Just when you thought things were gonna better....the man pulls the rug out
from under us. News today has Virgin skipping town leaving the entire Canadian market in the hands of HMV. Virgin, despite earlier claims of superstore expansion to Topronto, has announced that they are pulling out of Canada and focussing their attention on the U.S. Earlier this year, HMV shut down its last U.S. store thus abandoning the lower 48.
Where does this leave us....the Hi Rez fans hungry for new stuff? I popped into HMV's flagship store on Yonge yesterday to pick over their once impressive Hi Rez section. The section has been eliminated. Staff in the DVD section didn't
know what happened to it. The Marilyn Manson lookalike dude said all those sneaky formats had been reintegrated into the regular sections. I don't know about you...but I never even heard a Nektar song until they remastered some of their titles in multi-channel sound. (They're quite impressive...sort of a Syd Barrett era Pink Floydian business). So much for rediscovering old music.
Virgin was slated to start construction of a superstore on the corner of Dundas and Yonge. I used to journey to the Vancouver store and spend hours scanningh every section looking for that "Gun" import...or "Bubble Puppy" reissue. I was hoping that the second coming of Virgin (never mind) would result in a little head to head competition with the bully on the Canadian block. Alas...its HMV or nothing...but wait just a damn minute...
Sam's lone store on Yonge has 3 new remastered titles from "Can" that are
stealthily labelled as SACD. You have to examine the back of the cd and read the fine print to realize what you have. Talk about stealthy...the back reads, "Remastered Edition...this CD is also compatible with SACD players" and in smaller print, "This release is a Hybrid SACD designed to play in stereo on both CD and SACD players..." Best news...the 3 are available at 18.99 each(!). I'll let you know how they sound in the coming days...
As an aside...Spoon Records, in collaboration with Warner Music for Germany/Austria/Switzerland and Mute/EMI Records London for the rest of the world, is releasing remastered versions of the classic CAN albums. All remastered 14 albums will play on CD players, SACD players and SACD compatible DVD players and will include exclusive unseen photos from the time and new sleeve notes.
The release of the first four albums Monster Movie, Tago Mago, Ege Bamyasi and Soundtracks on is scheduled for October 2004. The release of the rest of the catalogue is scheduled for 2005 and 2006. Tuesday saw the release of "Future Days", "Soon over Babaluma" and "Unlimited Edition"
The albums were all remastered from the original master tapes and were overseen and attended by Holger, Irmin and Jono Podmore, so that they finally sounded on CD how they were always intended to sound. These releases follow the recent success of the DVD release, CAN DVD, which marked the 35th anniversary of the founding of the group.
Anyhow...I guess that's why I started this site...to help you and myself track down the latest and greatest rumours surrounding (heh) surroundsound audio releases. Know of any.....Bueller....
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