Pink woke from his hotel room to the steady heartbeat of the opening of Dark Side of the Moon on SACD He looked into his magic mirror. "Mirror mirror on the wall, who has the fairest surround sound album of them all?" "Beck" the mirror replied. Pink Floyd was shocked "WHO?!" "Beck", the mirror replied. "Beck the loser? "Beck" said the mirror. "The loser with the devils haircut!?" The mirror said it again "Beck" "Beck, the head without the body that put on BEND-AID?" "That was a Futurama episode Mr. Floyd, but yes, that Beck" answered the mirror. "ODELAY!" screamed Pink. "No, Sea Change" said the mirror.
Please don't revoke my life long Pink Floyd fan club membership, but out of my growing collection of surround sound SACDs and DVD-Audios, BECK has the best surround sound album out there. Many of you have been listening to the music since Sea Change was released in 2002, but I've got to tell you if you don't have this on SACD or DVD-Audio, you are MISSING 2/3rds of this wonderful album.
First, the proper way to listen to Sea Change. Sit or lay down in the middle of your surround sound system. It should have all full size speakers, none of those little satellite thingies" Pop in Sea Change on your SACD player (This is the review of the SACD, but you can also pick it up on DVD-Audio) Turn the phone off, turn the lights down, turn the Surround Sound Receiver up, set your SACD player to read the multi channel layer. Hit play and just LISTEN.
Starting with Golden Age acoustic guitars spread from the front sound stage, then gentle notes join in from the rear left. Floating in the middle of the room Beck's mellow sad voice intones "put your hands on the wheel, let the golden age begin". Sounds glide and gently move across the room until finally the sound is sucked up into the right rear channel. (evoking the end of Pink Floyd's Welcome to the Machine)
Paper Tiger, my favorite cut, heavy drums surround you with a slow methodical thump thump thump that is barely audible but definitely felt right in the chest. "Just like a paper tiger torn apart by idle hands". Guitars sound in the front right, answered by synthesizers in the rear left. Strings rear up in the surround channels. Beck's voice hangs steady and melancholy in the middle of the room.
The album smoothly moves onto Guess Im Doing Fine where calm guitars fill the front and echo in the rear until Beck sings lyrics sadder than a country western song."theres a bluebird in the window, I can't hear the songs he sings" Gentle piano accents the pain in the rear left.
On Lonesome Tears Boom bam boom boom, drums travel from left to right. Waves of synthesizers flow from the rear surrounds "Lonesome tears, I can't cry them anymore, can't think of what they're for" The sounds just float across the room, flowing in waves. The way the music is layered and washed in and out of each channel seems very natural and smooth.
In Lost Cause, sounds grow from the center, and suddenly are up in your left ear! New sounds well up and form in the front to wash up into the rear. Beck's voice is everywhere and nowhere all at once. "baby you're lost". The music creates a soundstage that seems to represent a feeling of being lost and abandoned. Instruments form in a channel, and before quite becoming recognizable they flitter off into another channel and they are gone.
End of the Day, Its all in your mind flow into Round the Bend, where Beck's voice has become almost ethereal blending in with the waves of music. His use of surround sound is just incredible; it creates a soundstage not of specific instruments or of ambiance, but of a sea of sound that you will float away in.
By the time I got to Already Dead, his melancholy sweeping melodies had nearly put me in a trance like state. Little One sums up the sombalistic quality of the album "go to sleep we're so tired now .. in a stolen boat we'll float away .. "
Its hard to describe the trance like dream like quality of this collection of a dozen songs. The pop songs of Mellow Gold or Odelay are NOT present on this album. The surround sound mix truly surrounds you and the way the multichannel mix is engineered is just incredible. I literally felt in most of the songs like I was just floating in a sea of music. Unlike many surround sound albums that use the extra channels to create a sense of a spatial studio or soundstage with instruments each clearly identifiable, Beck does quite the opposite to incredible effect. Although instruments appear from various channels, no instrument, not even Beck's voice is anchored in any one place, everything just floats around as if on a cool breeze or a gentle ocean current. The sounds truly do float across the room in a more natural way than the outstanding Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon or the more deliberate (and MUCH more upbeat) surround sound mix of Flaming Lips - Yoshima Battles the Pink Robots.
My only complaint would be that the album is so melancholy and presented in such sweeping gentle waves of sound, it may well knock you out. I would put a sticker on the album warning people not to drive, operate heavy machinery or handle dangerous equipment while listening to this album.
Pink lay comatose in his chair listening to Side of the Road, the final cut on Sea Change the melodic melancholic voice of Beck surrounding him, sadder than Bob Geldorf, more miserable than Roger Waters. Was someone at the door? Mr. Floyd, Mr. Floyd! A maid burst in, finding Pink asleep in his chair. Security shook him awake. A short stocky man who looked a lot like Bob Hoskins was shouting at him. "Pink Pink! Don't worry, Dark Side of the Moon is still a much better album than anything ever made. Was Beck's album on the top 200 for 11 years? He's just a loser with a devils haircut! Wake up!"
Review Equipment: SACD was played on a Pioneer Elite 47A in multichannel mode. Amplification and processing was from a Yamaha AV 5280 100 w/ch surround sound receiver, except the front channels, which were amplified by a dedicated Rotel RB 991 200 w/ch stereo amplifier. Speakers were Polk Audio Monitor 70s Front Left and Right, and Polk Audio Csi40 Center, and R20s for surrounds. Subwoofer was a Velodyne SPL 1000 series II (1000 watts/2000 watt peak) with the crossover set at 80 Hz.
I would also like to note that this opinion is listed with the regular CDs even though Beck is listed under CD, SACD and DVD-Audio. Don't know who corrects those sorts of things, but the CD, and the SACD are quite different, and the reviews should be separate, like the DVD-audio reviews. If you look under Beck - CD or Beck -SACD you will find the EXACT same reviews even though many reviewers were obviously reviewing one or the other.
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