Queen - A Kind Of Magic (1986, Remastered 2011)[DSD 2.0 1/2,8224 MHz | SACD-R]<Rock>

A Kind of Magic is the twelfth album by British rock band Queen, released in 1986..It was the band’s first studio album to be recorded digitally, and is based on the soundtrack to the film Highlander, the first in a series directed by Russell Mulcahy.
Although Queen would release another three albums with Freddie Mercury (including the posthumous Made in Heaven), A Kind of Magic would turn out to be the band’s last ever album promoted with a concert tour, because of Mercury’s diagnosis with AIDS the following year and his eventual death from AIDS in 1991. For the first time in their career, the band allowed filming of them while they were in the recording studio. The video for “One Vision” shows them in various stages of writing and recording the song.
A Kind of Magic reached #1 in the UK, selling 100,000 copies in its first week, and remained in the UK charts for 63 weeks. The album spawned three hit singles: the album’s title track “A Kind of Magic”, “One Vision” and “Friends Will Be Friends”. The sixth track on the album, “Who Wants to Live Forever”, features an orchestra conducted by Michael Kamen, while the last track, “Princes of the Universe”, is the theme song to Highlander.
Critical reaction to the album was mixed, but it has, in recent years, been cited by music publications and fans as one of Queen’s best records of the 1980s. The 1994 edition of the Guinness All Time Top 1000 Albums listed A Kind of Magic #171 in the all-time greatest rock and pop albums, and in 2007, Classic Rock ranked it the 28th greatest soundtrack album of all time. Estimates of the albums sales currently stand at fourteen million copies.

By the release of 1986′s A Kind of Magic, Queen’s stature as a prominent rock band in the U.S. had slipped considerably, while in all other parts of the world (especially Europe), they remained superstar hitmakers. A Kind of Magic was their biggest album yet in England, where it reached number one, remained on the charts for 63 weeks, and spawned several hit singles — the epic title track, the tuneful pop/rocker “Friends Will Be Friends,” and one of their most haunting ballads, “Who Wants to Live Forever” (also included was the Live Aid-inspired hit anthem “One Vision,” which was originally released as a single in 1985). Most of the songs were written for the movie Highlander — “Gimme the Prize (Kurgan’s Theme),” “Princes of the Universe,” the aforementioned “Who Wants to Live Forever,” etc. — but instead of issuing just a movie soundtrack, the band added a few non-movie tracks and made an official Queen release out of it. It may not have been as cohesive as some of their other albums, but A Kind of Magic was their best work in some time. Queen would embark on a sold-out tour of outdoor stadiums in Europe upon the album’s release, which would sadly turn out to be their final tour.