And the winner is: 1999 remaster, but read the explanation. The waveforms don't tell the whole story here. The drums sound markedly better on the original compact disc release, but the bass levels are far better on the remaster. Bass-dominant tracks such as "The Guns of Brixton" and "Death or Glory" benefit the most from this. But in another, very important way, things sound worse on the remaster. I'm not talking here about the sound clarity and fidelity to the original recordings that comes from using the original late 1970s master tapes for the newer release, but rather the actual vibe and feel of the music and how it resonates with me as a listener. The remaster sounds tightly compressed and "boxed in," and in this respect it loses to the original CD when listening to volume matched samples of the same material. That being said, the sound of the original disc often feels thin and overly bright, and it has an decidedly overall feeling of lacking "heft" and "weight." This is a really tough one, because the effects of the compression on the remaster are clearly audible but its earlier counterpart just sounds "off," and the vinyl rips of this I've heard for comparison don't clearly favor one CD version over the other. I'm going with the remaster by a hair, but I may revisit this analysis later if my perspective changes.

On an unrelated side note, and though this may upset some, I absolutely detest the infusion of reggae and ska styles and rhythms into rock music. London Calling makes up nearly the entirety of the very tiny body of reggae or reggae-ish material that I have any liking for, being heavily steeped in a musical genre that I don't like at all and am tired of hearing incorporated into punk. As such, it stands as a very singular, unique exception when it comes to my musical tastes, though even then I'm only a fan of so much of it. Reggae - in my personal opinion - was responsible for having ruined the sound of many a promising or erstwhile great punk band, and The Clash are no exception in this respect (just compare "White Riot" to later crap like "Rock the Casbah"). These are just my two cents, and shouldn't be taken as some kind of indictment against anyone whose musical tastes don't happen to coincide with mine.