Midge Ure – The Gift

Great sound, clean & crisp.
Loving the "If I Was (Extended Mix)"

Despite all of the flack chucked at it, I rather like this album.
It's sufficiently different to his Ultravox stuff and has some really good, 'full' sounding tracks.
Good effort, Midge. ;)

‘If I Was (Extended Version)’ on disc 2 is missing the first 3 to 4 seconds of the track cutting off the opening drum beats. I’ve checked vinyl rips of the 12” mix on youtube and the previous versions of the mix on CD, and none of them have it missing.

Agreed, the discs sound excellent, very clean with no background noise at all. Nice to have the extended version of That Certain Smile on vinyl. Both of my records are fully transparent red by the way, not solid red.

Very nice packaging and very good sounding CD's. It's just a shame there is no dvd with 96/24 hi-res stereo.

Excellent reissue, flat vinyl, great sonically. The majestic 'If I Was' worth the price alone. Love Midge's guitar on this on whole album. Mock up pics of this release showed translucent red wax, this is not the case, it is a very nice solid red.

So silly that it says “2xCD” when it is 4xCD.

So why in hell is the live version of Edo (on CD #4) not included in the download version?
Any idea? Anyone?

Something I don't see mentioned in the listings for the UK LP with a textured or 'relief' cover is that there was more than one kind of textured sleeve. My copy is textured like woodchip wallpaper but I remember there were also copies with a sort of ripple effect. There may have been one or two others too.

Nice review as a whole.
Although I might disagree somewhat about "the curse of Ultravox" ;)
Bought most of their MkII stuff in the 80's and I must say that Vienna, Rage In Eden (in particular), Quartet are still very listenable. Lament also has its moments. Their comeback album Brilliant was surprisingly good but the best part was how good their gigs have been since the reunion around 2009.