XTC - Skylarking: Corrected Polarity Edition (CD) - CD

Details: Digitally remastered, expanded and corrected edition of the British band's 1986 album. Some 28 years after it's initial recording and release, SKYLARKING finally appears on CD as it was originally intended to sound. Andy Partridge - never entirely happy with the overall sound of the finished album - took it to award-winning mastering engineer John Dent, who noticed something that had never previously been spotted. Somewhere, possibly in the transfer from the multi-channel tape to the stereo master, a polarity had been reversed. This is not the same thing as a reversed left/right channel which puts a stereo picture out of phase and makes the sound unlistenable, but a much more difficult to pin down event that can be triggered by something as simple as a badly wired plug in the overall system which, nonetheless, removes some of the punch and presence from a finished recording. The album's cover and track listing have reverted to the band's original vision, making this the ultimate edition of one of the band's most popular albums.