EVERYTHING BUT THE GIRL - AMPLIFIED HEART 25th ANNIVERSARY EDITION
Amplified Heart was first released in June 1994 and contains the original version of the band's biggest hit, "Missing", after New York DJ-producer Todd Terry’s remix made the leap from heavy club spins to global pop radio playlists in 1995 (#2, US Hot 100; # 3, UK Top 40; #1, Germany, Italy, Canada). Yet it is the original version - a timeless classic in its own right - that perhaps better reflects the enduring appeal of the album's modern-retro hybrid of ardent folk-soul and scratchy electronica.
The genesis of the album was anything but easy. Written in the aftermath of Ben's near-death experience in 1992 from a rare auto-immune disease, the lyrics - written alternately by Ben and Tracey - are raw unflinching stories of love and isolation, that often disarm with their candour.
To capture the sound, the duo turned in part to folk-rock legends Danny Thompson (double bass), Dave Mattacks (drums), and engineer Jerry Boys (Sandy Denny, REM, Sawmills Studio) to anchor the heart of the songs but also to electronic producer, John Coxon to find the loops and dusty sounds that give the album much of its underlying atmosphere. Brief cameo roles are played by Richard Thompson (electric guitar on "25th December") and veteran arranger Harry Robinson (Nick Drake) who wrote the strings for "Two Star' and "I Don't Understand Anything".
"We've always been proud of Amplified Heart," says Ben, reflecting on the new edition. "It is both close to the bone - understandable, given its background - but also gentle in its touch, and shot through with resilience. The newly mastered pressing sounds amazing - as good as the original tapes."
"I think it’s a real rebirth record," adds Tracey, "the moment we got our mojo back. And it's where "Missing" began its story, so it’s a significant album for us."
In a 2019 retrospective 8.6 review in Pitchfork, Philip Sherburne wrote: "Far beyond the impact of Todd Terry’s remix, the sound of “Missing,” and that of Amplified Heart in general, has resonated widely. Its careful strain of folktronica set the precedent for Beth Orton’s Trailer Park two years later, and then a whole raft of tuneful, trip-hop-adjacent sounds. Fifteen years after the album’s release, its gauzy mix of guitars and drums resurfaced on the xx’s debut album ... Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt’s spare, pensive style never sounded more fully realized than here."
The new vinyl edition has been mastered by long-time Everything But The Girl mastering engineer, Miles Showell, now at Abbey Road Studios, who is one of only a handful of engineers specialising in half-speed mastering that uses new techniques to more faithfully reproduce the sound of original master tapes.
Artwork note: Assembling the artwork was difficult. Ben and Tracey's own label Buzzin' Fly Records acquired the rights to the album from Warner Music in 2017, but Warner had lost or disposed of original photography. As a result, the new front cover was sourced from the original photographer who did not have the exact frame but was able to provide the near-identical one taken a fraction of a second later. Similarly, the original back cover photo - taken from a hotel room at night in Osaka by Ben in 1992 - was nowhere to be found; instead, Ben unearthed the original negatives and selected a new photo of a Japanese bullet train taken the same night with a similar atmosphere for the new back cover. English fashion and art photographer Corinne Day's iconic portraits of the duo that made up the centrefold of the original CD booklet were also lost; with only scans of the booklet prints to work from, the images were digitally de-noised and - unable to be enlarged further - were used for the new vinyl's labels.