Ranked Among the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time by Rolling Stone
Monster 1970 Double Album Presented in Audiophile Sound for the First Time
Mobile Fidelity Numbered-Edition Hybrid SACD
Sourced from the original master tapes
James Brown wants to know one thing before he and his band begin Sex Machine. “Can I get into the thing, really?,” he asks. His cohorts enthusiastically respond in the affirmative. And for the next hour and change, Mr. Dynamite gets into it and more, turning in a sweat-soaked, feet-moving, hip-swiveling, emotion-purging, in-the-red, drop-everything-you’re-doing-and-dance performance for the ages. Ranked by Rolling Stone among the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, the sweeping 1970 effort towers as a testament to Brown’s inimitable legacy as well as the peak powers of his voice, vibrancy, and bands.
Sourced from the original master tapes and housed in mini-LP-style gatefold packaging, Mobile Fidelity’s numbered-edition hybrid SACD presents Sex Machine in audiophile sound for the first time. It explodes with the energy the lightning-strike music demands. Dynamic, immediate, present, airy: Everything from the brassiness and fluidity of the horns to the snap and decay of the snare to the swell and carry of the organ comes across in full-range perspective.
Then there’s Brown’s superhuman singing, which here emerges with a purity, naturalism, and transparency that ensure you feel everything. Screeching, shouting, pleading, moaning, preaching, stinging, commanding, testifying, crooning, humming: The Godfather of Soul contributes one of the finest vocal performances known to man. This special 55th anniversary reissue of Brown’s monster funk statement further exhibits a combination of clarity, solidity, separation, and imaging that helps bring to light what he and his crack ensembles committed to tape. Both in the studio and on the stage.
Originally marketed as a live album, Sex Machine contains six songs recorded in the studio and later overdubbed with canned crowd noise and reverberation. Save for “Low Down Popcorn,” the tracks on the latter half stem from a phenomenal performance captured in October 1969 at Bell Auditorium in Brown’s adopted hometown of Augusta, GA. The special relationship between the singer, the audience, and the location is palpable.
Tracks
Get Up I Feel Like Being a Sex Machine
Brother Rapp (Part I & Part II)
Bewildered
I Got the Feeling
Give It Up or Turnit a Loose
I Don’t Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing
Licking Stick
Lowdown Popcorn 9.Spinning Wheel
If I Ruled the World
There Was a Time
It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World
Please, Please, Please
I Can’t Stand Myself (When You Touch Me)
Mother Popcorn
UPC: 821797229562