Post by MartinT on Feb 29, 2016 20:42:42 GMT
Dire Straits – Communiqué (1979)
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If I think about my playing patterns, it’s right and proper that this should be my next Album Choice as it’s never been far from my playlist ever since it came out. Dire Strait’s second album Communiqué is in my estimation their pinnacle of creativity, performance and recorded quality. Not even Brothers in Arms matches this as a recording and it certainly doesn’t match it musically. As a follow-up album to the first, which included the superb Sultans of Swing, it exceeded it in every aspect of playing and sound. That ‘difficult’ second album was obviously not such a problem for them. Describing the music is more difficult as no-one really sounded like them. Take a good quality pub band and enhance by 1000%. Nope, that still doesn't do it.
Not only is Mark Knopfler’s playing even more assured with the sound of his guitar amazingly well highlighted, the band give impressively tight backing throughout. The songs are memorable and the sound holds its head up high by any standard, in fact it’s demonstration class. The analogue recording was made in The Bahamas and mixed in Alabama. Bob Ludwig on mastering goes towards explaining the superb sound.
All versions that I have are good, although my original vinyl pressing is slightly outclassed by a much later 180g issue. My West German pressed CD is also very good indeed and sounds better when compared with a UK issued CD from the same period.
If you want to skim listen, please hear the first three tracks since they are creatively quite superb and represent some of the best output ever for the band.
For further listening, try Making Movies.
Wikipedia
If I think about my playing patterns, it’s right and proper that this should be my next Album Choice as it’s never been far from my playlist ever since it came out. Dire Strait’s second album Communiqué is in my estimation their pinnacle of creativity, performance and recorded quality. Not even Brothers in Arms matches this as a recording and it certainly doesn’t match it musically. As a follow-up album to the first, which included the superb Sultans of Swing, it exceeded it in every aspect of playing and sound. That ‘difficult’ second album was obviously not such a problem for them. Describing the music is more difficult as no-one really sounded like them. Take a good quality pub band and enhance by 1000%. Nope, that still doesn't do it.
Not only is Mark Knopfler’s playing even more assured with the sound of his guitar amazingly well highlighted, the band give impressively tight backing throughout. The songs are memorable and the sound holds its head up high by any standard, in fact it’s demonstration class. The analogue recording was made in The Bahamas and mixed in Alabama. Bob Ludwig on mastering goes towards explaining the superb sound.
All versions that I have are good, although my original vinyl pressing is slightly outclassed by a much later 180g issue. My West German pressed CD is also very good indeed and sounds better when compared with a UK issued CD from the same period.
If you want to skim listen, please hear the first three tracks since they are creatively quite superb and represent some of the best output ever for the band.
For further listening, try Making Movies.
Wikipedia
) because its great tracks are truly great, and so Communique gets a solid 7 from me - not at all bad, but not truly great either, imo.
