RADIO-ACTIVITY (Canada, 1986?)
Capitol, 4N-16380


Another Canadian issue, another sound improvement scheme; this time, the Dolby HX Pro... The system works, in short; it's a system to ensure less distortion, even at high input - which again means you can record the cassettes at a louder volume, thereby making the music rise out of the hiss and bob's yer uncle. A good idea around the advent of the CD, I suppose?


For me though, a better selling point of the Canadian cassette reissue is the cover design; the album cover is presented against a grey background, with the band name and album title repeated in blue. It's both a quite stylish effect, and a welcome change from other international editions, where - if they didn't amend the LP cover to make it fit the cassette front, the background would simply be white, or at a push, black. (It's a bit sad that no other country based their cover design on the German cassette!)


So. Being a mid-80s reissue from Canada, it's no surprise the J-card is a 1-panel affair, printed on one side only, and that the black cassette has on-body print and not paper labels. What DID surprise me though was that they've cut out a couple of tracks; "Intermission" is left off the A-side while the B-side omits "Transistor"! This does not make the sides of more equal lenght, I think; nor does it slip the 37 minute program under the half hour, if saving on tape was the issue, so I can't see any other reason to do this than they thought there were too many tracks? Very rum.






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