Some Guy's Top 1000 Albums

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240: FOR YOUR PLEASURE | ROXY MUSIC

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Wiki: For Your Pleasure is the second album by the English rock band Roxy Music, released by Island Records in 1973. It was their last to feature synthesizer and sound specialist Brian Eno, who would later gain acclaim as a solo artist and producer.

The group was able to spend more studio time on this album than on their debut, combining strong song material by Bryan Ferry with more elaborate production treatments. For example, the song "In Every Dream Home a Heartache" (Ferry's sinister ode to a blow-up doll) fades out in its closing section, only to fade in again with all the instruments subjected to a pronounced phasing treatment. The title track fades out in an elaborate blend of tape loop effects. Brian Eno remarked that the eerie "The Bogus Man", with lyrics about a sexual stalker, displayed similarities with contemporary material by the krautrock group Can.

Of the more upbeat numbers on the album, "Do the Strand" and "Editions of You" were both based around insistent rhythms in the tradition of the band's first single "Virginia Plain". "Do the Strand" has been called the archetypal Roxy Music anthem, whilst "Editions of You" was notable for a series of ear-catching solos by Andy Mackay (saxophone), Eno (VCS3), and Phil Manzanera (guitar).

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Eno is very present in the final song from the album, "For Your Pleasure" making it unlike any other song on the album. The song ends with the voice of Judi Dench saying "You don't ask. You don't ask why" amid tapes of the opening vocals ('Well, how are you?') from "Chance Meeting" from the first Roxy Music album. A live recording of the song has been used in 1975 as a B-side to "Both Ends Burning".

The original UK LP cover credits "Produced by Chris Thomas and Roxy Music" for the entire album, but only the side one label repeats that; the side two label credits "Produced by John Anthony and Roxy Music." Various foreign editions and reissues have confused the matter with random variations.