Stevie Wonder 1976
Director: N/A Starring: Stevie Wonder
By 1976 Stevie Wonder was a thoroughly mature musician, having utterly mastered his craft. It had been several years since he’d seized control of his artistic output, and the result had been a series of hit albums and singles. Incredibly—as this, his eighteenth original album, was launched—he was still just 26 years old.
‘Songs in the Key of Life’ hit number one on the US pop charts, ultimately attaining ‘Diamond’ certification; sales of at least ten million actual units.
Originally a double album on vinyl with seventeen songs, a foursong EP was included with a ‘Special Edition’ release. All twenty-one are included on this disc. The range is wide from the pop-like ‘Isn’t She Lovely’ and ‘Sir Duke’, to the funky ‘Black Man’, to the unusual instrumentation of ‘ Have a Talk with God’ and the haunting ‘Pastime Paradise’ (which later became the basis for Coolio’s hit ‘Gangsta Paradise’).
By 1976 recording technology, while still analogue in the popular music field, was extremely good. Wonder’s voice sounds exceptionally natural. At times he could have been standing between my loudspeakers. The tonal balance is good, with a solid bass line, sometimes extending surprisingly deep.
It’s clear that this is a clean transfer to 24-bit/96kHz PCM from the analogue tapes. It doesn’t have the characteristic ultrasonic noise profile of DSD. Sampling a few songs suggests that the natural frequency balance is carried up to around 16–18kHz, with an increasing fall-off beyond that, with some output (likely inaudible, given its low level) to around 24kHz. You can argue—and some do—about whether this is truly high-resolution audio. But what’s important is that this Blu-ray seems to capture every tiny bit of information from the source, and you can’t really do more than that. You can choose between LPCM, Dolby True HD and DTS-HD Master Audio.
As seems to be the standard with these ‘Pure Audio’ discs, the screen is basically static, with cover art, track and audio format selection. Track selection is by number, not by title. There are no titles at all on the OSD, nor lyrics. You do get a nice 28-page booklet with all the lyrics, but it seems such a waste not to provide them on the screen, along with the ability to select ‘Pastime Paradise’ for playback without having to know that it is track number 8.