Television: Marquee Moon (2LP, 180g, 45rpm, UltraDisc One-Step) [MOBILE FIDELITY]

Why you'll love it

Mobile Fidelity mastered this UltraDisc One-Step set from the original analog master tape and spread it across four 45rpm sides of 180g vinyl, in a numbered box limited to 3,000 copies. Marquee Moon is one of the cornerstones of New York's CBGB scene and a touchstone for post-punk guitar bands ever since.

This edition

• 2LP set
• 180g vinyl
• Cut at 45 RPM
• UltraDisc One-Step process
• Mastered from the original analog master tape
• Numbered, limited to 3,000 copies
• Box set packaging
• Remastered
• Stereo mix

About the album

Plenty of bands came out of downtown Manhattan in the mid-70s with three chords and an attitude. Television came out with two guitarists who'd rather listen to each other. Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd dropped punk's power chords for interlocking lines and counter-melodies borrowed as much from jazz as from rock, and rehearsed hard before signing with Elektra and cutting the album at A & R Recording in November 1976.

Verlaine produced it with engineer Andy Johns, and the songs feel both tight and wide open. "See No Evil" and "Friction" snap, "Venus" floats on Verlaine's French-poetry wordplay, and "Elevation" and "Guiding Light" glow. The ten-minute title track is the centrepiece, its two guitars circling each other until they take off, with "Prove It" and "Torn Curtain" closing out the record.

Critics hailed it as something genuinely new in rock when it arrived in February 1977. The title track gets a whole side to itself here, which at 45rpm is the hi-fi equivalent of giving a chap his own room.

Also at Kops: more Television on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab / Elektra (cat# UD1S 2-064), a reissue of the 1977 album.