Premiata Forneria Marconi – The World Became The World

Beautiful sounding remaster. I have an early UK pressing on vinyl, and it's all I've known for 40+ years. When I slipped this baby in the player, suddenly I'm hearing things I never heard before. Many subtleties in the acoustic guitars, string arrangements, and vocals are now suddenly present. The soundstage is much broader, and separation between instruments is clear and exact.

I own many Japanese CD variations of my fave records and almost every time they are superior to the OG vinyl pressings. Don't get me wrong; I'm a vinyl junkie, with 6025 slabs of wax in my collection, and desert island would always be vinyl. But there's just something about many of these Japanese pressings that clean up the muddiness of some OG pressings. And no, it's not my system. I'm using B&W 602 floor standers | Technics SL3300 DD | Pioneer Elite | Ortofon Blue so have plenty of fire power. I noticed that the Japanese releases of 70's era analog recordings almost always gain a crispness not present in the originals.

Excellent pressing. Quiet, flat, great bandwidth and instrument placement. No distortion even in inner grooves. This variant is highly recommended!

If your bag is folky pastoral Italian prog-rock sign up here. PFM showcase lovely melodic sensitivity & a bold harder more aggressive brand of prog soaked in multi-layered synth-washes, symphonic ages, complex prog patterns & haunting lyrics (all sung in English albeit through a thick Italian accent mixed low & heavily reverbed)
File next to Yes, Focus, King Crimson & Genesis. Arguably the finest Italian prog-rock band of the 1970s.
Proggy music for body & soul.

Bad pressing. Avoid this version. Distortion even with NM condition.

First copy i bought was 384/500. It started ok, but was just too noisy by the middle of side 1 sounding very non filled, thus no amount of Degritting was helping with that! Obliged to return it and in exchange im sent 184/500. Side 1 played ok and had me all excited but side 2 still has fsr too many pops and loud clicks caused by defects in the grooves. And it was warped. The third and final attempt, no 153 is the best of a bad bunch and only has a half dozen excessive noises plus an inaudible warp. I really like the album and the mastering is very acceptable, maybe not the most expansive or clear but defintely has analogue vibes with a warm leaning inoffensive sound. Such a shame then i find an otherwise dead quiet lp is ruined by these little rips and pops that no brand new record should have when pressed with care. Now if it was pressed at Record Industry, about the only EU plant currently in 2022 that does record pressing right, it would be an absolute must, as such the music really deserves better than this mediocre press, but i paid 16 quid so cant be too down i guess!

Esto es un grupo de rock progresivo italiano, por lo que leo, pero que cantan en inglés. No soy un gran fan del rock progresivo, incluso Pink Floyd me carga a veces, aunque hay que reconocerle el mérito incuestionable.
En todo caso, como digo que tiene mérito, pero meter tantos instrumentos, esas canciones kilométricas sin un estribillo claro... Me cuesta encontrarle el punto. Después de escucharlo me tengo que poner algo más reconocible, algo con su principio y su fin, algo directo... No sé, Los Ramones?

Opened sealed one. Ultra low quality press, noisy from born, scuffs, fingerprints and marks on both sides. Hard paper inner slave against normal antistatic. Sounds about like VG- or G of used ones. Very disappointed...

The inlay hole was previously filled wit an "island", which could be pressed out. I do not have that any more.

I've had unacceptable problems with this reissue : crackling and hissing on a new, unsealed copy, and had to ask for reimbursement.