The Miracles - Love Crazy + The Miracles - Hybrid SACD

2020 reissue

Through a long and prolific period, the Miracles released 24 albums from 1961 to 1976 on the Motown record label, 11 of which were billed as “Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.” When Motown packed their bags and left Detroit, Smokey Robinson left to work with the label, and a few years later when their contract was up, the band ended up on Columbia Records. It was at this point in 1977 when Love Crazy and their 1978 self-title The Miracles were released.

Looking for a slightly new voice the band tried to become closer to the Isley Brothers, but that change didn’t yield any chart topping tunes. The five Miracles, Pete Moore, Ron White, Bobby Rogers, Billy Griffin, and his brother Donald wrote and produced everything giving fans a turn in the road from their past sound.

Vocallion Records has now returned to the CBS vaults and remastered the quad and stereo masters from their original analog mixes and spun them out on a new hybrid multi-channel SACD. The first album Love Crazy is available in both Quad and Stereo DSD, while the second album The Miracles is only available as Stereo DSD.

Depending on your preference for channel layout, quad enthusiasts may or may not find this mix which features bass in the back left and drums in the back right speakers to work for you. Those looking for surround activity the price of entry makes this disc worth it just for “Spy for Brotherhood” alone, exuding grand use of panning of instrument and sound effect around the quadscape.

Throughout the album the quad mix fills the room with audio bits popping up all around the sweet spot, continually engaging the aural senses. Generally, the sound quality is high, as fans and collectors have come to appreciate from the albums Michael J. Dutton has remastered and released on Hybrid SACD.

This SACD also contains the couple of additional minutes of “Love Crazy Reprise” that wasn’t found on the original SQ Quad vinyl released back in the day, although found on the Q8 Quad 8-track. It is awesome that Vocallion has paid attention to this level of detail with the inclusion of this track.

The 1978 album “The Miracles” albeit in stereo only was never officially released in the United States, and certainly a nice bonus here. This single SACD containing two albums is another valuable release in the quad and hi-res reissues from Vocallion