Raw Power

by

Iggy & The Stooges

Edit

As someone who clung to the original album of Raw Power like a life preserver at one point in my life, I was pleased to see that someone finally took it upon themselves to upgrade the album's sound. But: there are some changes on this album. Most of which I really like: the "1-2-3-4" count into "Shake Appeal"; the new "hey!"s on "Search and Destroy"; the extended ending of "Death Trip". However, the guitar solo on "Raw Power" is NOT the solo that appeared on the original album. Having spent more hours than I care to admit playing that spiraling-out-of-control James Williamson explosion over and over again, I was more than a little dismayed to hear a similar but still different solo on the song I loved so much. And the guitar solo at the end of "Search and Destroy" is mixed way down from the original release. Not like it matters - this is the way Raw Power will be forevermore, and that's alright. The sound is substantially better, especially in the lower frequencies, and the Iggy Pop interview in the liner notes is funny and informative. So: a slight letdown in some ways, but still snarling and alive and revelatory in ways that Limp Biskit won't ever be. Get it now.

Raw Power! Whether Bowie's or Iggy's mix, this album deserves 5 stars and a place on any shelf that contains punk, rock, punk-rock, proto-punk, classic rock or any other kind of rock.

UNFORTUNATELY the "remastered" album in front of you is borderline unlistenable due to The Idiot and the incompetence of the mastering engineer. Judging by the liner notes, Iggy does not know the difference between analog distortion and digital clipping and treated the remaster as if on an analog medium, which is a huge %$&^ing shame given the greatness of the album.

Using analog distortion creatively is an art form, while clipping in the digital realm results in a total loss of acoustic information. If you record analog distortion onto a digital medium and master it correctly, it sounds pretty much identical to the original, but alas instead of pre-mastering 'in the red' on an analog console, some fool let Iggy into the digital mastering toolkit where 'in the red' means something a bit different. It means no dynamic range and heavily clipped peaks (in fact, almost no peaks at all, everything is uniformly loud), which defeats the purpose of using a compact disc entirely.

This album clips more than any album I have had the displeasure of hearing, which distorts several songs (Death Trip, Search& Destroy) into near inaudibility. It is Loud, but white noise or britney mastered to 99dB is also loud. Again, this is due entirely to the inept mastering.

While one cannot help but love Iggy's aggressive impulses, one imagines that he should have been left to master an analog record re-issue and the CD mastering should have been done by someone not under his influence.

There is a reason the volume knob exists, and that reason is so you can TURN IT UP. Sadly, turning it up is almost pointless here.

BUY THIS ALBUM.

But, buy a used copy of the record and record it onto disc, seriously.

Your only other recourse is to record this remastering onto a computer, put it through a software audio editing suite and run a declipping algorithm on it. While it's not a real solution since the information that is clipped is forever lost to you, it does make the album sound much better. A better sounding album sells more copies and will be listened to more often. It's also less likely to wind up in the bargain bin due to terrible mastering.

Try it again Columbia, and give us both mixes while you're at it!

If only the rhino people could get ahold of the tapes like with the first two Stooges albums.