PHIL COLLINS - Face Value (1981)

Codec: mp3.
Description: MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3.
Bit rate: 320 kbps.
Sample rate: 44100 Hz joint stereo.
Tags: ID3V1 & ID3V2.
Source format: CD
Number of tracks 17.

Allmusic review:
"Collins proves himself a passionate singer (and distinctive drummer) with a gift for both deeply felt ballads and snarling rockers. His debut album transformed him from the frontman of Genesis to a solo star who happened to be in Genesis, too. Contains "In the Air Tonight" and "I Missed Again." 

Rolling Stone review (1981......)
"With the notable exception of the three Peter Gabriels, every solo album from a Genesis member or ex-member has proudly displayed the lessons learned in that band–and been the worse for it. But Phil Collins' initial foray is neither art-rock nor the fusion jazz that Collins favored in Brand X. Instead, he keeps the fluid vocal tone he's lately developed in Genesis, yet ignores the group's high-blown conceits in favor of some basic pop and R&B lessons apparently gleaned from Face Value's backup musicians, the Earth, Wind and Fire horn section and Stephen Bishop. Like "Misunderstanding" (the best song from the last Genesis LP), Face Value is pop music about personal turmoil: in this case, the dissolution of Collins' marriage. At times, the singer's broken heart is too clearly on his sleeve, and musical missteps abound: the annoying Munchkin-like Vocoder effects in "I'm Not Moving," some rote horn charts, a batch of indistinguishable ballads and a flaccid cover version of the Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows." But Collins hits more often than not, adeptly blending moody keyboard trills and bone-crunching drumbeats in "In the Air Tonight" and shifting with surprising sure-footedness from the Eno-esque repetition of "Droned" through the percussive horn blasts of "Hand in Hand" to the persuasive intimacy of "If Leaving Me Is Easy." Face Value is far less ambitious and important than Gabriel's solo debut, yet it's also unmistakably the most worthy Genesis product since that record."

Wikipedia bio "Face Value":
"Face Value is the title of Phil Collins' debut solo album, released in February 1981. The album includes one of Collins' biggest, and perhaps most enduring hits, "In the Air Tonight". The album itself reached #1 in the UK, Canada, and many European countries, also meeting the U.S. Top 10. Like the album that followed, Hello, I Must Be Going!, most of the songs on Face Value are based on the pain and anger Collins felt while he was going through his divorce. Other singles didn't have the same chart success as "In the Air Tonight", they were: "I Missed Again", which reached No. 14 in the UK and No. 19 in the USA. Also "If Leaving Me Is Easy" was released as a single, reaching No. 17 in the UK, but was never released as a single in the USA. One of the songs not included on this album, was a track titled "How can you just sit there?", which was the working title for the song that later became, "Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)". Phil had stated in an interview in 1985 that the reason why the song was left off the album was that he felt the album had "too many ballads". This is the only Phil Collins album to include a hidden track."

Wikipedia bio "In The Air Tonight":
""In the Air Tonight" is a song by Phil Collins which first appeared on his 1981 album, Face Value. It was the first single of Collins' solo career, and remains one of his best known hits. The music video was among those aired on the first broadcast day of MTV.
The song/recording: 
The recording is notable for its atmospheric production and macabre theme. Released in January 1981 in the UK, the single was an instant hit, quickly climbing to Number 2 in the Singles Chart. It was also an international hit, reaching the top 20 on the Billboard Chart in the summer of 1981. "In the Air Tonight" remains, alone among Collins' solo oeuvre, a popular selection on many classic rock radio stations. It is the song most often associated with Collins' solo career, and he has performed versions of it at many events, notably at Live Aid, where he played the song on the same calendar day in both Philadelphia and London. In September 1981, he made his live debut as a solo performer, appearing at the invitation of producer Martin Lewis at the Amnesty International benefit show The Secret Policeman's Other Ball at the Theatre Royal in London. Collins performed two songs "In The Air Tonight" and "The Roof Is Leaking" accompanying himself on the grand piano. His performance was augmented by Daryl Stuermer on acoustic guitar and banjo. The performance was the first time that Collins had performed live as a soloist and the first time that he performed at a charity show.
The lyrics of the song take the form of a dark monologue directed towards an unnamed, possibly prominent person; the singer describes having witnessed an unspecified act perpetrated: "I was there and I saw what you did /Saw it with my own two eyes" and anticipating an equally unspecified consequence: "I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord /I've been waiting for this moment for all my life". 
Musically the song consists of a series of ominous chords played over a simple drum machine pattern (the Roland CR-78 Disco-2 pattern, plus some programming); processed electric guitar sounds and vocoded vocals on key words add additional atmosphere. The mood is one of restrained anger until the final chorus when an explosive burst of drums releases the musical tension, and the instrumentation builds to a thundering final chorus. Collins wrote the song in the wake of a failing relationship with his then-wife. 
Collins has described obtaining the drum machine specifically to deal with these personal issues through songwriting, telling Mix magazine: "I had to start writing some of this music that was inside me." The song's popularity in the 1980s increased after a nearly complete recording of it was featured in the pilot episode of the American television show Miami Vice ("Brother's Keeper"), thus becoming one of the first pop/rock songs to be featured as part of a TV programme in this manner. On the heels of this successful merging of media, Collins became associated with the show; other Collins tracks including "Take Me Home" were later featured and Collins himself also acted in an episode, "Phil the Shill". The song was remixed in 1988 by Ben Liebrand for his weekly appearance in the Curry & van Inkel radio show on Dutch radio. The mix was completed and then taken by Liebrand to be part of a mix showcase at the DMC Mixing Championship Finals in London. This mix was picked up by Virgin records for an official release, which hit Number 4 in the UK charts.
Drum sound: 
“ "Musically, it's an extraordinarily striking record, because almost nothing happens in it ... It's the drum sound in particular that's amazing. You don't hear it at all for the first two minutes of the song ... then there's that great doo-dom doo-dom doo-dom comes in, and the drums come in half way through the song, setting the template for all the Eighties drum songs after that" - Stuart Maconie ” The means by which Collins attained the drum sound on this recording was long a source of mystery. The exact process was, as happens so often, a result of serendipity: an unintended use of studio technology giving unexpectedly useful results. In this case, the Solid State Logic 4000 mixing board had a "reverse talk-back" circuit (labeled on the board as "Listen Mic"). Normal "talkback" is a button that the mixing engineer has to press in order to talk to the recording musicians (the recording and the mixing parts of a studio are completely sonically isolated otherwise). Reverse talkback is a circuit (also button-activated) for the engineer to listen to musicians in the studio. In order to compensate for sound level differences — people can be close to the reverse talkback microphone or far off — this circuit has a compressor on it, which minimizes the differences between loud and soft sounds. While recording "Intruder" for his ex-bandmate Peter Gabriel's solo album, at some point Collins started playing the drums while the reverse talkback was activated. The engineers and his friend Jeffrey were amazed at the sound achieved. Overnight, they rewired the board so that the reverse talkback could be recorded in a more formal manner. Later models of the SSL 4000 allowed the listen mic to be recorded with the touch of a button. When recording engineer Hugh Padgham was brought in to help develop Collins' demos that would become Face Value they recreated the "Intruder" sound using the reverse talkback microphone as well as heavily compressed and gated ambient mics. Hugh Padgham continued working with Genesis for Abacab later in 1981 and the same technique (generally referred to as Gated reverb) was used, and the powerful drum sound has become synonymous with later Genesis projects and Collins' solo career ever since. 
The original single version of "In the Air Tonight" features extra drums that play underneath the song until the signature drum crash appears. These were added at the suggestion of Atlantic Records head Ahmet Ertegun. In the 2007 book about Genesis, Chapter and Verse, Collins says: "Ahmet came down to the final mix in the cutting room in New York....We were playing back "In the Air Tonight." The drums don't come in until the end but Ahmet didn't know that at this point, because on the demo the drums hadn't come in at all; it was only drum machine all the way. And he was saying, 'Where's the down beat, where's the backbeat?' I said, 'The drums come in in a minute.' 'Yeah, you know that and I know that, but the kids don't know that; you've got to put the drums on earlier.' So we added some drums to the mix and put it out as a single."


TRACK LIST

Face Value (1981)
=================

01. In The Air Tonight
02. This Must Be Love
03. Behind The Lines
04. The Roof Is Leaking
05. Droned 
06. Hand In Hand
07. I Missed Again
08. You Know What I Mean
09. Thunder And Lighting
10. I'm Not Moving
11. If Leaving Me Is Easy
12. Tomorrow Never Knows
+
13. In The Air Tonight (Original 1981 7" Mix)
14. In The Air Tonight ('88 Remix)
15. In The Air Tonight ('88 Extended Version)
16. In The Air Tonight (Live 'The Secret Policeman's Ball' 1982)
17. The Roof Is Leaking (Live 'The Secret Policeman's Ball' 1982)

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