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AAA 100% Analogue This LP was Remastered using Pure Analogue Components Only from the Master Tapes through to the Cutting Head

Mobile Fidelity - MOFI 1-033 - 140 Gram Virgin Vinyl 

AAA 100% Analogue - Numbered Limited Edition -   Pressed at RTI  

Mastered on the Mobile Fidelity The Gain 2 Ultra Analog System

1985 Smash Includes Chart-Topping “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” and “Shout” Few songs in the mid-80s attained bigger status than Tears for Fears’ contagious “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” and “Shout.” As commercial breakthroughs, the singles drew attention to the meticulous detail and sophisticated arrangements gracing Songs From the Big Chair, a creative maelstrom of emotional catharsis, dreamy melodicism, and magnetic lyricism.

Having hit the top of the album charts in most major countries, the 1985 album remains a staple of the decade’s essential sounds and a critically beloved work. This Silver Label LP brings to a warmth and transparency to the music that previous analog editions have lacked. By clearing a direct path to the production, it reveals the myriad soulful complexities contained within tracks such as “Mothers Talk” and “Head Over Heels,” also charting hits. Dramatic, literate, immediate, refined, and subtly elaborate, the material glistens with carefully placed instrumentation.

Here, the depth of the piano chords, extension of the brassy horns, high frequencies of the backing vocals, and bite of the guitar solos come to life as never before. Named after psychotherapist Arthur Janov’s primal scream theories—which suggest that adult problems often relate back to parental abandonment during childhood, and that confronting such issues is essential to one’s development—Tears for Fears, and key members Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith transcended their broken-home backgrounds by turning their raw feelings into self-expressive songs etched with equal parts tenderness and directness, earnestness and melancholy. After a promising synthpop-based debut, the duo took its finely crafted art up several notches on Songs From the Big Chair, one of the period’s most introspective and incisive pop works.

Rather than consume themselves with weighty prose, Orzabal and Smith cut to the heart of their emotions, framing brooding sentiments and solitary thoughts within tumbling hooks, memorable refrains, and delicate passages. Saxophones, pianos, and support vocals shade the duo’s keyboard- and guitar-anchored compositions, many of which flirt with R&B motifs and austere classicism. Serious albeit freeing, Tears for Fears’ ambitious pop stood apart from the decade’s casually tossed-off fare—a beneficial aspect that’s only grown in stature since the album’s release.

Tears for Fears Songs From the Big Chair Track Listing:

1. Shout
2. The Working Hour
3. Everybody Wants to Rule the World
4. Mothers Talk
5. I Believe
6. Broken
7. Head Over Heels/Broken
8. Listen

GAIN 2 Ultra Analog™ is a proprietary cutting system built and designed by legendary design genius Tim De Paravicini, with consultation from one of MFSL’s founding fathers – Stan Ricker, an audio engineer responsible for many of MFSL’s most heralded past releases.

The GAIN 2 Ultra Analog™ system is comprised of a Studer™ tape machine with customized reproduction electronics* and handcrafted cutting amps that drive an Ortofon cutting head on a restored Neumann VMS-70 lathe. (*It is worth noting that independent studies have confirmed that the GAIN 2 Ultra Analog™ system can unveil sonic information all the way up to 122kHz!)

First and foremost, we only utilize first generation original master recordings as source material for our releases. We then play back master tapes at half speed enabling the GAIN 2 Ultra Analog™ system to fully extract the master’s sonic information. Our lacquers are then plated in a specialized process that protects transients in the musical signal. (Due to this process, there may be occasional pops or ticks inherent in initial play back, but as the disc is played more, a high quality stylus will actually polish the grooves and improve the sound). We further ensure optimum sound quality by strictly limiting the number of pressings printed for each release. These limited editions, in addition to being collectors’ items, ensure that the quality of the last pressing matches the quality of the first.

As you can imagine, all these efforts involve a tremendous amount of time, technology, cost and effort. The introduction of GAIN 2 Ultra Analog™ maintains Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab’s position as the world’s leading audiophile record label, where a passion for music with extraordinary sound quality matters most.

RTI HQ- Vinyl

Record Technology is a world class record pressing plant located in Camarillo, California. We have been operating since 1974, pressing for most audiophile record labels and for many quality minded independent and major record labels from around the world.