I always thought the studio HOT SPACE album sound is bloody horrible ( apart from Life is Real, Action, Calling All Girls and Pressure in my opinion)... in spite of it the related live tour is really great... what do you think?
You summed it up pretty well. The Hot Space tracks are good in their own right, they're just subject to bad production techniques. Most people here would agree that the tour was good, and saved some of the tracks with more upbeat renditions.
I have a feelning that the HOT SPACE sound (with the deep electric bass and the crisp highs) was shining on VINYL but lost its edge on CD.What do you think? link
Yes true, bad sound technique actually at that time... Maybe on vynil it was more edged but I don't know sincerely, boh!
It's only my opinion but even if Under Pressure is a good song, they played too much live for over 4 years, bloody Bowie took advantadge from it!!
I think Hot Space's issues have more to do with instrumentation and performance than with Production. Freddie's voice is flawless, though.
The 2011 release pumps up the bass a bit and it sounds better, I think. The '93-'94 are the worst of the lot because they sound too crisp.
Still, one of my favorite Queen albums, one of the two that I owned first and I will always have a soft spot for it.
I'll just say that quite a lot of Hot Space material was much better live. Under Pressure was separate from the Hot Space sessions, so it didn't have as many production problems.
I allways thought that this is a great album. It's very consistent.
I started to listen to it on Vinyl, and it allways sounded fresh, never outdadted for my personal taste. Freddies voice is absolutely excelent on this one, and i like Brian's tone on this one too.
The thing with this album is that people compare it with "A Night at the Opera" or other earlier release, but i knew that they were trying to do something new, and i lestened to it as that -something new and different- and respect them for it.
Mack has donne a great job producing this record, and he says it's his personal favourite of all that he has produced for Queen, and it's my favourite too. It's clearly an album ahead of it's time, and probably 6 months to 1 year after it came out there was a boom of bands using the same sounds and electronic devices (drums, etc).
I just found it more consistent than "The Game" or "The Works", and i allways thought that "Under Pressure" being a great song structurewise , lacked some extra production. It sounds like a demo to me.