Ah now, this is an odd one, but before I tell you
why I'm going to let the back cover have its say:
This stereophonic recording was originally produced in an acoustically perfect studio equipped with Telefunken microphones that were placed within the band to enhance the 'pin pointing' of the musical effects scored in the program.
The performance was mixed and amplified to a four track Sculley Tape Machine running at 30 I.P.S. The four track program was then edited and reduced on an Ampex No 300 two track stereo machine for subsequent transfer to disc on a Nueman heated stylus cutting lathe. The maximum frequency response of the original performance has been faithfully maintained through the use of the latest quality controls to give you this program of exciting stereo dimensions.
Well that sounds impressive doesn't it? It goes on to claim this as 'The revolutionery (sic) sound that puts you in the centre of the music', but alas, it's all just so much snake oil designed to sucker in the gullible - they may as well have said 'we recorded some music and transferred it to vinyl in much the same way as everybody else does'. And much of my evidence for this conclusion is supplied by my own ears - I can categorically state that the music on this record sounds not much different in terms of sound quality to any other record I've come across so far. And what's more, unless my faculties are failing me at an alarming rate, I'll go further and say I can barely hear any stereo on it at all.
From the cover, title and the label it's on, I thought this might be a companion piece to the earlier 'Sounds Astounding' and so would be choc full of artificial speaker to speaker ping ponging trickery, but not a bit of it - 'Stereo Special' plays itself out on a flat plane of virtual mono, and I say this after listening to side one with my head equidistant between two speakers and side two with headphones pressed tightly to my ears. And in both cases I'm hearing almost identical sounds in both ears - certainly not enough to make 'stereo special' as a main selling point. So go figure.
And the oddness doesn't stop there; the tracklist on the back is another mix of songs popular ('The Happening', 'Ob La Di Ob La Da', 'Lili (sic) The Pink'), traditional ('John Brown's Body', 'Yellow Rose Of Texas', 'My Bonnie') and classical ('Barcarole', 'Humoreske'), yet after each (except for The Beatles song), they are credited to 'L Muller', giving the impression of authorship, which is patently not true. It's corrected slightly on the record label itself where it states, for example - 'The House of The Rising Sun (Trad Arr L Muller), but it also leads to the curious credits 'Dvorak Arr L Muller' and 'Hoffman Arr L Muller'. So who is this L Muller when he's at home hijacking publishing rights? Well a quick search online reveals Leo Muller to be a pseudonym of entrepreneur D. L. Miller, a Croatian entrepreneur who owned the 'Stereo Gold Award' label. Which I guess makes 'Stereo Special' a kind of vanity project where 'the boss' stamps his authority on one of his own releases (the back cover also carries the boast of 'Recorded Under Direction of D L Miller'). Not a crime in itself I suppose, but the question is what exactly does Mr Muller do to earn that credit?
And the answer is - not that much really; the overall thrust of the music on this is horn led, Tijuana Brass style instrumentals but without the Tijuana styling. The tunes are all taken more or less at face value and are delivered in a uniformly upbeat and chipper manner with none of them arranged or re-arranged in any way that does not make them instantly recognisable - it's telling that 'Ob La Di Ob La Da' is given a straight Lennon & McCartney credit - presumably L Muller knew better than to goad the Apple lawyers - whilst sounding no different in its presentation or arrangement in context here than anything else around it. It's an approach that hammers flat any rough edges that may have popped up when The Supremes and Dvorak are pushed up against each other, and whilst it creates a unifying theme that otherwise would simply not exist amongst such disparate pieces of music, it also removes any interest that such juxtaposition may have generated, making for rather a bland whole.
Ultimately, I find 'Stereo Special' very odd; the music is more than competent and is played well by professional musicians ('The Hiltonaires' are credited as the band though I'm guessing that's another pseudonym for a bunch of session musicians) - time and effort has clearly been put into it, but to what end? It has a run of the mill predictability in how it sounds, while at the same time the flat out randomness of the tracks make it almost uncategorisable. It doesn't do what it says on the tin, but then what it does do isn't exactly awful either. The cover boasts that this is 'For listening or dancing pleasure', and I guess you could certainly listen to this or dance to it, but my own view is that this is mutton dressed as lamb via a load of hi falutin' talk that promises far, far more than it actually delivers. As I said upfront, all rather odd really.
This stereophonic recording was originally produced in an acoustically perfect studio equipped with Telefunken microphones that were placed within the band to enhance the 'pin pointing' of the musical effects scored in the program.
The performance was mixed and amplified to a four track Sculley Tape Machine running at 30 I.P.S. The four track program was then edited and reduced on an Ampex No 300 two track stereo machine for subsequent transfer to disc on a Nueman heated stylus cutting lathe. The maximum frequency response of the original performance has been faithfully maintained through the use of the latest quality controls to give you this program of exciting stereo dimensions.
Well that sounds impressive doesn't it? It goes on to claim this as 'The revolutionery (sic) sound that puts you in the centre of the music', but alas, it's all just so much snake oil designed to sucker in the gullible - they may as well have said 'we recorded some music and transferred it to vinyl in much the same way as everybody else does'. And much of my evidence for this conclusion is supplied by my own ears - I can categorically state that the music on this record sounds not much different in terms of sound quality to any other record I've come across so far. And what's more, unless my faculties are failing me at an alarming rate, I'll go further and say I can barely hear any stereo on it at all.
From the cover, title and the label it's on, I thought this might be a companion piece to the earlier 'Sounds Astounding' and so would be choc full of artificial speaker to speaker ping ponging trickery, but not a bit of it - 'Stereo Special' plays itself out on a flat plane of virtual mono, and I say this after listening to side one with my head equidistant between two speakers and side two with headphones pressed tightly to my ears. And in both cases I'm hearing almost identical sounds in both ears - certainly not enough to make 'stereo special' as a main selling point. So go figure.
And the oddness doesn't stop there; the tracklist on the back is another mix of songs popular ('The Happening', 'Ob La Di Ob La Da', 'Lili (sic) The Pink'), traditional ('John Brown's Body', 'Yellow Rose Of Texas', 'My Bonnie') and classical ('Barcarole', 'Humoreske'), yet after each (except for The Beatles song), they are credited to 'L Muller', giving the impression of authorship, which is patently not true. It's corrected slightly on the record label itself where it states, for example - 'The House of The Rising Sun (Trad Arr L Muller), but it also leads to the curious credits 'Dvorak Arr L Muller' and 'Hoffman Arr L Muller'. So who is this L Muller when he's at home hijacking publishing rights? Well a quick search online reveals Leo Muller to be a pseudonym of entrepreneur D. L. Miller, a Croatian entrepreneur who owned the 'Stereo Gold Award' label. Which I guess makes 'Stereo Special' a kind of vanity project where 'the boss' stamps his authority on one of his own releases (the back cover also carries the boast of 'Recorded Under Direction of D L Miller'). Not a crime in itself I suppose, but the question is what exactly does Mr Muller do to earn that credit?
And the answer is - not that much really; the overall thrust of the music on this is horn led, Tijuana Brass style instrumentals but without the Tijuana styling. The tunes are all taken more or less at face value and are delivered in a uniformly upbeat and chipper manner with none of them arranged or re-arranged in any way that does not make them instantly recognisable - it's telling that 'Ob La Di Ob La Da' is given a straight Lennon & McCartney credit - presumably L Muller knew better than to goad the Apple lawyers - whilst sounding no different in its presentation or arrangement in context here than anything else around it. It's an approach that hammers flat any rough edges that may have popped up when The Supremes and Dvorak are pushed up against each other, and whilst it creates a unifying theme that otherwise would simply not exist amongst such disparate pieces of music, it also removes any interest that such juxtaposition may have generated, making for rather a bland whole.
Ultimately, I find 'Stereo Special' very odd; the music is more than competent and is played well by professional musicians ('The Hiltonaires' are credited as the band though I'm guessing that's another pseudonym for a bunch of session musicians) - time and effort has clearly been put into it, but to what end? It has a run of the mill predictability in how it sounds, while at the same time the flat out randomness of the tracks make it almost uncategorisable. It doesn't do what it says on the tin, but then what it does do isn't exactly awful either. The cover boasts that this is 'For listening or dancing pleasure', and I guess you could certainly listen to this or dance to it, but my own view is that this is mutton dressed as lamb via a load of hi falutin' talk that promises far, far more than it actually delivers. As I said upfront, all rather odd really.
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