Roxy Music Roxy Music Half-Speed Mastered 180g LP

Roxy Music's self-titled seminal debut album, released in 1972, firmly put Bryan Ferry and Brian Eno at the forefront of the art-rock movement. Their penchant for glamour was showcased in the lyrics and immortalized in the 1950s-style album cover. This vinyl reissue is mastered at half-speed and cut by Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios. It also features revised artwork with a gloss-laminated finish.

Falling halfway between musical primitivism and art rock ambition, Roxy Music's eponymous debut remains a startling redefinition of rock's boundaries. Simultaneously embracing kitschy glamour and avant-pop, Roxy Music shimmers with seductive style and pulsates with disturbing synthetic textures.... Brian Eno's synthesized 'treatments' exploit electronic instruments as electronics, instead of trying to shoehorn them into conventional acoustic patterns. Similarly, Bryan Ferry finds that his vampiric croon is at its most effective when it twists conventional melodies, Phil Manzanera's guitar is terse and unpredictable, while Andy Mackay's saxophone subverts rock & roll clichés by alternating R&B honking with atonal flourishes. But what makes Roxy Music such a confident, astonishing debut is how these primitive avant-garde tendencies are married to full-fledged songs.... That was the trick that elevated Roxy Music from an art school project to the most adventurous rock band of the early '70s.

When Roxy arrived in the greater pop consciousness, they were glam personified with their spangled outfits, meticulously styled hair and a sound that added a sci-fi sheen to their British pop influences through Brian Eno's modular synths and guitarist Phil Manzanera's array of effects. Standing at the center of it all was vocalist Bryan Ferry who looked ready to take any and all willing bodies on a metaphorical walk in space within his boudoir. Their debut album is still a five star masterwork of sensual delights that sounds better than it ever has on this new vinyl edition.