Gerry Mulligan – Night Lights

Sounds fabulous. A+ pressing and jacket quality. All around great reissue.

Great great pressing! It sounds absolutely beautiful, especially when all the horns come in. The detail in the saxophone-playing is unreal! Im glad this gets the AS-Series treatment. The New Land edition was fine, but this tops it. The cover quality is miles better, too.
Perfect pressing (aside from a light warp), perfect sound, perfect cover. What more do You need?

Breathtakingly gorgeous recording. Enjoy late at night with coffee or your preferred adult beverage.
Very glad to get a high quality pressing.
Zero surface noise and wonderful sound.
As others have noted my copy has a rather tight spindle hole. Keeps the record extra flat to the turntable I guess!
Another home run by the Acoustic Sounds Series of jazz reissues.

My third pressing of this bonfide personal fave (top 25) jazz LP.

The NewLand KPG cut is excellent if a little heavy on the bass. My older dutch press is passable but notably thinner sounding.

This one is the Goldilocks! Its JUST RIGHT. And then some!!!
Just buy it NOW!!

Being that this is one of my favorite albums [let alone jazz albums] and a desert island disc, I had been eagerly awaiting the release of this remaster/pressing from the esteemed Analogue Productions. I had owned two pressings [now three] and a Japanese 2496 Spectrum Rainbow CD by Phillips. This new remaster / pressing is beautiful in many respects. However, with one caveat - which I will detail a bit later.

The Analogue Productions’ pressing [as usual] is dead flat and completely absent of any surface noise - dead quiet. Instrument body and textural details emerge from a pure, silent [zero surface noise] and black background. An obvious example of this is the light guitar strumming after the initial opening bars of “Night Lights” and the light syncopated single C note on the piano after a few bars into Mulligan’s solo on "Black Orpheus" - both normally almost imperceptible - were produced with excellent clarity. Instruments hover in an adequate soundstage [for a recording of this period]. The low end is very detailed and solid with excellent presence. This pressing really does bring out this recording / performance’s exceptional traits - smooth, silky, and mellow.

My Japanese pressing [Philips: SFX-10543 manufactured by Nippon] is the first LP I’ve owned of this recording. It is very pleasant and well balanced but is lacking the aforementioned AP attributes. That said, I think anyone would be content to own it. My second LP was released on the New Land label [NEWLAND001]. Remastered using the original master tapes [by the great and ubiquitous Kevin Gray] and pressed on 180g vinyl. It is a vast improvement over the Japanese pressing. The argument could be made that it rivals the AP and some might even prefer it. The New Land’s resolution is not quite as superlative as the AP but just marginally so; and even though it sounds exceedingly neutral, its tonal balance has a very attractive sense of color and timber in comparison to the AP. It isn’t quite as a visceral an experience as the AP provides, but it is exceptionally balanced in every respect. However, both the New Land and Japanese pressing betters the AP in one significant area – which brings me to my single caveat.

Caveat = Significant piano and trumpet distortion on Night Lights.

As I have listened to this album almost exclusively on LP over many many years, I had been aware of this [heretofore] “very slight” [recording?] anomaly. However this new Analogue Productions’ mastering is [apparently] so transparent that reveals it in a rather stark and prominent manner - “PERHAPS”. I had thought that the other pressings were equally obvious in this regard, but after an intense and protracted comparison, the distortion is not nearly as obvious; and in the case of the New Land pressing, it is nonexistent. Regrettably, this gives me pause and causes me to question Ryan K. Smith’s mastering and/or the cutting of the lacquer, (by KPG or AP?). This AP pressing is indeed louder than the others which leads me to suspect that this remaster was perhaps cut/mastered a bit too hot.

I had originally thought that this distortion must be present on the master tape - due to either over-saturation, tape damage, or both. But it was not present on the New Land mastering/pressing - which makes me doubt that it exists at all - in addition to the fact that this distortion isn't present on any digital release I've heard. Mind you, this isn’t a deal breaker nor does it detract from the perennial pleasure I get from this seminal recording – but this is very apparent on my system.

As for the cover and artwork quality, the AP is likewise superb and of better quality than my other two with the New Land being the least preferred/most lacking of the three.

I wish I had an OG stereo pressing for comparison as well but, c'est la vie. All and all, the AP is definitely a keeper.

Excellent! My copy has zero noise, is perfectly flat and sounds great. Much better than Newland pressing - I went through two copies of those and both had cracks and pops in various places. The Verve release is just perfect.

The jacket is thick sturdy carton gatefold and like many Tone Poet releases is larger size.

EDIT: Today I compared Verve and Newland releases side by side and here are my impressions:

Manufacturing quality - Verve AS is a clear winner - nice sturdy gatefold, flat and noise free media. Definitely better than Newland pressing which has audible no fills in few places, especially annoying during trumpet solo in Night Lights.

Sound and mixing - this is more complicated. AS version is a bit louder and leaves better impression overall because of low noise, it sounds fuller and more spacious to me. Both AS and Newland releases have some piano solo distortion in Night Lights, it sounds like piano track tempo slows down for a fraction of a second. However, this distortion is barely noticeable in Newland release and quite pronounced in AS version.

Another difference: Newland release has extra track of 1965 version of Night Lights with Gerry Mulligan on clarinet which I like a lot, kinda disappointing it is missing in AS version.

My verdict: both versions are pretty good and both are keepers although I expect AS to get more spin time due to overall noise free listening pleasure.

I do not have any other pressing to compare to. The record is flat and mostly quiet with a few very minor pops on side A that will probably disappear with cleaning. The center hole is tight, but I was able to push it on completely. The gatefold is nice with a good sheen to it which allows the cover art to pop. My needle tracks well. This pressing does not come with the 1965 version of night lights, which is included on the Newland pressing, however it is an under three minute song that I will stream when I feel like listening to. I read two other reviews that compared both this and the Newland pressing and this pressing was said to sound better so I took that into account when deciding. Overall this is a very nice sounding pressing.

This sounds really great!. Sort of wish it wasn't a gatefold just to save space but the photo a Mulligan are nice. Perfect pressing. I think it sounds better than the New Land version but its been a bit since I owned that one.

From my copy, looking at the stamped matrix, this is straight off the original US stereo stampers: PHS600108A M2 and PHS600108B M2
https://www.discogs.com/release/7123574-Gerry-Mulligan-Night-Lights

Is going to be repressed by Acousting Sounds,let's see which will sound the best