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Details: Vinyl music

February 2024

Craft Recordings CR00683
Format: LP

Musical Performance

Sound Quality

Overall Enjoyment

In 1953, the original release of Jazz at Massey Hall on Debut Records listed Charlie Parker as “Charlie Chan.” Knowledgeable jazz fans probably knew that Parker’s common-law wife, Beverly Berg, was known as Chan Parker. They also might have recognized that the alto player pictured on the left side of the album cover was Parker, although the photo does not show his face. Parker was with another label and Debut could not release the album with his name listed on the cover.

Details: Pulse!

February 2024

Los Angeles real estate developer Paul Solomon was well established in the city when he began working on revitalizing a large office complex on Century Boulevard. The building is very close to Los Angeles International Airport, better known as LAX. Solomon decided to carve out an area in the 92,000 square feet available and put in a bar that would reflect his varied interests. “One of my passions is jazz,” Solomon notes on the website for the Sam First bar. “Another is architecture, another is photography. Those are my pictures all over the walls. As for the furniture, all the pieces that aren’t built-in are real vintage midcentury pieces, made by people like Herman Miller and Artemide.”

Details: Art+Tech

February 2024

After a slow start, typical winter weather finally arrived on the river south of Ottawa, Canada, sending me looking for some suitably restful music. Just as summer calls for songs related to open roads, surf, and sun, winter days demand ethereal sounds that carry me away.

Details: Uncategorized

January 2024

DBpm Records—DBPM 001-23-CD
Format: CD

Musical Performance

Sound Quality

Overall Enjoyment

Wilco has produced all of its own albums since its sixth release, Sky Blue Sky (2007), but for its 13th, Cousin, the Chicago-based band reached out to Welsh musician and producer Cate Le Bon. Earlier in 2023, Le Bon produced H. Hawkline’s Milk for Flowers, and she has also worked with Kurt Vile, Deerhunter, and many other musicians. Her own work often consists of highly experimental art-pop in which she leverages sound and studio effects to create unusual music that falls outside the mainstream.

Details: Pulse!

January 2024

I’ve been reading high-end audio mags for more than 25 years and collecting vinyl for more than twice as long. About 15 years ago, I began noticing the already high prices of the very best audio gear creeping up. A few years later, I began to wonder if reviewers were equating higher cost with greater enjoyment, especially when prices began to go from already high to there’s no way I or anyone I know can afford this stuff.

Details: CD music

December 2023

Rolling Stones Records / Geffen Records / Polydor 602458122565
Format: CD

Musical Performance

Sound Quality

Overall Enjoyment

When I heard the Rolling Stones were releasing a new album, just two years after Charlie Watts’s death, I was slightly underwhelmed and plenty cynical. Watts and Keith Richards had been the soul of the band—something Richards has stated often and emphatically. And I would have said that the last thing the world needed was another faded attempt at rock’n’roll by a group of old guys (and I’m speaking as another old guy).

Details: Pulse!

December 2023

Every November, around Thanksgiving Day, I move my holiday music collection into the living room. It takes some effort, because I have to shift a couple of CD storage shelves down to the basement and bring my seasonal CD collection upstairs. Then I bring the holiday LPs up from the basement, and they displace the records I’ve been playing recently. I don’t know how much of my holiday music ends up hitting my turntable or CD player from late November through early January, but it takes up a good bit of living-room real estate.

Details: Art+Tech

December 2023

I recently visited a twentysomething relative who works as a lawyer in a large city. Like many young professionals, she lives in a compact one-bedroom apartment, sacrificing living space for the downtown location. She has a large-screen TV, a small desk, and little room for anything else. One thing she does have is a vintage turntable, but it isn’t hooked up. For music, she streams through a Sonos speaker.

Details: Curator

November 2023

For a few years in the 1960s, the Byrds were a great American rock’n’roll band; maybe, the great American band. They popularized the 12-string electric guitar, sang in complex, indescribably beautiful harmonies, and did interpretations of Bob Dylan’s songs that even people who thought they didn’t like Dylan could love. The band’s first five albums stand easily beside the best music of the time, and members of the band wrote terrific songs with strong melodies that still sound fresh.

Details: Pulse!

November 2023

One of the best things about listening to and collecting music is that you get the chance to challenge old opinions and hear things with a fresh ear.

Details: Art+Tech

November 2023

One of my favorite comedians is a lesser-known Canadian performer named Ron James, who has a particularly wry way of looking at the world. Like me, he’s a man in his 60s, and some of his observations have me doubled over laughing. One I particularly like is his take on trends and Western humanity’s obsession with “the new.” In a cascading series of punch lines, he notes that things like the iPhone 11 in your pocket are not “old”; the Dead Sea Scrolls are old.

Details: Vinyl music

October 2023

Reveal
Craft Recordings CR00548
Format: LP

Musical Performance

Sound Quality

Overall Enjoyment

Accelerate
Craft Recordings CR00550
Format: LP

Musical Performance

Sound Quality

Overall Enjoyment

Drummer Bill Berry left R.E.M. in 1997, due to health issues. The group carried on as a trio for five more albums, bringing in other drummers for sessions and touring. Craft Recordings has reissued R.E.M.’s last four albums on vinyl, making them available in that format for the first time since their original release dates. I’ll be looking at the vinyl reissues of Reveal (originally released in 2001) and Accelerate (2008). Kevin Gray of Cohearent Audio cut the lacquers for the new pressings using Bob Ludwig’s digital masters, and the LPs were manufactured by Memphis Record Pressing.

Details: SoundStage! Encore

October 2023

On September 22, 2023, Canadian-singer Dominique Fils-Aimé released her fourth album, Our Roots Run Deep. This new album signifies the beginning of a new trilogy of albums for her, and it’s also the first time she’s released an album in Dolby Atmos, a music format she now loves.

Details: Pulse!

October 2023

As vinyl grows in popularity, Heinz Lichtenegger of Pro-Ject Music Systems, Harry and Mat Weisfeld of VPI Industries, Roy Hall of Music Hall Audio, and Roy Gandy of Rega Research must be pleased that they kept their faith in LPs and continued to manufacture turntables. Companies that had scaled back or even dropped their turntable lines are back in the game. Audio-Technica and Technics are making turntables for the audiophile market after years of sticking with DJ or entry-level ’tables.