LATEST ADDITIONS

Sometimes artists walk away from a final mix, heads shaking after a reluctant sign-off . . . This is essentially what British prog outfit Gentle Giant did with their 1973 LP In a Glass House.

I'm far too disorganized to have kept an accurate count, but I'm pretty sure that at this point in my life I have installed or adjusted well over 5000 phono cartridges. These days I work on three or four turntables in a typical week and have been doing that consistently for the last 40 years.

Music often brings me joy, awe, and, if I'm lucky, something close to transcendence, but it's not my only route there. A few years ago, on a sunny January day in Madrid's Prado museum, I went looking for Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights.

I believe that every question has only one right answer. And that most of us are pretty challenged when it comes to knowing what it is. I know I am. To redeem myself, I've devoted my life to thinking up dumb questions.

Earlier this year, I wrote two articles on record cleaning, in particular the ultrasonic kind. Some of the ideas I expressed were good and correct, like the choice of surfactant (Tergitol 15-S-9). Others, like the amount of Tergitol to use, were less well-considered.

Margaret Glaspy: I Am Both
ATO Records (auditioned as 24/192 FLAC). 2026. Joe Henry, prod.; Patrick Dillett, Thom Beemer, engs.; Chris Gehringer, mastering.

Believe it or not, there are still active shopping malls in the US—and at least one, Garden State Plaza in New Jersey, leases to a modern record store, The Sharp Notes. The notion is so retro it's almost quaint.