Search - David Bowie :: Reality

Good album on sacd, but sony bungled the release

12/13/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"If you found this review, you're probably specifically looking for the Reality SACD. It's fairly hard to find, because sony has done a poor job of issuing this release. First of all, its a CD/SACD hybrid, so why they decided they needed to issue a regular cd version, a special edition version and a hybrid SACD version of this release is beyond me. Secondly, the SACD release date was pushed back for so long that many people who might have bought the hybrid disc have already purchased one version or another. This might explain why stores don't seem to be stocking the SACD version--they probably have more than enough unsold special editions sitting on their shelves. Sorry for the rant, but sony's approach to sacd pisses me off: first they issue sacd only discs that won't play on a normal cd player, then when they finally realize how stupid that was and issue hybrid discs like this, they screw it up as well. That said, this is a very good production from Bowie. Nothing jaw-dropping (though Pablo Picasso might come as a shock to Modern Lovers fans), but not boring either. Given that the album's music has more of a "live" sound, it's not surprising that the 5.1 mix is pretty straight forward. There's a few songs where the drums and effects are spread out to the surrounds, but Bowie's voice mostly stays center. Sounds good though."