism, especially during the punk/new wave era. -Allmusic Just mindblowing...Sometimes I hate it most times I love it..I can never stop listening to it! -Reptiled

"...but by all accounts, the music and arrangements were carefully scripted and notated by the Captain, which makes the results even more remarkable."I can't agree with that part of your cut n' paste review from Allmusic.John French, especially, and the members of the band were the glue which held Don's often impractical concepts together - along with Laurie Stone's typing!Utterings, such as "Play it like a strawberry, man", need some kind of interpretation...But I agree with the remaining spirit of the article & your comment.