Sandra Stay In Touch 2012 Deluxe Edition 2CD

THIS IS A REVIEW OF " SINGER SANDRA " ( FROM GERMANY ) CD CALLED " STAY IN TOUCH " . THIS ALBUM IS " FOR SURE " -- ONE OF SANDRA"S " BEST ALBUMS EVER " ! " STAY IN TOUCH " WAS PRODUCED BY " JONES & BLAKE " ( THIS IS " NEW " FOR SANDRA ) & IT WAS " MOST DEFIANTLY " THE " RIGHT MUSIC MOVIE " FOR " SINGER SANDRA " . THE MUSIC IS " FRESH, DIVERSE, & INNVOCATIVE " ! GERMAN SINGER " SANDRA " HAS " PRODUCED A " WINNER " WITH THE " STAY IN TOUCH ' ALBUM . THE" ALBUM IS " MUCH DIFFERENT " THAN " SANDR'A"S ALBUMS . AND IT"S ALSO " MUCH BETTER " !

The sound is a return to her breakout mid-80s synthpop solo records, including the return of Hubert KaH on backing counterpoint male vocals...like Kylie Minogue's 2000 back-to-pop comeback "Light Years", and with a more mature angle, like Kylie...Sandra's sorta-comeback comes at age 50 and her 10th solo album. I found her last 2 albums enjoyable...the darker, painfully personal, artful "Art Of Love" from 2007 (she wrote all the lyrics on that one), and 2009's strange American R&B/Latin (??) flavoured "Back To Life"...many people thought her career was dead in the water...but the German DJ/remix/production duo Blank & Jones decided to step in (intervention??) and fix her career...first with the AWESOME 2CD "So80s" compilation that takes her 80s 12" singles and keeps them in one place...then the new album...as much as I love her 2000's work, this thing is her best album since "Close To Seven" from 20 years ago...(?!?!)...scary. She did not write any of the songs though...producer/collaborator/one-time Cretu side-guy Jens Gad did 90% of them...but that's fine because it's one vision (not a hodgepodge of outside people), and like she's the singer in the Jens Gad/Hubert KaH Band...sounds like the logical next step after 1988's "Into A Secret Land", as if Enigma and "Paintings In Yellow" never happened, a blip in time skipped...

If you are a long time Sandra fan or a brand new one you will love this album. I was very late in hearing Sandra for the first time in 2004. I quickly added each of her albums to my collection. It is not often that you come across such an established artist and find that you love every single album in their career but that's how it turned out. Since then I have bought each CD as they were released. I have to say that hands down this is my absolute favorite. Both the original and the remix disc are amazing. If you are a fan of Sandra and a fan of 80's beats you will not be able to stop hitting repeat on this one.

wow this cd rocks . i am loving every song .i get 2 cd 1 original and the 2 u get extended version what can i say more that is is awesome. i dont to sound negative but i wish sandra dont mumble when she sing . I can hardly understand the words sometimes . I wanted u guys to know i am a true fan of sandra that why i bought the cd cause i like her music.

If you are a Sandra fan, this is a must have CD. She went back to her roots and this album has a very 1980's sound to it, which is a very good thing. All the songs are good and male backup vocals add a really nice touch. I highly recommend this new CD to any Sandra fan.

I should begin by saying that I've been a big fan of Sandra from the dawn of time... well, perhaps not that far back but certainly from the moment she exploded on the European music scene in '85. Also, by virtue of being a fan, I do own most of her albums on either vinyl, CD or both and, given that, naturally, I felt compelled to buy this (the latest of her) studio albums essentially as soon as it came out, despite the fairly long run of somewhat lackluster albums she's released over the past ten years. Nonetheless, by the same virtue, some bias on my part may be inevitable and thus the reader is forewarned to take this review with a grain of salt.Stay in Touch is an album produced by Blank & Jones and written (for most part) by Jens Gad, a long time collaborator with both Sandra (starting with Fading Shades) and (her now ex-husband) Michael Cretu (on the Enigma project), and by Hubert Kemmler (of Hubert Kah fame) who also provides the background vocals. The music on this album is, in a nutshell, Sandra/Gad's attempt to return to the up-beat tempo and sunnier days (of commercial success) she has enjoyed in the 80s and most of the 90s. Listening to the tracks on it, one cannot miss strong influences from her own work, going back to The Long Play [e.g. Kings and Queens lead-in is lifted straight out of (I'll Never Be) Maria Magdalena] but also some influences from that of others (at times I thought I detected hints of OMD, Duran-Duran, Erasure, Depeche-Mode, Pet Shop Boys, Alphaville, others (?!) well take your pick.) Certainly, Sandra has done her fair share of covers with Cretu/Gad as producers (The Wheel of Time comes to mind) or Gad as the sole producer (The Art of Love) but Stay In Touch breaks that pattern (of albums using covers as fillers) and is not merely a melee of previous or sampled work. Jens Gad has been in the music business long enough to know the pitfalls of sampling (in something pitched as new), and as such, the material included here is well mixed and massaged and molded into something that is, in fact, sufficiently original to stand on its own feet. In addition, Sandra's voice is as good as ever (Kemmler's too) and that helps keep everything together. Thus, as mentioned above, personally, I find the album as a whole quite enjoyable. Nevertheless, I do not think that Stay In Touch, is the pinnacle of Sandra's career, but by the same token, is not the low point either. Indeed, while it changes the direction set by the ill received (by most of her fans) "Art Of Love" (which essentially put her career on life support - so much so that her next album was aptly named "Back To Life,") stylistically, Stay In Touch does not match the impact of Sandra's early studio albums (The Long Play, Mirrors, or Into A Secret Land) nor does it come close, artistically, to Paintings In Yellow and even less so to what (in my opinion) remains Sandra's career high-mark: Close To Seven. While laden with catchy synth rhythms and acoustic effects and what not, the overall feel of Stay In Touch is one of urgency and sensory overload rather than (one of) deliberately crafted diversion. In addition, except for the last track, the similar, unbroken tempo throughout the album renders the whole thing a little monotonous. The lyrics are also somewhat of a strange choice. To start things off we have things like "one more time/ you put your arms 'round my waist/ feeling me..." from the title track, or "now I'm close to you/ tonight there's no taboo/ can you feel the fire burn..." from Moscow Nights, or "right here/ look in my eyes/ circle of hallucination/ feel me..." from Kings and Queens, or there yet "love me/ care and believe/ that's all I need/ feel me..." from Angels In My Head. (Are you beginning to) See a pattern there? Personally I do find these lyrics somewhat uninspired. Throw in a few photos of a wet Sandra on a beach and perhaps you can begin to see my puzzlement. I mean, on one hand we've seen a drop-dead gorgeous, every man's fantasy Sandra at thirty, pondering the meaning of life and love and pain and sacrifice and all that in Close To Seven, and on the other, here we see Sandra at fifty attempting what? - to channel a sexually repressed high-school teenager? (okay, I agree, the last part of this sentence is a little redundant.) Now, Jens Gad is fairly good when it comes to it (i.e. to producing music), but he's no Michael Cretu and, perhaps, considering the artistic direction he's tried, for instance, with The Art of Love and the single release from it: What Is It About Me, I'd say he's been trying pretty hard not to be (or, at least, not to be seen as a lesser replacement of Cretu). There (in The Art of Love) the intent seems to have been a complete reinvention of Sandra while recapturing or rather, retaining some of the mystery and sleek refinement of Enigma (with singing in various languages - Silencio A Mi Lado, anyone? and some fairly elaborate musical arrangements) but clearly that effort lacked Enigma's refinement and (I think) completely missed on the mystery (unless anyone thought that simply mentioning the word "zombies" in All You Zombies would instantly lend that song a veil of mystique.) The next attempt at reinventing Sandra (i.e. Back To Life) was an even bigger failure, more akin to a kiss of death for Sandra's career than a shot in the arm. Add to this the strange cover art, which (in The Art of Love) looked straight out of Kama-Sutra (which at best tried to portray Sandra as a high end Oriental call-girl) or the downright dreadful "mug-shot" like photo of an angry looking Sandra on the "Back to Life" album cover and by all measures, the reset or return to the beginnings with Stay In Touch may very well feel like a breath of fresh air, while (one might add) also amounting to an implicit admission of failure (by Gad/Sandra) in most, if not quite all of their previous endeavors.Technically, the CD is somewhat of a letdown especially when auditioned with headphones. The dynamic range is fairly compressed, and that, at times, is rendering the whole listening experience similar to one of watching TV commercials. With a good headphone amp and decent headphones (my setup: C-7030 cd-player/MacBook Pro - XMOS USB 2.0 Reference Design Aynchronous DAC, Matrix M-Stage headphone amp/ Audio-Technica ATH-A900 closed headphones/ Sennheiser HD-598 open headphones) the distortions due to (soft) clipping are readily and annoyingly audible. From this point of view, the second CD (which contains some extended versions of the tracks) is the worse of the two. These issues become less objectionable when auditioned in speakers, although the lack of variation in the output level leaves the sound feeling devoid of nuance (i.e. the sound has but one quality - it's loud). For some reason I expected more from Blank & Jones (it was perhaps the good reviews about their mastering I've read somewhere else) but they just appear to be following the general trend of excessive dynamic range compression so pervasive in the industry nowadays.To conclude, while no heavy fare, stylistically or artistically, I think that Stay In Touch achieves its primary goal - that of resetting Sandra's career by delivering something that has been known to work for her (vis-a-vis of commercial success.) Nonetheless, the album seems to have been crafted to appeal to a younger generation (rather than to the more typical Sandra fan, such as myself) and that, considering the obvious challenges any singer of Sandra's age may have connecting with a younger generation of fans, may yet prove to have been a flawed gambit. Personally, while I've enjoyed listening to Stay In Touch well enough, I'd much rather have liked to see Sandra go in the direction she was moving two decades ago with Paintings in Yellow and Close to Seven. Overall I'd rate this as a good effort that could have been mastered/recorded a little better, so all in all - 4 star.

Sandra's best new album since "Paintings In Yellow". Awesome 80's sounds thanks to Blank & Jones. Hope she stays with them.

If you like 80s music and trance music, you'll like this cd. It features great Sandra's voice with great trance mix from B&J. It's great!

Says it's the deluxe version and it is not!!!!

Uno dei più bei dischi di questa bravissima e meravigliosa artista tedesca Sandra... che ha fatto come un passo indietro nel tempo ed ha rievocato le meravigliose atmofere degli anni 80, con un arrangiamento decisamente più moderno ed attuale. Bellissime e ballabilissime Stay in touch, Moscow nights, Maybe tonight... Dolcissime le ballads come Heart of wax, Infinite kiss...Un disco che non deve mancare nella collezione dei fans di Sandra, e che non deluderà neanche quello più esigente.Voto 10.

Un excelente disco, con un sonido moderno, además de muchos guiños a sus éxitos de los años 80.

アラベスクのファンなので購入しました。サンドラの声が好きです。良い曲が沢山有りました。

Il est rare que je fasse un commentaire sur un CD. Mais cet album sort vraiment du lot. Sandra qui s’était un peu perdue dans les années 2000, nous fait un retour plus qu'à la hauteur. Elle fait à nouveau du Sandra aux sonorités délicieusements 80's avec son choriste de l'époque. A la première écoute cet album laisse un avis mitigé. Mais au fur et à mesure des écoutes, on s’aperçoit qu'il est bien supérieur à la première impression qu'il avait laissé.Hormis un titre que je n'aime pas parce que trop lent (Sun In Disguise), le reste de l'album est devenu à ma surprise une vraie drogue que j'écoute désormais en boucle. Au vue de la production musicale actuelle, il est rare pour être souligné qu'un album contienne 10 titres excellents sur 11 alors que la plupart des autres en contiennent beaucoup moins de valable.Un titre sort vraiment du lot : Love Starts With A Smile. Il est une vraie réussite. Il lui faudrait un peu de promo et pourrait devenir le nouveau tube de Sandra des années 2010. A noter que pour quelques euros de plus la version 2 CD est un vrai plus avec ses versions longues qui font durer encore le plaisir que je conseille vivement. Bref cet album est une vraie réussite et la collaboration avec Blank & Jones permet un retour vers le haut de Sandra. Il est devenu pour moi l'un des meilleurs albums de Sandra désormais, moi qui pensait qu'elle aurait du mal à revenir sans Michael Cretu.J'espère qu'il y aura d'autres albums avec Blank & Jones aux commandes : je les prends tout de suite !