Vanilla Fudge

Permission to Get Weird: Vanilla Fudge Shape-Shifts the Familiar Into Original, Uncharted Psychedelic Excursions Marked by Mesmerizing Arrangements, Bizarre Timing, and Grinding SoulMastered from the Original Master Tapes and Strictly Limited to 3,000 Numbered Copies on 180g 45RPM 2LP and 2,000 Copies on Hybrid SACD: Sonically Superb Mobile Fidelity Reissues Present the Record in True-tothe-Original Mono1967 Cult Classic Features Stretched-Out Covers of Familiar Works by the Beatles, Supremes, Curtis Mayfield, and More: Vanilla Fudge Plays with a Maverick Streak and Offbeat VisionPermission to get weird is granted with Vanilla Fudge. Created during the peak of heightened chemical, musical, and social experimentation, the band’s self-titled debut aims for sonic and mental expansion via psychedelic means. Consisting primarily of elongated covers of then-modern works by the Beatles, Supremes, Curtis Mayfield, and others, the album shape-shifts the familiar into original, uncharted excursions that lead to colorful dimensions. Musically and thematically, the 1967 magnum opus occupies territory located between high-art seriousness and rule-breaking outrageousness. It’s maverick streak treats reverential scripts with inviting strangeness, offbeat vision, and zero pretension. More than 50 years after it’s original release, the symphonic arrangements now sound more ambitious, direct, mesmerizing, and influential than before courtesy of a superior mono restoration.Mastered from the original master tapes and strictly limited to 3,000 numbered copies on 180g 45RPM 2LP and 2,000 copies on hybrid SACD, Mobile Fidelity’s reissues unveil the baroque underpinnings, gorgeous harmonies, grinding soul, and low-end-plumbing organ riffs that help make the quartet’s fare unique. The timing of the off-kilter tempos and improvisational movements gets cast into unpolluted light, with the collective’s expert shading and deliberate tonality emerging as major components of the songs. Vastly improved, too, is the powerful, jazz-inspired drumming of Carmine Appice. Seated deep and wide in the vast soundstage, his playing illuminates the genius of Vanilla Fudge’s arguably most valuable asset-a sense of dynamics and surprise that contributes to a rich, malt-like musical thickness true to the band’s name. There’s not another album like Vanilla Fudge in the entire rock canon.