CLASSIC CUTS ABBA THE VINYL COLLECTION 2010

"Abba at their purest – the sound of the band at their bba created some of the most perfect pop records creative height and via analogue the world has ever heard, and had a perfect visual – what more could you ask for?" and sonic combination. Let’s take the complex yet this magnificent vinyl box set along what that ninth disc is supposed Arelatively shallow – but very impor- with a ninth LP of extra tracks. The to do, makes perfect sense. But, “It tant for any pop outfit – physical box contains: ‘Ring Ring’, ‘Waterloo’, seems that Benny is quite fond of attributes first. The band was fronted ‘ABBA’, ‘’, ‘ABBA: The Album’, ‘Sombrero’, I had another candidate by two beautiful girls. Young teenage ‘Voulez Vous’, ‘Super Trouper’ and but he said. ‘No I don’t want that on I boys would undertake long philo- ‘The Visitors’. The extra LP, ‘ABBA want this on instead’.” sophical discussions about which of Tracks’, features, on the A-side, the Palm spent many an hour keeping the two they fancied the most. Girl five single A-sides not included on the project on track. For example, fans loved the lead-singer’s look, their the original studio albums. The B-side if it wasn’t for him, we may have a style and their choreography... and features a selection of singles’ B- box set full of inferior mixes and ignored the blokes. Oh, and the band sides plus a rare track that first saw incorrect edits. But even he needed was Swedish... the light of day in the late-90s, ‘Put help on occasion, “I regularly sought As for the music? It was On Your White Sombrero’. Finally, help from my network of Abba supremely melodic, infectiously catchy you receive a fifty-plus page booklet fans from around the world. They and you could hum along to it after detailing the band and the albums. really listen to this music, they are thirty seconds. More to the point, it I spoke to the box set’s official obsessed – in a good way – with the was quality stuff. Songwriters Benny consultant from his home in Sweden, band. For example, there was a vinyl Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus actually Carl Magnus Palm, about the project inner sleeve, from the third album, crafted excellent songs. If they had and the attention to detail that he that appears in this box set that I’d been writing forty years earlier, they oversaw. “The albums are replicas never seen before. A fan supplied the would have been sitting within Tin of the original Swedish editions of correct information for that.” Pan Alley, competing with the likes of those albums which means that, for Each LP has been remastered Irving Berlin, Gershwin and the other the first two or three albums, you get from the original master tapes. Palm, contemporary pop purveyors of the inner sleeves with advertisements for a dedicated digital fan, was surprised time. other albums on them. We were very by the result. “I know some people Putting the two together was careful that we had the correct ads believe that analogue is superior to sheer genius. Finally, the fact that the for each album.” digital and, upon hearing these vinyl band’s songwriters were married There is one minor bone of remasters I was expecting them to the two beautiful girls (Anni-Frid contention on this box set, it has to to sound worse but even I was ‘Frida’ Lyngstad and Agnetha Fältskog) be said. And it’s a problem that goes surprised at how good they sounded and that their marriages would crash to the root of the box set’s creation on vinyl – I even went out and and burn within full public view and its creators; Palm and Abba man bought a new cartridge to hear the would just lend a maturing credibility . It seems that, for new remasters properly!” to their ‘art’. the B-side of the ‘Abba Tracks’ disc, A magnificent box set, this is The whole story is contained featuring that previously unreleased Abba at their purest – the sound of over the band’s eight albums and track, ‘Put On Your White Sombrero’, the band at their creative height and all of those are now available, in Palm had another B-side candidate via analogue at that, what more could individual replica sleeves, within instead which, when you look at any fan ask for? PR

www.hi-fiworld.co.uk APRIL 2011 HI-FI WORLD 117

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