{"product_id":"talkilittl_2605","title":"Talking Heads - Little Creatures - White Hot Stamper","description":"\u003cp\u003eWe’re huge fans of Little Creatures, and when you hear a copy like this you’ll know exactly why. Not many records from this era sound as amazingly rich as this one, not in our experience anyway.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn the best copies, the sound is punchy, smooth \u0026amp; so \u003ci\u003eanalog\u003c\/i\u003e, with an especially beefy bottom end, the kind a good Big Beat Pop Album record needs. For a good reference think Get The Knack or Parallel Lines.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTight, punchy, surprisingly deep note-like bass absolutely makes or breaks the sound on Little Creatures. Without the proper bass foundation this funky beat-crazy Talking Heads album can’t BEGIN to do what it’s trying to do: get your feet tappin’ and your body rockin’ to the music.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe best pressings are surprisingly dynamic, with a sweet, often silky top end. The drums are very well recorded throughout -- you can really hear the room around that big kit. You will also find that the higher-rez pressings give David Byrne's vocals the presence and breathy texture they need. The overall sound will be open, spacious, and sweet -- even three-dimensional.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eWhat The Best Sides Of Little Creatures Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe most Tubey Magic, without which you have \u003ci\u003ealmost\u003c\/i\u003e nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes even as late as \u003ca href=\"\/search?q=tag:%221985%22\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e1985\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNatural tonality in the midrange -- with all the instruments having the correct timbre\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTransparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNo doubt there's more but we hope that should do for now. \u003ci\u003ePlaying the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above,\u003c\/i\u003e and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eMastering and Pressing\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou would never know how good this album can sound by playing the average pressing you might pick up for five bucks at your local used record store. The typical copy of this record is pretty average sounding -- smeary, a bit grainy, lacking in richness and weight, with no real top end.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLet's face it: every mastering mistake that \u003ci\u003ecan\u003c\/i\u003e be made \u003ci\u003ewill\u003c\/i\u003e be made sooner or later with mass-produced domestic vinyl like this. There's no getting around it; some copies just weren't pressed properly, or the vinyl was bad that day, or who knows what else might have gone wrong.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe try and find the copies with the least number of problems, the copies that sound the most like \"master tapes\" and the least like \"old records.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eWhat We're Listening For On Little Creatures\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eEnergy\u003c\/strong\u003e for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThen: \u003cstrong\u003epresence and immediacy\u003c\/strong\u003e. The vocals aren't \"back there\" somewhere, lost in the mix. They're front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe Big Sound\u003c\/strong\u003e comes next -- wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThen \u003cstrong\u003etransient information\u003c\/strong\u003e -- fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eTight punchy bass\u003c\/strong\u003e -- which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNext: \u003cstrong\u003etransparency\u003c\/strong\u003e -- the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eExtend the top and bottom\u003c\/strong\u003e and \u003ci\u003evoila\u003c\/i\u003e, you have The Real Thing -- an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eVinyl Condition\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMint Minus Minus and maybe a bit better is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThose of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of other pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don't have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful recordings.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that's certainly your prerogative, but we can't imagine losing what's good about this music -- the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight -- just to hear it with less background noise.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eThe Last Great Talking Heads Album\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is the Last Great Talking Heads album. The first four and this one give you all the Talking Heads music you'll ever need. Each of them is brilliant in its own way. One of the ways this one is especially brilliant from our admittedly skewed point of view is that it's the best sounding record the Talking Heads ever made.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eA Must Own Record\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is a recording that belongs in any serious rock collection. Others that belong in that category can be found \u003ca href=\"\/search?q=tag:%22core-rock-collection%22\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ehere\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Talking Heads","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51813508350248,"sku":"talkilittl","price":599.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0257\/3415\/2295\/files\/talkilittl.jpg?v=1748374456","url":"https:\/\/better-records.com\/products\/talkilittl_2605","provider":"Better Records","version":"1.0","type":"link"}