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An Interview with Mastering Engineer Kevin Gray
June 2023
It’s hard to think of a currently active mastering engineer whose initials appear on more LP lead-out grooves than Kevin Gray’s. He cuts the lacquers for Blue Note’s Tone Poet and Classic Vinyl series, as well as for rock recordings released on vinyl by Intervention Records. He also remasters vinyl reissues for some of Concord’s Craft Recordings reissues, including the newly resurrected Original Jazz Classics series. And that’s just a sampling of his current work.
Three Distinctive Voices Flow through the Pro-Ject MaiA DS3 Stereo Integrated Amplifier
Note: for the full suite of measurements from the SoundStage! Audio-Electronics Lab, click this link.
June 2023
If you caught last month’s column, you’ll know that one of the recordings I featured was Van Morrison’s signature major-label debut, Astral Weeks. I noted that—typically for a pop recording in the late 1960s—the recording setup was pretty basic. Morrison’s voice is centered in the soundstage, and there appears to have been little or nothing altered in post-production. One consequence is that Morrison occasionally sounds slightly off-mike. Having seen Morrison perform several times, I expect those off-mike incantations were deliberate.
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Van Morrison: “Moving On Skiffle” | Joe Lovano: “Our Daily Bread” | Carmell Jones: “The Remarkable Carmell Jones”
May 2023
Van Morrison: Moving On Skiffle
Exile / Virgin Music 2448191410
Format: CD
Musical Performance
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If you’re a Van Morrison fan, you get used to the singer’s crankiness, but he probably pushed a little too hard on two recent outings—Latest Record Project, Volume 1 (2021) and What’s It Gonna Take? (2022). Van was mad that he couldn’t tour because of the COVID-19 pandemic and went after everyone from government officials to the media. He released the first album during the worst of the pandemic and received some blowback; some of it deserved, some unfair.
An Interview with Producer Joe Harley
May 2023
If you want a good example of vinyl’s healthy return as a format, take a look at Blue Note’s Tone Poet reissue series. Jazz lovers have embraced it, despite the slightly higher costs. The Tone Poet LPs are mastered to an audiophile standard and the packaging reflects the care everyone has taken in presenting the great Blue Note and Pacific Jazz titles in the series. The covers are made of heavy cardboard, with tipped-on, laminated artwork prepared by Stoughton Printing. Most of the covers are gatefolds, with photos from the original sessions. Record Technology Incorporated, one of the best vinyl plants in the world, presses the 180gm LPs.
How Good Can the Focal Utopia Headphones Make Remarkable Recordings Sound?
May 2023
For most of my “Art+Tech” columns so far I’ve led with the music. More often than not, I’ve used the art to see how well a piece of technology can reproduce it.
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GoGo Penguin: “Everything Is Going to Be OK” | Vince Mendoza and the Metropole Orkest: “Olympians” | En Attendant Ana: “Principia”
April 2023
GoGo Penguin: Everything Is Going to Be OK
XXIM Records
Format: 24-bit/48kHz WAV download
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
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GoGo Penguin’s new album, Everything Is Going to Be OK, arrived April 14 on CD, LP, and download, about nine months after the band’s EP Between Two Waves was released. Like that EP—the band's first record since moving to Sony’s XXIM Records—the LP features the band’s new drummer, Jon Scott, and integrates the occasional synthesizer in the mix. The trio has used studio technology to alter and process its sound in the past, but now it has embraced electronic keyboards to help it move in some new directions.
Looking Back 50 Years with Wadada Leo Smith and the NAD C 3050 LE Integrated Amplifier
Note: for the full suite of measurements from the SoundStage! Audio-Electronics Lab, click this link.
April 2023
Composer Wayne Shorter died on March 2 this year, at the age of 89. Along with the release of a massive, career-capping biography of fellow saxophone giant Sonny Rollins, this is a landmark—the symbolic end of a jazz era studded with remarkable iconoclasts. Miles. Monk. Trane. Wayne. Sonny. We all know their unique sounds; hearing them in our heads as soon as those single names pass the lips.
James Brown, Curated
April 2023
“James Brown was born to lose. He refused to accept that fate.” Those words begin the biography of the Godfather of Soul included in the booklet that accompanied Star Time (1991), a four-CD anthology that presents a comprehensive overview of Brown’s career. Harry Weinger and Cliff White continue the story: “Brown was determined to be Somebody. He called himself ‘Mr. Dynamite’ before his first Pop hit, and ‘The Hardest Working Man in Show Business’ before the business knew his name.”
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Ralph Towner: “At First Light” | Ralph Alessi Quartet: “It’s Always Now”
March 2023
Ralph Towner: “At First Light”
ECM Records / Universal Music
Format: 16-bit/44.1kHz WAV download
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Ralph Alessi Quartet: “It’s Always Now”
ECM Records / Universal Music
Format: 16-bit/44.1kHz WAV download
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Although ECM Records has released its share of music by European jazz musicians, the label has also given exposure to American musicians since it was established by Manfred Eicher in 1969. The label’s first release was pianist Mal Waldron’s Free at Last (1970). Keith Jarrett’s solo piano recordings for the label increased his popularity and ensured the label’s financial viability, and his Standards Trio recordings with ECM reaffirmed his place in the jazz pantheon. Pat Metheny, John Abercrombie, Charles Lloyd, and Peter Erskine all made fine recordings for ECM.
Vinyl's Growing (or Not Growing) Pains
March 2023
I’m on the email list for the writer Ted Gioia, who maintains a Substack blog publication called The Honest Broker. Gioia’s list of accomplishments is long—he is a music historian whose many books, including The History of Jazz (in its third edition as of 2021) and Music: A Subversive History (2019), are well regarded. Gioia has also written many music reviews, and, for a time, owned a record label. His fiction reviews are also well worth reading, but they seem to have migrated to The Honest Broker, which is a pay site.
Vintage Improvisation Meets Contemporary Elac Debut ConneX DCB41 Powered Speakers
March 2023
This is a story about creativity, power, and choice. It’s also about breaking from what’s expected and taking a risk in new territory.
Fred Hersch & Esperanza Spalding: "Alive at the Village Vanguard"
February 2023
Palmetto Records PM2208CD
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
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Esperanza Spalding is a genre-defying musician with a strong foundation in jazz. Fred Hersch is a pianist and composer with an extensive discography as leader and sideman. His playing shows great sensitivity and beauty, and he brings a unique interpretive touch to the work of other composers. He asked Spalding to join him at the Village Vanguard for four nights in October 2018. He assumed she would be playing bass, but instead Spalding chose to focus on singing, with Hersch accompanying.
Experience "Xperience" Anew
February 2023
Music is the reason for high-end audio. I still recall the first time I heard music on something that was better quality than the stereo console my parents owned. When I was in high school, I knew a keyboard player who worked part-time in an electronics supply shop. He convinced the owner, who might have been his dad—we’re going back quite a few years so the details are a bit fuzzy—to let him set up an audio shop in a section of the store.
For the Love of Sound: Kenny Barron and the RME ADI-2 DAC FS
Note: for the full suite of measurements from the SoundStage! Audio-Electronics Lab, click this link.
February 2023
When the user’s manual for a desktop DAC has 68 pages—68 pages of very small type—you know you’re not dealing with just another digital-to-analog converter. At $1299 (all prices in USD), RME’s ADI-2 DAC FS isn’t priced like most of its competitors, either. I slid it into the place normally filled by my $199 iFi Audio Zen DAC V2, between my iPad Pro and my Focal Alpha Evo 50 studio monitors.
