| SoundStage! Music Online Editor's Pick
Archives March/April 2003 Misha Mengelberg Quartet - Four in One Musical Performance  This live-to-stereo-DSD recording is what we audiophiles want all
SACDs to sound like. The musicians -- Misha Mengelberg on piano, Dave Douglas on trumpet,
Brad Jones on bass, and Han Bennink on percussion -- are sonically portrayed with great
vividness and a complete lack of electronic haze. Douglas' trumpet has the perfect amount
of bite, and the piano wafts through the soundstage with supreme clarity. You'll need to
goose the volume more than usual, but this will help you admire the wide dynamic range of
this SACD all the more. The music is inventive and inspired, all of it composed by leader
Mengelberg or Thelonious Monk, not the sleep-making jazz found on all too many audiophile
recordings. This is one of the very best-sounding SACDs you can buy, which makes it one of
the best-sounding recordings, period....Marc Mickelson
Best of Bowie Musical Performance  This two-disc DVD-V compilation culls almost 50 of David Bowie's
music videos and live performances -- from the early '70s to the late '90s. You'll find
all of the MTV-approved fare, such as "Let's Dance" and "Modern Love,"
along with videos done for Bowie's earlier and more recent albums, some of which weren't
shown much or at all in the US. More than any other rock star of his era, David Bowie was
a visual spectacle, so he translates very well to such a comprehensive video set. Best
of Bowie lends itself to beginning-to-end viewing -- perhaps over a couple of
sittings, however, because the running time is in excess of four hours. Even though the
more recent videos on disc two don't hold up nearly as well as the vintage material on
disc one, Bowie is forever watchable, not just because of his clothing and makeup but also
his persona(s) and presence. You can't call him a rock chameleon -- he didn't blend into
what was going on around him, preferring instead to define the cutting edge.
Philosophizing about David Bowie is easy, but as this set proves, pinning him down is
hard. The image quality is impressively crisp, and the sound is the same. Both befit a
deluxe A/V greatest-hits package....Marc Mickelson
Copyright © 2003 SoundStage! |
