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| Pornography [Deluxe Edition] | ![Pornography [Deluxe Edition]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41DAH62V3JL._SL160_.jpg)
 enlarge | Artist: The Cure
Label: Elektra / Wea
Category: Music
List Price: $24.98
Buy New: $17.82
You Save: $7.16 (29%)
New (20) Used (7) from $16.55
Avg. Customer Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 4196
Format: Extra Tracks, Original Recording Remastered
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 2
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 5.4 x 5 x 0.7
MPN: 74684
UPC: 081227468422
EAN: 0081227468422
ASIN: B0007XT8AS
Release Date: April 26, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Buy With Confidence
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| Tracks:
Disc 1
| • | One Hundred Years | | • | A Short Term Effect | | • | Hanging Garden | | • | Siamese Twins | | • | Figurehead | | • | A Strange Day | | • | Cold | | • | Pornography |
Disc 2
| • | Break | | • | Demise | | • | Temptation | | • | Figurehead | | • | Hanging Garden | | • | One Hundred Years | | • | Airl1ock: Soundtrack | | • | Cold | | • | A Strange Day | | • | Pornography | | • | All Mine | | • | A Short Term Effect | | • | Siamese Twins | | • | Temptation Two |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Album Description
Originally a Goth-flavored post-punk outfit, the Cure evolved into one of the truly seminal bands of the '80s, and ultimately one of modern rock's most celebrated and influential acts. Guided by creative visionary Robert Smith, the Cure's signature sound balances a dreamy pop savvy with a dark, brooding majesty and fuses superbly crafted, literate songs with a feverish emotional intensity. The band's early catalog-newly remastered and expanded wtih a wealth of rarities-is a series of masterpieces that laid the groundwork for their phenomenal and enduring popularity.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 24 more reviews...
 Totally Worthwhile Upgrade April 26, 2005
73 out of 74 found this review helpful
For fifteen years consumers have had to live with muddy-sounding, flat, low-rent mastering of this classic album. Now, finally, we've got something akin to actual hi-fi. The remastering is amazing. I'm listening to it right now on my wife's cheap Panasonic shelf system and can hear at least four new levels of nuance in just about every instrument in the mix. I honestly feel like I'm hearing the album for the first time.
Robert's voice in particular now actually sounds like it's coming through the flames at you, bounding down from his implosive pulpit like a hail of nails. This album has always been billed as the group's most depressing work -- a love letter to self hate and cryptic defeatism. It is. And beautifully so. Much of the current generation of corporate goth rockers (Manson et al) sound positively silly compared to this album.
As for the extras, well, they're a mixed bag. The studio demos often sound like completely different tracks (particularly the Hanging Garden demo which sounds more like something off "Faith.") These are worth the price alone. The live material is certainly inspired but most of it comes from audience recordings. Nonetheless, with live material from this era being so rare, anything is better than nothing.
Overall, I'd call this an automatic purchase for any Cure fan and certainly the preferred format for new fans to discover one of their best albums. Short of the work of groups such as Current 93, absolutely nothing else comes close to depicting the inherent inner-violence of depression. Pornography indeed.
Early masterpiece. May 4, 2005
21 out of 21 found this review helpful
As each album had been getting progressively darker, there seemed little room for the Cure to go after "Faith", but "Pornography" found something new-- Robert Smith (guitar, vocals, keys), Simon Gallup (bass, keys), and Lol Tolhurst (drums, keys) constructed something dark, edgy, and frightening, taking the haunted mood of the last album and adding aggression and noise. The guitars have become more distorted and louder, and the drums have been moving into a somewhat more tribal pattern. The result is something much more in your face than anything the Cure had done.
Nowhere is this more obvious than the opener, probably best summed by the line "waiting for the death blow", "One Hundred Years" is full of edgy guitars and despondant passion. This sort of passionate delivery is a thread throughout the album-- take the powerful invocation of "I will never be clean again" on "The Figurehead" (over a great tribal drum pattern from Tolhurst) or the plodding but effective "Siamese Twins", rescued by a great Smith vocal.
While the album is pretty dark, it does get fairly varied-- "A Strange Day" seems almost optimistic (if you don't listen too closely to what Smith is singing) and the album does cover a number of moods, from rock ("One Hundred Years") to pseudo-ambient ("A Short Term Effect") to a sort of gothic progressive rock ("Cold"). Start to finish, its a fantastic album, and unlike many albums with a somewhat unvaried mood, this one is quite listenable.
As the rest of the Cure remasters, the sound is fantastic, crisp, clean, showing every nuance of the music and allowing its expressiveness to breathe. Again, the liner notes include a candid and honest essay about the creation of the album and the tour that followed, and a disc of bonus material is included. The demos, given the sort of bleak production of the music, are often quite telling on this one, and the live material is nothing short of fantastic, although the sound quality in both cases is not letter perfect for obvious reasons, but given the strength of the material, it carries through well enough.
If you're new to the Cure but used to kind of odd music, this might be a good place to start, its certainly one of their peaks, and thsi reissue only makes it sound better.
An essential reissue for Cure enthusiasts April 27, 2005
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
I went into the record store I work at on Monday, my day off, just to buy the three reissues before anybody else had a chance. The first one I put in was 'Pornography', the one I was most excited about.
As for the remastered sound, this could be the least altered of the three reissues. The most noticeable improvement is certainly the element of "distance" given to Robert Smith's voice. His vocals have a permanent echo to them that float above the mix much clearer than in the past issuing of the album. The mix is considerably louder and given more bottom end. If anything is proven by modern remastering, however, it's that the actual production of the album is extremely dense and murky. 'One Hundred Years' with its "Phil Spector in Hell" sound doesn't reveal quite as much as a more subtle, spare song like 'The Figurehead' (the first guitar arpeggio, for instance, and even Smith's vocals).
The bonus material and packaging is first rate. Most of the rarities disc contains live material and rejected instrumental demos. The most fascinating part of this reissue is definitely the demo of 'The Hanging Garden'. It started out as a slower number with a more basic drum beat, and lyrics that would become parts of other 'Pornography' songs. It almost feels as if this were a creative start for the whole project. The 'Airlock' soundtrack shows Robert Smith's mental state probably more than anything on this whole reissue (you'll have to listen to it to know what I mean).
In my opinion, the sound on this reissue isn't quite as improved and clear as on the other two reissues, but it is a definite and genuine improvement over the original cd issue. The second disc and booklet makes this essential for major Cure fans.
Listen to the drums June 16, 2005
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
A few years back I bought the original CD release of Pornography, to see if there was anything beyond the tracks from Staring at the Sea I liked. I played through it and forgot about, nothing special. So when I bought this re-release (along with the simultaneous rereleases of Faith and Seventeen Seconds) I wasn't expecting much.
Boy was I wrong! This album comes alive with the remasters, just listen to the drums. I think of this as the "angry drum album", because that's what it is. For those who didn't like Pornography, listen to this album at night while driving in your car. Focus on the drums, let them hammer into you. Then you'll get it.
One Hundred Years sounds about like it does on the Paris concert album, and the drums beat into you as they always do on The Hanging Garden. A real treat is The Figurehead, most familiar to owners of the Paris live album. The drums are just stunning on this one, as Robert's vocals wail on. A Strange Day has an eerie beat reminiscent of early eighties pop in general, but there is that devastating drum again. Finally I love Cold, with a dread organ playing backdrop to the menacing drumbeat.
The bonus CD has some interesting oddities and some really excellent tracks. It opens with two "mood" demos, Break and Demise, which give you a feel for what went into this album. A real standout is the studio demo of The Figurehead. The arrangements are the same, but spare and without frills. It's good enough to be on my playlist along with the other versions of the song.
The early version of The Hanging Garden is a great illustration of just what went into Robert Smith's songs. Somewhere along this bland song he said toss it, let rip out something completely different with a hammering drum beat. The live version of Cold is a treat, and sounds great. The live Short Term Effect is so clean I mistook it for a studio jam.
The album sleeve art and font are distorted and hard to make out, as was obviously the intent. It sums up the mood of the album certainly. (Note that the fonts are different from the two previous album reissues, so this is all deliberate.) If you heard Pornography before and dismissed it, get this remastered edition and hear it as it was meant to be heard, with the drums hammering into your brain!
Hear the Depth and Nuance for the 1st Time June 14, 2005
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
The question for fans will obviously be, "Do I need to buy this remaster or am I all set with the original?" Unfortunately folks you need to reach for the wallet again. I think that enough has been done here to warrant spending your hard-earned cash... who are we kidding - you don't work that hard. Not only have a load of demos and rarities been included, but the remastering has brought out a new level of depth and nuance that you just couldn't hear before.
Where the original is muddy, the remaster is crystal clear. Of course, one could argue that the muddy production actually helped to create the dense wall of sound that made this album so intimidating in the first place. Well that is true to be sure. However, that's part of the amazing thing about this. In all of the clean-up effort, the opaqueness of the original is never lost. You will still feeel as though you are lost in a forest of despair; the difference now is that you'll be able to tell the difference between the fog and the cobwebs instead of sensing just one hazy mass of white gauze. You can hear how each synth bar decays with time. You can discern the subtle variances between several different electronic string instrument tones that may coexist at the same moment. The effects on the guitar and bass jump off the page now.
Basically either of the upgrades (the new tracks and the enhanced sound) makes the purchase worthwhile. Old fans have no choice. And new fans might as well buy this version as opposed to the original anyway. To heck with freedom of choice - do what you are destined to do and buy, or rebuy as the case may be.
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I've tacked on my review of the original here at the end to decribe the music for new fans...
Unquestionably this was Robert Smith's darkest hour. This 8-track release is oppressive in its bleak attack. It deserves 5 stars due to its sheer brilliance and originally; nothing ever sounded like this before or since. But for newcomers reading these great reviews be forewarned - I did not use the word oppressive by accident. Every moment of 'Pornography' is black, despairing and tortured. If you are on the verge of suicide this could be a rope thrown to save you or it could be a mack truck with a plow on the front driving you further over the edge. If you can get past that then what you will find is a stunningly creative album that creates some of the most sepulchral music ever heard.
The band at this time was stripped down to 3 members: Smith on vocals and guitar and keyboards, Simon Gallup on bass, and Lawrnece Tolhurst on drums. Strangely it may have been Tolhurst's lack of musical talent (an issue that would later get him fired) that created much of the atmosphere. The drumming is very flat and mechanical sounding creating an absolutely dead feel throughout; even sound dies as the stick hits the skins. Smith's vocals sound desperate and often deranged filled with lurid, bizzare imagery. Gallup's bass is potent and overwhelming in a style that only he could pull off.
My favorites are "One Hundred Years" with its sense of desperation and unrequited longing. "A Short Term Effect" is saturated with doom as the characters of the song try to laugh in the face of what may come, "Something small falls out of your mouth and we all laugh". "A Strange Day" is angst-ridden but with something bordering on beauty buried deep within. Finally the title track is an complete descent into madness, as the closer on an album like this should be.
One of the greatest black-to-the-core albums ever and arguably the darkest. The Sisters of Mercy came close with the rare 'Reptile House EP', but that work is more of an exploration of drug-addicted frustration where this is just suffocating hopelessness.
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