Vanilla Fudge

Vanilla Fudge Limited Numbered edition

Permission to get weird is granted with Vanilla Fudge. Created

during the peak of heightened chemical, musical, and social

experimentation, the band's self-titled debut aims for sonic and

mental expansion via psychedelic means. Consisting primarily of

elongated covers of then-modern works by the Beatles, Supremes,

Curtis Mayfield, and others, the album shape-shifts the familiar into

original, uncharted excursions that lead to colorful dimensions.

Musically and thematically, the 1967 magnum opus occupies

territory located between high-art seriousness and rule-breaking

outrageousness. Its maverick streak treats reverential scripts with

inviting strangeness, offbeat vision, and zero pretension. More than

50 years after its original release, the symphonic arrangements now

sound more ambitious, direct, mesmerizing, and influential than

before courtesy of a superior mono restoration.

Mastered from the original master tapes and strictly limited to 3,000

numbered copies on 180g 45RPM 2LP and 2,000 copies on hybrid

SACD, Mobile Fidelity's reissues unveil the baroque underpinnings,

gorgeous harmonies, grinding soul, and low-end-plumbing organ

riffs that help make the quartet's fare unique. The timing of the

off-kilter tempos and improvisational movements gets cast into

unpolluted light, with the collective's expert shading and deliberate

tonality emerging as major components of the songs. Vastly

improved, too, is the powerful, jazz-inspired drumming of Carmine

Appice. Seated deep and wide in the vast soundstage, his playing

illuminates the genius of Vanilla Fudge's arguably most valuable

asset--a sense of dynamics and surprise that contributes to a rich,

malt-like musical thickness true to the band's name. There's not

another album like Vanilla Fudge in the entire rock canon.