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A Universe of Pop: Fleetwood Mac's Tango in the Night Features Meticulous Production, Includes the Hits 'Big Love,' 'Everywhere,' 'Seven Wonders,' and 'Little Lies'

Mobile Fidelity's Numbered-Edition Hybrid SACD of 1987 Album Captures the Perfectionist Details, Plays with Extraordinary Airiness and Clarity

The perfectionism involved in crafting Fleetwood Mac's Tango in the Night reached a level of intensity experienced by few artists before or since. Commercially and creatively, the painstaking efforts paid off. Recorded over the span of 18 months, the triple-platinum album spawned four hit singles and put Fleetwood Mac back at the center of mainstream conversation. It's demands also ultimately forced it's primary architect, guitarist-singer Lindsey Buckingham, to leave the group shortly after it's completion. Was it all worth it? A thousand times 'yes.'

Sourced from the original master tapes and housed in mini-LP-style packaging, Mobile Fidelity's numbered-edition hybrid SACD of Tango in the Night presents the 1987 record in audiophile sound for the first time. Everything co-producers Buckingham and Richard Dashut sought to instill in the music - the exacting tones, gauzy textures, plush atmospherics, shifted harmonics, unique pitches, pristine acoustics, biting rhythms - can now be heard with elevated accuracy, range, depth, and detail.

Made under challenging circumstances, Tango in the Night is as much a universe of sound as it is an album. This reissue conveys that sonic spectrum in exhaustive manners that go beyond prior editions by playing with a combination of transparency, imaging, openness, and dynamics that provides uncanny insight into the meticulously layered vocal and instrumental tracks. Equally important, it also amplifies your connection to the elaborate melodies, contagious hooks, and airy highs that account for the album's ageless pop brilliance.

As for the wondrous array of percussive accents, synthesizer elements, interlaced guitars, and lush chrouses - all seemingly occupying the exact right place amid the soundstages and taking on shapes and forms that lend them a living, breathing quality? If your audio system is up to the task, the realism, presence, and warmth of Mobile Fidelity's collectible edition will have you considering Tango in the Night from a new perspective - one that puts it's lavish, gorgeous creations on a par with those from Rumours and Tusk.

Unlike those records, Tango in the Night began from a more individualistic perspective in that it sprang from what originally was intended to become a Buckingham solo effort. Instead, it remains the final album credited to the peak Fleetwood Mac lineup involving Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, Chrstine McVie, Mick Fleetwood, and John McVie. Though the participation of all the members varies from track to track, the cohesive arrangements and alchemic production on Tango in the Night suggest a unity that remains on a par with the band's other landmark works.

Largely constructed from laborious methods that involved recording at half speed to achieve the desired sonics and tonal nuances, piecing together verses and choruses to attain seamless synchronicity, and Buckingham using a Fairlight CMI synthesizer/workstation in visionary ways, the songs pair electronic and acoustic elements to radiant effect. Tango in the Night also possesses light dance structures that resulted in several tunes being recast as dance mixes on extended-play singles. Above all, however, this is music that appears to float and cast dreamy spells.