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  3. Barclay James Harvest - Victims of Circumstance (Polydor 817 950-1) (GER 1984) (Vinyl 24-96) [Eventide]

Barclay James Harvest - Victims of Circumstance (Polydor 817 950-1) (GER 1984) (Vinyl 24-96) [Eventide]

Posted By: luckburz
Date: 3 Jun 2011 08:05:42
Barclay James Harvest - Victims of Circumstance (Polydor 817 950-1) (GER 1984) (Vinyl 24-96) [Eventide]

Barclay James Harvest - Victims of Circumstance
FLAC | Artwork | 24Bit 96kHz: 818 MB
Cat#: Polydor 817 950-1 | Country/Year: Germany 1984
Genre: Art Rock, Prog Rock | Hoster: Filesonic/Uploaded

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This rip is by avax member eventide and i'm helping him to get it online. I'm glad to see the community of vinyl rippers growing!






Info:

Tracks:

A1 Sideshow 4:56
A2 Hold On 5:13
A3 Rebel Woman 4:17
A4 Say You'll Stay 3:55
A5 For Your Love 5:31
B1 Victims of Circumstance 3:52
B2 Inside My Nightmare 4:24
B3 Watching You 4:36
B4 I've Got a Feeling 5:24


Musicians:

- Les Holroyd / vocals, bass, keyboards
- John Lees / vocals, guitars
- Mel Pritchard / drums, percussion

Guest musicians:

- Bias Boshell / keyboards
- Frank Ricotti / percussion
- The David Kate Strings
- Pip Williams / orchestral arrangements

Bias Boshell played keyboards (Yamaha DX7, Roland JP8 and JX3 and a Steinway grand piano). The orchestral arrangements were written by Pip Williams and performed by the David Katz Strings. Stevie Lange, Vicki Brown (the mother of Sam Brown, who sang with the band on the subsequent tour and later went on to a successful solo career) and Joy Yates provided some backing vocals.

Recording Studios:
Recorded at Wisseloord Studios, Hilversum, Holland
Recording Dates:
September 1983 to January 1984
Producer:
Pip Williams
Engineer:
Gregg Jackman




review from amazon.co.uk

In defence of a victim of circumstance…., 9 Nov 2007
By alextorres "musiclover" (Near Bristol, UK) (TOP 500 REVIEWER)
This review is from: Victims of Circumstance [European Import] (Audio CD)
This album of Barclay James Harvest's, despite not being well liked by the band's English core fan-base, is one of my favourites of theirs. I can understand people's reticence at liking this album: when I first bought it on its release, I disliked it intensely and sold it after only a couple of airings, my reconciliation with it not occurring until some 10 years later.

What is it then that made me, and still makes other BJH fans, dislike this album so much? The answer will sound petty to most people - it's simply that the album has a commercial sound edging towards the pop-end spectrum of rock. What's worse, sin of holy sins, the band employed female backing singers to assist them with the album and the corresponding tour! Absolutely unheard of on a BJH album, either before or since "Victims…", and to many fans, as it was for me in 1984, it was a step too far.

So….true to its title, the music was never really given a fair chance to be heard.

My reconciliation happened as a result of two things.

First, I had just invested in a CD player for the first time and was looking to play some BJH music on it: the first BJH CD that I bought was a compilation called "Alone We Fly" and one of the songs that I loved on it, "Sideshow" I initially thought I hadn't heard before. I had - it was taken from "Victims…".

Second, about the same time I also purchased a video of the band recorded live on the Victims of Circumstance tour - again, there were a few songs in the set-list that I loved and thought hadn't heard before: "Rebel Woman", "For Your Love" and "Victims of Circumstance" itself. Of course, that last was the clue that these are all songs from the maligned album.

These two experiences taught me that I had clearly not given it a fair opportunity in 1984 and so I sought the album out again, buying it for the second time.

I have loved it ever since: the songs that I've already mentioned deserve to be ranked amongst the band's very best. "Sideshow", a strong John Lees song about the power of the media to skew reality is given a golden edge with Les Holroyd taking over the vocals for the last verse; the juxtaposition of their voices has always benefited the few songs in the repertoire where it occurs. "Rebel Woman" has a great guitar riff overlying it, "Victims of Circumstance", a Les Holroyd song about injustices perpetrated by politicians on behalf of the populace, that he was inspired to write by hearing the "victims of circumstance" lyric on John's "Rebel Woman" song, has a classic BJH-feel to it whereas "For Your Love", with its "let it shine" refrain in its last phase is anthemic.

The remaining five songs do not come up to the same standard but Pip Williams's production manages to tie the whole together such that even the out-and-out pop of "Say You'll Stay", "Watching You" and "Inside My Nightmare" feels as though it belongs on this album, making the whole a very enjoyable listen.

Unfortunately, its low standing with the core fan-base means that it has not yet been re-released and is currently unavailable as a CD. However, broadband users can still obtain it via download from such sites as War Child Music.







equipment used:

Cleaning:
Dynavox carbon fibre brush
Custom cleaning liquid: distilled water + isoprop. 99.9% (ratio ~70:30) + "Agfa Agepon" surfactant

Hardware:
Dual 505-3 with ULM aluminium tubular tonearm
Ortofon 2m Blue aligned with Baerwald protractor @~1,8g balance weight
Hormann Audio Supa 2.0 Phono amp @100pf compliance + PS4 Wall Wart
Tascam US 144 MK II Audio Interface with ASIO4All
AMD Athlon 4800+ 2gb RAM

Software:
Adobe Audition CS5.5 v4.0 for recording / cutting / minimal editing
ClickRepair for manual de-click - no automatic de-clicking has been used on this recording
FLAC Frontend, encoding level 8
foobar2000 (tagging & testing)

Tonearm / Cartridge alignments:
Baerwald "stupid protractor" from vinylengine with correct skale
Azimuth aligned
Balance weight: ~1,8g | Antiskating: ~1,8

The SUPA 2.0 is a custom made phono board by R. Hormann
Even though it's fairly cheap, it compares well against higher priced pre-amps like the NAD-PP2 and others in this price range. In fact, in german message boards the SUPA 2.0 is often regarded as being a bit better . That's not my opinion, as I know way to little about the internals of pre-amps to come to this conclusion, but for me, the SUPA sounds really good considering the price.

For more details about it (german language only) see:
http://hormann-audio.de/viewarticle/1-produkte/1244-supa-2.0/description.htm

The Supa board offers the possibility to change the compliance. The 2m Blue has a recommended compliance of 150-300pf, so I attached a compliance of only 100pf to it. The tonearm and cables have their own compliance, so the actual compliance should be around 200pf.




Personal notes by eventide:

This is my (eventide1) first real needledrop using a new Ortofon 2m Blue cartridge. I actually did quite some testings and alignments before I decided to actually record something, as I wanted to get the best results I could. Now I'm happy to present you this very first recording of mine.

Note that it says "digital recording" on the front cover of the lp. I don't own the CD of this record so I can't compare it to the vinyl. My apologies for uploading if the CD is actually better.


About my recordings:
- I carefully aligned the input levels of the recording device and the software, so that there's no clipping happening.
- I don't do any normalizing or volume leveling after and during recording. Some of my recordings might be a bit louder than others, but the volume has the same level for each complete release.
- If you see a heavy layer of dust on the pictures of my lps, that's not what you'll hear. I carefully clean the vinyls before recording, but sometimes, I do the pictures first.
- I clean the vinyl as good as I can before recording so I need to do as little editing as possible.
Major clicks are fixed in Audition and/or with ClickRepair in manual mode.

- Unless otherwise stated, I don't use any sort of automatic de-clicking and/or de-crackling and I don't use any noise filters. If the vinyl is in extremely bad condition, I might use a very soft automatic de-click function in ClickRepair and monitor the sound that's being cut out. If there's any music leaking through, I'll lower the filter. I will of course mention if I used automatic de-clicking.

And finally, english isn't my native tongue, so please don't bash me on my language ;)

This is my first recording, so if anything's wrong or if I did some mistake, please let me know and I'll try to fix it.

Please, no mirrors and don't post this elsewhere without my permission.











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