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.
April 2023
GoGo Penguin: Everything Is Going to Be OK
XXIM Records
Format: 24-bit/48kHz WAV download
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
February 2023
Palmetto Records PM2208CD
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
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.
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.
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.
January 2023
Curation Records
Format: 16-bit/44.1kHz FLAC download
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Uni Boys is a rock’n’roll quartet from Southern California whose crunchy, guitar-based power pop combines sophisticated songwriting with garage-band edginess. The group recorded two DIY albums that gained a following and impressed Los Angeles label Curation Records, which intended to give those recordings an official release. The group instead persuaded the label to release an album of new recordings, and Do It All Next Week hit streaming services a couple of months ago. Vinyl and CD releases will follow this month.
January 2023
Harrisonburg, Virginia, is a city of 52,000 in the Shenandoah Valley, about two hours from Washington, DC. Roughly an hour from Charlottesville, Virginia, where you can visit Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello, and another Jeffersonian attraction, the University of Virginia, Harrisonburg itself is home to two well-established colleges: James Madison University and Eastern Mennonite University. James Madison is a public university of over 21,000 students, while EMU is private and has about 1200 students.
Note: for the full suite of measurements from the SoundStage! Audio-Electronics Lab, click this link.
January 2023
If there’s a psychiatrist out there who wants to delve into the connection between weather and music, I’d be happy to lie on your couch. Deep in my Canadian psyche is the need to hear extremely buoyant–yet-meditative instrumental jazz on late-autumn days. Pianist Keith Jarrett’s 1973 album Solo Concerts: Bremen / Lausanne is the ideal way to scratch that itch. That stems from the first time I saw Jarrett in concert: a crisp, fall night in 1975, which gave way to an exceptionally snowy morning. I woke to it with his music still in my head.
December 2022
It was the year live music was supposed to be back. And it was, in some senses—although pandemic-related restrictions continued to play havoc with musicians’ travel and festival schedules, and artists continued to reflect on the theme of “What the hell just happened?”
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