Queen – Jazz [Vinyl LP Half Speed Mastered]

Queen – Jazz [180g Vinyl LP]

Details

• Format: Vinyl LP, Album, Reissue, Remastered, Half-Speed Mastered, Embossed Gatefold, Stereo
• Catalogue Number: 602547202741
• Barcode: 602547202741
• Genre: Hard Rock / Arena Rock / Classic Rock
• Label: Virgin EMI Records / Universal Music
• Originally Released: 10 November 1978
• Reissue Released: 2015
• Pressing: 180 Gram Vinyl
• Condition: New & Sealed

Description

Jazz is the seventh studio album by Queen — released on 10 November 1978 on EMI Records in the UK and Elektra Records in the US — and one of the most stylistically wide-ranging records in their catalogue. It was also the first Queen album to be recorded outside the United Kingdom: sessions began at Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland in July 1978 — the studio the band would later purchase outright — and concluded at Super Bear Studios in Nice, France in October. The reunion with producer Roy Thomas Baker after his absence on News of the World and The Works gave the sessions a looser, more ambitious character, and the resulting album demonstrated a band completely uninterested in consolidating a formula. The album reached number two on the UK Albums Chart and number six on the US Billboard 200, and has sold over five million copies worldwide. The irony of its title was entirely deliberate: the album contains no jazz whatsoever, and Brian May has confirmed the name was chosen precisely for that reason.

The album's two lead singles were released as a double A-side in October 1978, generating immediate controversy and commercial success in equal measure. "Bicycle Race" — accompanied by a music video filmed at Wimbledon Stadium featuring 65 nude female cyclists — and "Fat Bottomed Girls" together reached number eleven in the UK and number twenty-four in the US, producing the kind of headlines that cement a band's reputation regardless of the musical content. The musical content was, in fact, exceptional: "Don't Stop Me Now" — released as a single in January 1979 and reaching number nine in the UK — has become one of the most beloved Queen recordings, a euphoric, piano-driven celebration of hedonism in Mercury's most uninhibited vocal performance, later voted by BBC listeners as the greatest song to exercise to and used in countless films and television series; it was ranked by Rolling Stone as one of the greatest rock songs of all time. The album's opener "Mustapha" is an extraordinary piece of mock-Arabic spectacle; "Dreamer's Ball" is a delicate acoustic piece influenced by Django Reinhardt; "More of That Jazz" closes the album by quoting melodic fragments from every other track in a piece of structural self-referentiality unusual for mainstream rock.

This 2015 Virgin EMI / Universal reissue presents the album using the 2011 remix sourced from the original multitrack recordings, half-speed mastered on 180 gram black vinyl. The half-speed mastering process — in which the lathe cuts at half the normal rotational speed, giving the cutting head twice the time to trace each groove — produces demonstrably cleaner high-frequency reproduction and more stable stereo imaging than standard-speed cuts. The pressing is housed in an embossed gatefold sleeve faithful to the album's original bold graphic design — the cover artwork, suggested by Roger Taylor who had seen a similar design painted on the Berlin Wall, remains one of the most visually arresting in the Queen catalogue. The catalogue number and barcode are identical on this pressing.

Tracklist

Side A

1. Mustapha
2. Fat Bottomed Girls
3. Jealousy
4. Bicycle Race
5. If You Can't Beat Them
6. Let Me Entertain You

Side B

1. Dead on Time
2. In Only Seven Days
3. Dreamer's Ball
4. Fun It
5. Leaving Home Ain't Easy
6. Don't Stop Me Now
7. More of That Jazz

Credits

• Freddie Mercury – Vocals, Piano
• Brian May – Guitar, Vocals
• Roger Taylor – Drums, Vocals
• John Deacon – Bass
• Roy Thomas Baker – Producer
• Queen – Producers
• Label – Virgin EMI Records / Universal Music