R.E.M. • Chronic Town & Murmur I.R.S. Records/Interscope Records DSS 10
Chronic Town, the band's first official release, in 1982, was a five-cut EP. Murmur, the full-length follow-up from 1983, was often the first R.E.M. album people bought. If you listened to college radio in the early 1980s, you probably have the buoyant, danceable beat of “Radio Free Europe” permanently imprinted on your brain. Michael Jackson's Thriller was everywhere in 1983 -- on network TV, on constant play on MTV and the radio, in the record stores, and in the clothes young people wore -- on the way to becoming the best-selling album of all time. Yet Murmur had the greater effect on the popular music that followed it. Rolling Stone understood this and named Murmur the best album of 1983. Neither Chronic Town nor Murmur was an audiophile favorite, both because the music was too new and the recordings sounded as murky as the kudzu on the cover of Murmur. So it may seem odd for these two LPs to receive the full-on audiophile treatment as part of Interscope's Definitive Sound Series (DSS) -- One Step releases that are special in every important way: remastering, pressing, and packaging. Mobile Fidelity debuted the One Step process ten years ago, and its own releases number in the dozens from the likes of Santana, Bill Evans, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Paul Simon, Van Halen, the Eagles and others. Craft Recordings has used it for a half-dozen special releases, including iconic Bill Evans and Thelonious Monk titles, and Chesky used it for its first LP release of David Johansen and the Harry Smiths, which was available on Record Store Day Black Friday 2025. So Interscope is in good company with its growing premium series, which includes titles from Beck, Nat King Cole, Dr. Dre, Lionel Richie, and Blink-182. In the One Step process, the first metal part produced from the plating of the lacquer is used to press the records, reducing the overall process by two steps and putting the records two steps closer to the master tape. It also means that fewer copies of each record will be produced -- 3000 for this set, each pressed at RTI. The vinyl is Neotech’s VR900-D2 “super vinyl,” which allows for greater groove detail. It is also incredibly quiet, so the music isn't obscured by vinyl-induced noise. Finally, the GPA Global packaging is a handsome slipcase that holds the pair of LPs in their heavyweight sleeves.
Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering created the lacquers for Chronic Town and Murmur from the original master tapes, so the release is all analog from beginning to end. The sound is glorious by any measure -- airier and more impactful than that of original pressings [I.R.S. Records SP 70502 & SP 70604], and at the same time more weighty and substantial, especially in the bass, which has an added measure of heft. Instrumental lines have greater separation, the music sounds less congealed, and there's a sense of ambience, of the music occurring within the studio space and not simply coming out of the speakers. Each DSS One Step is sold only on Interscope's website. When you make something this good, buyers will find you. As proof of concept -- that careful remastering and the
One Step process can improve recordings that would seem to resist it -- this two-LP set is
a rousing success. If you thought, as I did, that R.E.M.'s music was beyond sonic hope,
you will want to hear these LPs -- and be ready to admit you were wrong. |
guitar-driven
folk-rock band from Athens, Georgia, might seem like an unlikely impetus for a musical
movement, but that's what R.E.M. was. The band's combination of jangly, Byrdsian guitar
hooks, cryptic lyrics, and loose, music-in-the-moment vibe came to define alternative
rock. R.E.M.'s music somehow managed to sound both new and as old as the hills. For me, a
music lover in college in the early 1980s, R.E.M. was one of the few bands that mattered.
Their music channeled the eccentricities of Southern literature, mixing them with a fresh
and thoroughly contemporary aesthetic. Their influence was wide and deep; you could hear
it in so many bands from the '80s and '90s.
