The Kinks

The Kinks – Party (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · November 2, 2023 · Comments off

The Kinks - Party (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

The Kinks were an English rock band formed in Muswell Hill, north London, in 1963 by brothers Ray and Dave Davies. They are regarded as one of the most influential rock bands of the 1960s. The band emerged during the height of British rhythm and blues and Merseybeat, and were briefly part of the British Invasion of the United States until their touring ban in 1965. Their third single, the Ray Davies-penned “You Really Got Me”, became an international hit, topping the charts in the United Kingdom and reaching the Top 10 in the United States.
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The Kinks – 60s Classics (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · November 2, 2023 · Comments off

The Kinks - 60s Classics (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

The Kinks – The Journey, Pt. 1 (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · April 25, 2023 · Comments off

Celebrating the Kinks 60th anniversary and compiled by The Kinks, this is a new, high-profile, worldwide release combining the Pye and RCA catalogues. It is the first new Kinks ‘best of’ for many years, especially so on vinyl.‘The Journey’ is a collection of tracks chosen by The Kinks’ Ray Davies, Dave Davies and Mick Avory that reflect the trials and tribulations of their journey through life together as a band since 1963.

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The Kinks – Muswell Hillbillies (Deluxe Version, 2022 Remaster) (1971/2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · November 7, 2022 · Comments off

How did the Kinks respond to the fresh start afforded by Lola? By delivering a skewed, distinctly British, cabaret take on Americana, all pinned down by Ray Davies’ loose autobiography and intense yearning to be anywhere else but here – or, as he says on the opening track, “I’m a 20th century man, but I don’t want to be here.” Unlike its predecessors, Muswell Hillbillies doesn’t overtly seem like a concept album – there are no stories as there are on Lola – but each song undoubtedly shares a similar theme, namely the lives of the working class. Cleverly, the music is a blend of American and British roots music, veering from rowdy blues to boozy vaudeville. There’s as much good humor in the performances as there are in Davies’ songs, which are among his savviest and funniest. They’re also quite affectionate, a fact underpinned by the heartbreaking “Oklahoma U.S.A.,” one of the starkest numbers Davies ever penned, seeming all the sadder surrounded by the careening country-rock and music hall. That’s the key to Muswell Hillbillies – it mirrors the messy flow of life itself, rolling from love letters and laments to jokes and family reunions. Throughout it all, Davies’ songwriting is at a peak, as are the Kinks themselves. There are a lot of subtle shifts in mood and genre on the album, and the band pulls it off effortlessly and joyously. Regardless of its commercial fate, Muswell Hillbillies stands as one of the Kinks’ best albums.

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The Kinks – Everybody’s in Show-Biz (Deluxe Version, 2022 Remaster) (1972/2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · November 7, 2022 · Comments off

The 1970s were not kind to the Kinks. While the band had already transitioned gracefully from their mod-ish British Invasion origins (and the heavy production thumb of Shel Talmy) into something more adventurous and artful with 1968’s The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, that masterpiece’s two iconic follow-ups (Arthur and Lola) found Ray Davies’ weird twin penchants for acidic lyricism and music hall song structures becoming more and more dominant in the group’s sound. By the time the 1971 soundtrack to Percy rolled around, U.S. audiences had all but forgotten about the band, who soon found themselves facing the same fate in their native England. And although Davies would delve further and further into high-concept theatricality (and deeper commercial irrelevance) with a series of four albums in the mid-70s, there was a brief interregnum in 1971 and 1972 when it looked as if the Kinks had seized upon a creatively successful way to synthesize all of their influences. While 1971’s Muswell Hillbillies is more often notched into various “Best Of…” lists, there’s a strong case to be made that its follow-up, Everybody’s In Show-Biz, does a much better job at showing off the band’s strengths at the time. To be sure, like nearly every Kinks album, this one has a couple of bafflingly dumb songs; “Maximum Consumption” is another list-of-foods song that is the mirror image of the equally stupid “Skin and Bone” (originally on Muswell, but also here in a live version), and “Motorway” is a song about … driving (with its own short list of foods one may eat while driving). While these dumb-but-lovely tunes are par for the course for a Kinks album, the more typical Kinks tunes here—”Supersonic Rocket Ship,” “Hot Potatoes” (someone please feed Ray Davies!)—are deceptively breezy, as their easy-rocking structures are played as wryly as their lyrics. A cut like “You Don’t Know My Name” shouldn’t be as good as it is, and it definitely shouldn’t be kicked into an even higher gear by an unexpectedly perfect flute solo in the bridge. Given the relatively higher level that most of the material here is working at, it shouldn’t be surprising that Show-Biz’s high points are some of the best songs the Kinks ever put to vinyl. And while the emotionally note-perfect sentimentality of “Celluloid Heroes” justifiably gets the lion’s share of attention, the sly and subtle “Sitting In My Hotel” is nearly as effective. Two reissues mark the album’s 50th anniversary. The Deluxe 2022 Remaster version is relatively spare when it comes to extras; of course the live set from the Muswell Hillbillies tour that was included in the original vinyl version appears intact, but beyond that, the bonus material is limited to just a couple of new mixes of “Celluloid Heroes.” The Legacy Edition features previously unreleased studio outtakes and more live cuts from their two-night stand at Carnegie Hall in March 1972. Still, this is an album that deserves to stand on its own, and does so remarkably well, even half a century later.

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The Kinks – Soundtrack from the film "Percy" (1971) [Vinyl Rip 24Bit/96Khz]

Vinyl Rips By admin · March 15, 2017 · Comments off

Ray Davies and company had already participated in one failed television musical when the movie Percy came along — it wasn’t as original as Arthur, nor did Davies have nearly as much to do with its creation, but he still outdid himself given the material at hand. Directed and co-produced by Ralph Thomas, who had been responsible for some brilliant thrillers (The Clouded Yellow, Above Us the Waves) and very popular comedies (Doctor in the House) in past decades, Percy was the story of the world’s first penis transplant (it was probably inspired, or at least justified, by big-budget efforts of the period like Myra Breckinridge). Although virtually unseen in the United States, it was still popular enough to yield a sequel (Percy’s Progress), but its real impact came from its soundtrack. Davies wrote some hauntingly beautiful ballads (“The Way Love Used To Be”) and some solid blues and country as well — “God’s Children” and “Animals in the Zoo” have turned up on some career anthologies, but there’s a lot more to Percy than those two tracks. “Completely” is as fine a slow blues as the band ever recorded, with a sizzling performance by Dave Davies, and “Dreams” is a pretty solid rocker, even up alongside “Animals in the Zoo.” To this day the album has never appeared in the U.S. catalogue — recorded at the tail end of their contract with Pye Records in England and Warner/Reprise in America, and connected with a movie that was never going to see much exposure in the U.S.A., Reprise passed on it at the time. Bruce Eder, allmusic. (more…)

The Kinks – Celluloid Heroes (1976) [SACD 2007] PS3 ISO

SACD / DSD By admin · March 15, 2017 · Comments off

Although they weren’t as boldly innovative as the Beatles or as popular as the Rolling Stones or the Who, the Kinks were one of the most influential bands of the British Invasion. Like most bands of their era, the Kinks began as an R&B/blues outfit. Within four years, the band had become the most staunchly English of all their contemporaries, drawing heavily from British music hall and traditional pop, as well as incorporating elements of country, folk, and blues. (more…)