Psychedelic Rock

The Moody Blues – On The Threshold Of A Dream (1969) [2006 Remaster]
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DST64 2.0 & 5.1 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 38:47 minutes | Scans included | 2,76 GB
or FLAC 2.0 Stereo (converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | 67:57 mins | Scans | 1,27 GB
Remastered Reissue 2006 | Features 2.0 Stereo & Surround Mix, manipulated from original Quadrophonic Master

On the Threshold of a Dream was the first album that the Moody Blues had a chance to record and prepare in a situation of relative calm, without juggling tour schedules and stealing time in the studio between gigs — indeed, it was a product of what were almost ideal circumstances, though it might not have seemed that way to some observers. The Moodies had mostly exhausted the best parts of the song bag from which their two preceding albums, Days of Future Passed and In Search of the Lost Chord, had been drawn, and as it turned out, even the leftover tracks from those sessions wouldn’t pass muster for their next long-player project — but those albums had both been hits, and charted well in America as well as England, and had overlapped with a pair of hit singles, “Nights in White Satin” and “Tuesday Afternoon,” on both sides of the Atlantic. Their success had earned them enough consideration from Decca Records that they could work at their leisure in the studio through all of January and most of February of 1969; what’s more, with two LPs under their belt, they now had a much better idea of what they could accomplish in the studio, and write songs with that capability in mind. Equally important, they’d just come off of an extensive U.S. tour (opening for Cream) and had learned a lot in the course of concertizing over the previous year, achieving a much bolder yet tighter sound instrumentally as well as vocally, and they could now write to and for that sound as well. So this album is oozing with bright, splashy creative flourishes in two seemingly contradictory directions that somehow come together as a valid whole. On the original LP’s first side (which was the more rock-oriented side), the songs “Lovely to See You,” “Send Me No Wine,” “To Share Our Love,” and “So Deep Within You” all featured killer guitar hooks (electric and acoustic) and fills by Justin Hayward; beautiful, muscular bass from John Lodge; and vocal hooks everywhere. It’s also a surprisingly hard-rocking album considering the amount of overdubbing that went into perfecting the songs, including cellos, wind and reed instruments, and lots of vocal layers — yet it even found room to display a pop-soul edge on “So Deep Within You” (a number that the Four Tops later recorded).

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