eric clapton unplugged ULTRADISC 1 ONE-STEP 2-disc 45rpm box set NEW / Sealed

$

140

eric clapton unplugged Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab ULTRADISC 1 ONE-STEP 2-disc 45rpm box set NEW / Sealed

Label:

Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab UD1S 2-020

Series:

UltraDisc One-Step, Original Master Recording

Format:

2 x Vinyl, 12", 45 RPM, Album,Limited Edition № 000652 of 10,000, 180g, SuperVinyl Box Set

Country:

US

Released:

May 17, 2022

Genre:

Rock, Blues

Style:

Blues Rock, Acoustic

Tracklist

A1 Signe 3:14 A2 Before You Accuse Me 3:45 A3 Hey Hey 3:16 A4 Tears In Heaven 4:36

B1 Lonely Stranger 5:27 B2 Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out 3:18 B3 Layla 4:46

C1 Running On Faith 6:30 C2 Walkin' Blues 3:36 C3 Alberta 3:42 C4 San Francisco Bay Blues 3:23

D1 Malted Milk 3:36 D2 Old Love 7:52 D3 Rollin' And Tumblin' 4:12

• Record Company – Warner Music Group
• Mastered At – Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab
• Lacquer Cut At – Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab
• Manufactured For – Rhino Entertainment Company
• Pressed By – Record Technology Incorporated
• Distributed By – Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab, Inc.
• Mixed At – Power Station

• Backing Vocals – Katie Kissoon, Tessa Niles
• Bass Guitar, Backing Vocals – Nathan East
• Drums – Steve Ferrone
• Guitar – Andy Fairweather Low*
• Guitar, Vocals – Eric Clapton
• Keyboards – Chuck Leavell
• Lacquer Cut By [Runout Etchings] – KW
• Mastered By – Krieg Wunderlich
• Percussion – Ray Cooper
• Recorded By – Jim Barton*

Notes

Limited Edition № 000652 of 10,000. Gatefold insert.
Specially plated and pressed on 180 Grams of High Definition Vinyl. Pressed on SUPERVINYL™.
SUPERVINYL™ formula developed and manufactured by NEOTECH
Mastered by Krieg Wunderlich at Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab®, Sebastopol, CA on the GAIN 2 ULTRA ANALOG SYSTEM™.

℗ © 1992 & 2021 Manufactured for Rhino Entertainment Company, a Warner Music Group Company..
Distributed by Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab ®, Inc. 1811 W. Bryn Mawr Ave, Chicago IL 60660.
Runouts are etched.

Blockbuster 1992 Album Stirs the Heart, Shakes the Soul, and Invigorates the Senses: Eric Clapton Unplugged Radiates with Intimacy, Maturity, Poignancy, Honesty, and Sweetness

Mobile Fidelity's UltraDisc One-Step 180g 45RPM 2LP Box Set Is Mastered from the Original Master Tapes and Limited to 10,000 Numbered Copies

Mitsubishi X-86 digital master to analog console to lathe

Eric Clapton's Unplugged is far more than an album. It remains a majestic picture of a moment in time; an unvarnished glimpse into the soul of one of music's most legendary artists; a visionary journey into the inspirations that helped shape Clapton's character; a re-exploration and re-evaluation of deep-seated roots; a continuation of critical blues heritage; a building block on which a subgenre sprouted; a launching pad for both a later-career resurgence and discovery. A perennial audiophile favorite and the best-selling concert release of all time, Unplugged now takes on an irresistible luster that veritably gives you a front-row seat at Bray Film Studios.

Strictly limited to 10,000 numbered copies, pressed on MoFi SuperVinyl at RTI, and mastered from the original master tapes, Mobile Fidelity's ultra-hi-fi UltraDisc One-Step 180g 45RPM 2LP collector's edition enhances the blockbuster work for today – and the ages to come. Surpassing the sonics of any prior version, it peels away any remaining limitations to provide a transparent, lively, ultra-nuanced presentation of a record that won six Grammy Awards – including prizes for Album of the Year, Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, and Best Rock Song. The expanse and depth of the soundstage, fullness of tones, natural snap and extension of the guitar strings, realistic rise and decay of individual notes, and roll of Clapton's vocals all attain demonstration-grade levels.

Housed in a deluxe box, the UD1S Unplugged pressing features special foil-stamped jackets and faithful-to-the-original graphics that illuminate the splendor of the recording and the reissue's premium quality. This UD1S reissue exists is made for discerning listeners who desire to fully immerse themselves in everything involved with the album, from the images to the finishes.

Truly, everything about Unplugged matters. Having sold more than 10 million copies in the U.S. and more than 26 million copies worldwide, the 1992 work resonates with listeners of all generations and speaks a universal language. Recorded for MTV before a very small audience on January 16, 1992, the 14-track set became the signpost for future acoustic-based endeavors that witnessed artists of all stripes re-examining their catalogs and, in many instances, as Clapton does here, placing familiar originals in fresh contexts and unveiling spirited versions of cover material. Needless to say, Clapton's session turned MTV's series into can't-miss programming for which the likes of Rod Stewart, Tony Bennett, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and more would soon participate.

Kicking off his performance with a spirited instrumental to establish the mood, Clapton immediately wades into the style that originally caught his attention as a British teenager in the early 1960s: American blues. Backed by a superb band that includes guitarist Andy Fairweather Low, pianist Chuck Leavell, bassist Nathan East, and drummer Steve Ferrone, Slowhand delivers a rhythmic, toe-tapping rendition of Bo Diddley's "Before You Accuse Me" that announces he's come to reconnect with his muse. What follows over the course of nearly the next hour stirs the heart, shakes the soul, moves the mind, and invigorates the senses.

Of course, there's no talking about Unplugged without keying in on "Tears in Heaven," the striking ballad Clapton penned about the death of his four-year-old son. More emotional, direct, spare, and healing than the studio version released a year prior, it crackles with an intimacy, maturity, poignancy, honesty, sweetness, and integrity that inform the entire concert. Indeed, how Clapton frames other favorites here – transforming "Layla" into a relaxed, comfortable stroll and ruminating on the seasoned ripples flowing throughout "Old Love," for example – indicate both a creative rebirth and gleeful acceptance of the next phase of his career.

And that very direction (two of Clapton's next three albums would be all-blues projects) is what really makes Unplugged so indispensable. Equivalent in mastery if not in volume to the output that earned him his "God" nickname, interpretations of Jesse Fuller's "San Francisco Bay Blues" (complete with kazoo!), Big Bill Broonzy's "Hey Hey," Robert Johnson's "Walkin' Blues" and "Malted Milk," and Muddy Waters' "Rollin' & Tumblin'" showcase a learned professor in his element and all the wheels turning.

In every regard, Clapton's Unplugged session was appointment listening when it came out in August 1992. With the arrival of MoFi's UD1S pressing, that sensation is more urgent than before.

More About Mobile Fidelity UltraDisc One-Step and Why It Is Superior
Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab's UltraDisc One-Step (UD1S) technique bypasses generational losses inherent to the traditional three-step plating process by removing two steps: the production of father and mother plates, which are created to yield numerous stampers from each lacquer that is cut. For UD1S plating, stampers (also called "converts") are made directly from the lacquers. Since each lacquer yields only one stamper, multiple lacquers need to be cut. Mobile Fidelity's UD1S process produces a final LP with the lowest-possible noise floor. The removal of two steps of the plating process also reveals musical details and dynamics that would otherwise be lost due to the standard multi-step process. With UD1S, every aspect of vinyl production is optimized to produce the best-sounding vinyl album available today.

MoFi SuperVinyl
Developed by NEOTECH and RTI, MoFi SuperVinyl is the most exacting-to-specification vinyl compound ever devised. Analog lovers have never seen (or heard) anything like it. Extraordinarily expensive and extremely painstaking to produce, the special proprietary compound addresses two specific areas of improvement: noise floor reduction and enhanced groove definition. The vinyl composition features a new carbonless dye (hold the disc up to the light and see) and produces the world's quietest surfaces. This high-definition formula also allows for the creation of cleaner grooves that are virtually indistinguishable from the original lacquer. MoFi SuperVinyl provides the closest approximation of what the label's engineers hear in the mastering lab.

Allmusic review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine      Its' massive success -- it is one of the rare albums to be certified as diamond in the U.S. and it went platinum all over the world; it also won the Album of the Year Grammy for 1992 -- makes it difficult to place Eric Clapton's 1992 MTV Unplugged in context, but it's important to do so. It arrived three years into MTV Unplugged's run -- 1989 also being the year Clapton stirred artistically with the assured AOR of Journeyman -- and a year after Paul McCartney established the practice of an official album release of an Unplugged session with his own Unplugged (The Official Bootleg). Also in 1991, Clapton's young son Conor died in a tragic accident. The guitarist wrote "Tears in Heaven" as a tribute to his late son and, via its inclusion on the 1991 soundtrack to Rush, it became a hit single and, later, a centerpiece to the Unplugged set. The passage of time has blurred the lines separating all these events, suggesting Clapton's 1992 Unplugged was the first-ever MTV album, that it alone was responsible for revitalizing EC's career, that it is was the place where "Tears in Heaven" premiered, when none of that is quite true. What is true is that Unplugged is the concert and album that established the MTV program as a classy, tony showcase for artists eager to redefine themselves via reexamination of their catalogs, which is what Clapton cannily did here. The album's hit was a slow crawl through Derek & the Dominos' "Layla," turning that anguished howl of pain into a cozy shuffle and the whole album proceeds at a similar amiable gait, taking its time and enjoying detours into old blues standards. Clapton is embracing his middle age and the pleasure of Unplugged is to hear him opt out of the pop star game as he plays songs he's always loved. Tellingly, it's these blues and folk covers -- Jesse Fuller's "San Francisco Bay Blues," Big Bill Broonzy's "Hey Hey," the standard "Alberta," Muddy Waters' "Rollin' and Tumblin'," two songs from Robert Johnson ("Walkin' Blues," "Malted Milk") -- that are the best performances here; they're alternately lively and relaxed, Clapton happily conforming to the contours of the compositions. These capture a moment in time, when EC was settling into his age by reconnecting with the past, whereas the originals -- whether it's the revised versions of "Layla" and "Old Love," "Tears in Heaven," or the debut of "My Father's Eyes," originally heard here (and on the 2013 expanded anniversary edition) but released as a single much later in the decade -- point forward to the sharply tailored adult contemporary crooner of the '90s, one who turned out to be very comfortable existing in a world of high thread counts and designer duds. These are the tunes that belong to the '90s -- and several of these also appear on the 2013 expansion, which contains songs that didn't appear on the album, almost all of which are originals apart from an alternate "Walkin' Blues" and "Worried Life Blues" -- but the rest of MTV Unplugged manages to transcend its time because it does cut to the quick of Clapton's musical DNA.