Nick Heyward – North Of A Miracle

Fantastic sounding album. Wonderful music, blending jazz, pop… some great songs. Missed this somehow in the 80’s , but this is a truly great album with top class production and mastering. If you can source a clean copy any music lover will not be disappointed.

Wonderful melodic sophist-pop w/ production by Geoff Emerick (Beatles et al), string arrangements by the great Paul Buckmaster (Elton, etc).
Brilliant summery pop perfection.

Nice reissue, except for one crucial thing, the mastering. The bonus disc seems ok but the main album isn’t great. My advice: buy it for the extras but then get a copy of the original made in Germany cd and sit back, crank it up and experience audio bliss!

Time has been kind to this LP. Nick's first solo project was a surprisingly sophisticated leap forward from his Haircut 100 days. A lot of money must have spent on the production, engineering and photography. There are 35mm contact sheet size photos, one for every song on the inner sleeve and every one is beautiful. The pop songs are tight, catchy and hold up quite well especially the more jazz influenced ones. The sound quality is excellent on my US release, I'd bet the UK original version sounds even better.

Well, I thought that someone ought to at least say something about this album. The first thing that strikes me is that a hell of a lot of money must've been spent on the making of this record. Apart from the orchestration there are also a number of top session musicians involved and I can only imagine that the outlay was never recouped. A shame really, as this contains some really excellent songs, many of which, unfortunately for all involved, probably sound better now than at the time of release. The singles Whistle down the wind and especially Blue hat for a blue day, deserved to chart so much higher than they did and sound like classic pop songs to my ears. I suspect that Whistle down the wind was probably the wrong choice of lead off single and that Club boy at sea (which was never released as a single) might have been a better one. Had that been a top 10 hit, I think there's every chance that Blue hat for a blue day might also have been.
The other thing that really need mentioning is that this record sounds amazing. This is good enough a recording to warrant be used as a test record for stereo equipment, in my opinion. Would love to hear the Japanese pressing of The Day it rained forever, on a top quality stereo system. That would really be something, I'd imagine!