10) Gracias Por La Musica

Albumtracks:

01) Gracias Por La Musica
02) Reina Danzante
03) Al Andar
04) Dame! Dame! Dame!
05) Fernando
06) Estoy Sonando
07) Mamma Mia
08) Hasta Manana
09) Conociendome, Conociendote
10) Chiquitita

Bonustracks:

11) Felicidad
12) Andante, Andante
13) Se Me Esta Escapando
14) No Hay A Quien Culpar
15) Ring Ring


In 2011, when I checked my complete restored versions of the eight regular studio albums, I decided to add the spanish album to complete my work. I checked the following sources first:

- Gracias Por La Musica (Japan 1986)

- Mas Oro (1994 Polar / Polydor)

I first listened carefully to the 1997 version, but the noise reduction on some tracks was too disturbing to work with it. Besides this, various songs suffer from a too high level and you can hear some over-compression and a hard-working limiter, especially on the track "Felicidad" (also the one with the highest amount of noise reduction).

Next option were the versions, included on "The Complete Studio Recordings", but they turned out very silimar to the 1997 remasters, but with a louder level...so the entire sound was more limited and distorted and there was no way to adjust these faults in the sound. A very intersting detail is, that the song "Felicidad" includes the same strength of noise reduction as on the 1997 remasters.

Today I got straight copies of the 1986 Japan CD "Gracias Por la Musica" and the 1994 released "Mas Oro" album, both in lossless format. I checked the tracks included there and I was amazed about the very good sound quality !!! I started analyzing the frequency spectrum and the levels and compiled all 15 spanish songs from both albums.

It was a really easy work on it, cause the source material used for the pressings was great !!! The only two things I had to repair were the small drop-out on "Reina Danzante" ("Dancing Queen") and the little scratching noise on "Al Andar" ("Move On"). I described the restoration of both parts in the "Arrival" and "The Album" articles very detailed.

One last interesting thing is that I am not sure about the real channel setting of left and right (all spanish songs)...I compared the versions of the Japanese CD with my original "Gracias Por la Musica" vinyl and I had to change left and right...but the 1999 version of Astley told me I have to turn it back as it was before...either Astley made a wrong stereo transfer or he used CD sources for his 1997 remastering job, where the channels were on the wrong place...would be very nice to know more details about it...I think the original vinyl version shows the real thing, but I am not sure about the 5 bonustracks, cause I don't have any vinyl source for the songs...is there anybody out there who can help me to fix it ???

In the end I created a nearly perfect version of all spanish material they ever recorded and I am proud that I finished my work on all available material - except the live recordings. I am sure I will start working on it in the near future and will keep you updated here.

Thank you for patience !!!