#59: Heaven 17 / Penthouse and Pavement SDE exclusive blu-ray audio

"The best it has ever sounded" - B.E.F & Heaven 17 co-founder Martyn Ware

Heaven 17's debut album Penthouse and Pavement is now available to pre-order on SDE exclusive blu-ray order, newly remixed in Dolby Atmos, 5.1 and stereo by David Kosten.

The album features the singles '(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang', 'Play to Win', 'Penthouse and Pavement' and 'The Height of the Fighting' and as well as being commercially successful (it was a top 20 hit and remained in the top 100 for 77 weeks) the record was almost universally critically acclaimed. 

In newly commissioned sleeve notes for this edition, The Guardian's head rock and pop critic, Alexis Petridis, says: "45 years on, Penthouse And Pavement remains a landmark, the kind of album documentaries have been made about, a high watermark from one of pop’s greatest eras, the perfect encapsulation of the surfeit of ideas and innovations that flowed through British pop in the post-punk period"

David Kosten, who in recent times has impressed immersive audio fans with stunning Atmos Mixes of Propaganda's A Secret Wish, Fine Young Cannibals' The Raw and the Cooked and Thompson Twins' Into The Gap, has worked his magic on Penthouse and Pavement, rebuilding the album in stereo from the original analogue multi-track tapes and then creating highly immersive Dolby Atmos and 5.1 Surround Mixes allowing all the cutting-edge technology from 1981 and the dancefloor-focused rhythms room to breath in three dimensions. David's new stereo mix is also fantastically dynamic and unlimited.

Martyn Ware, whose interest in immersive audio goes back 20 years, attended approval sessions in person at Kosten's West London studio was bowled over, saying that in Atmos the album was "the best it has ever sounded".