Mobile Fidelity - UDSACD 2210 - Hybrid SACD Mono 

Permission to Get Weird: Vanilla Fudge Shape-Shifts the Familiar into Uncharted Psychedelic Excursions Marked by Hypntic Arrangements, Bizarre Timing, and Grinding Soul
Mastered from the Original Master Tapes and Strictly : Sonically Superb Mobile Fidelity Is in True-to-the-Original Mono

Permission to get weird is granted with Vanilla Fudge. Created during the peak of heightened chemical, musical, and social experimentation, the band's self-titled debut aims for sonic and mental expansion via psychedelic means. Consisting primarily of elongated covers of then-modern works by the Beatles, Supremes, Curtis Mayfield, and others, the album shape-shifts the familiar into original, uncharted excursions that lead to colorful dimensions. More than 50 years after its original release, the symphonic arrangements now sound more ambitious, direct, mesmerizing, and influential than ever before courtesy of a superior mono restoration featuring wider, deeper grooves.

Mastered from the original master tapes, unveils the baroque underpinnings, gorgeous harmonies, grinding soul, and low-end-plumbing organ riffs that help make the quartet's music inimitably unique. The timing of the off-kilter tempos and unpredictable improvisational movements is also cast into unpolluted light, with the collective's expert shading and deliberate tonality emerging as major components of the songs.

Vastly improved, too, is the powerful, jazz-inspired drumming of Carmine Appice. Seated deep and wide in the vast soundstage, his playing illuminates the genius of Vanilla Fudge's arguably most valuable asset – a sense of dynamics and surprise that contributes to a rich, malt-like musical thickness true to the band's name. Psychedelia, yes, but seemingly more dense, absurd, slow, and groovy than that offered by any of its late 1960s contemporaries, and free of any of the cloying nature that immediately identifies retro acts as imitators.

Indeed, Vanilla Fudge's 1967 magnum opus occupies territory located between high-art seriousness and rule-breaking outrageousness. Its maverick streak treats reverential scripts with inviting strangeness, offbeat vision, and zero pretension. Sharing a mental wavelength with Frank Zappa and the Mothers' finest work, renditions of the Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby" and Curtis Mayfield's "People Get Ready" swirl with bizarre accents and stretch the imagination. Equally creative, Vanilla Fudge's takes on Sonny Bono's "Bang Bang" and the Zombies' "She's Not There" redefine the dirge.

Developing a sound that predated prog-rock and metal by years, Vanilla Fudge has been cited by members of Deep Purple, Yes, and Chicago as a key inspiration. And none other than Led Zeppelin's John Bonham cited Appice for devising a new approach on the album. In a late-career interview with Goldmine Magazine, the latter explains, "Supposedly I had created this new power rock kind of drum style, which I did out of necessity. There were no real amplifiers back then, no PA systems. I had to bang the hell out of my drums and I even bought a 26-inch base drum because it would be louder."

Mobile Fidelity's meticulously engineered mono edition of Vanilla Fudge brings such intensity and liveliness to the fore. Skip the candy aisle and secure your definitive copy of this cult classic today!

Carmine Appice — drums, vocals
Tim Bogert — bass, vocals
Vince Martell — guitar, vocals
Mark Stein — lead vocals, keyboards

Ticket to Ride
People Get Ready
She's Not There
Bang Bang
Illusions of My Childhood - Part One
You Keep Me Hanging On
Illusions of My Childhood - Part Two
Take Me for a Little While
Illusions of My Childhood - Part Three
Eleanor Rigby

Mobile Fidelity believes that mastering systems should be neutral and transparent. The essential idea is to unveil all the detailed musical information on the original master recording without adding deterioration, coloration or other sonic artifacts. 

It is worth noting that Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab stands out as one of few record labels that independently invests in research and development of audio technology. With proprietary innovations such as GAIN 2™, general music enthusiasts and audiophiles alike have reaped the benefit of a higher consumer audio standard without investing in costly new hardware. Mobile Fidelity is pleased to work with a variety of engineering legends and companies including Tim de Paravicini, Ed Meitner, Pass Labs, Theta Digital and Sony Electronics. 

Our joint efforts to seek out the ultimate audio experience, has resulted in significant advances for the technology of music reproduction. 

GAIN 2™ Mastering Technology for Ultradisc UHR™ Hybrid SACD and Ultradisc II™ 24kt Gold CDs 

For over twenty years, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab has continually searched for the ultimate audio experience. During this search MFSL engineers and associates created The GAIN™ System, a proprietary mastering technology which brought warmth and ambience to the compact disc format. A few years ago - with higher resolution formats on the horizon - the vision of GAIN 2™ began. As it stands today, GAIN 2™ is one of the greatest technical advancements in analogue and digital technology in the last ten years. It consists of a series of critical modifications and new components to Mobile Fidelity's proprietary mastering chain. 

We feel that GAIN 2™ has come extremely close to meeting this goal. The key accomplishments of GAIN 2™ System are 1) the ability to extract all the musical information as possible through the Ultra High bandwidth analogue tape playback system with proprietary custom tape playback heads, reproducer electronics and 2) transparently capturing and storing that information with the Direct Stream Digital recording system.