LATEST ADDITIONS

Carla Bley, Andy Sheppard, Steve Swallow: Andando el Tiempo
ECM 2487 (CD). 2016. Manfred Eicher, prod.; Stefano Amerio, eng. DDD. TT: 47:19
Performance ****½
Sonics *****

Resistance is futile. From the moment she dropped out of high school in Oakland, California and headed for New York, nothing was going to stop Karen Borg, the daughter of a church organist, from evolving into one of the most influential jazz composers of her generation in her new identity as Carla Bley. While working as a hat-check girl at Birdland, she met the brilliant avant-garde pianist Paul Bley (1932–2016), married him in 1957, and kept the surname when, in 1964, they divorced. She began composing during that period, transforming the music she'd learned from her father into a jazz language rooted in the numinous depths of devotional music, but capable of the free expression absorbed from compatriots of her husband such as Ornette Coleman and Charles Mingus.

Stax Kogyo, a small audio company by Japanese standards, has been for the past 15 years steadfastly refining and redefining the electrostatic headphone. The SR-Lambda Pro is their current flagship model, and at a 1984 US list price of $780 it also represents a very substantial investment in headphone technology.

Before I visited the Bob's Devices booth in the Plaza ballroom, I was having a hotel breakfast with my runnin' buddy (and Stereophile's Deputy Editor) Art Dudley. We were speaking in whispers—plotting the overthrow of all governments—when a happy guy with facial hair, who I later found out was Bob Sattin of Bob's Devices, comes to our table and says he wants to show us a photo of a "modified record player"…

At 5pm on a Thursday, some Thursdays ago, Robert Baird and I embarked on a post-work record hunt in Brooklyn. More specifically, we explored Williamsburg, otherwise referred to as "Hipster Land" (footnote 1). Aside from being an all-round neat neighborhood, Williamsburg is also home to quite a few record shops. This trip, we decided to keep our stops to a minimum and focus on two of our favorites: Rough Trade (64 N 9th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11249) and Earwax Records (167 N 9th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211).

To hear the system demonstrated by The Voice That Is was to conclude, on the basis of that experience and previous experiences with systems put together by proprietor Doug White, that the man is utterly incapable of making bad sound…

I like the out-of-the-ordinary, possibly because I have been disappointed by the ordinary often enough that I'm not uncomfortable looking elsewhere. So I'll admit up-front that I was predisposed toward enjoying Larsen loudspeakers, from Sweden, which are designed to perform their best, not in an anechoic chamber but in a real room, when positioned up against a real wall. Even that bit of psychological preconditioning didn't prepare me for how impressed I was by the Larsen 8 ($7000/pair), driven by a GamuT Di150 integrated amplifier ($13,990), itself fed by a Pear Audio Blue Kid Howard turntable ($5000 w/tonearm) and an Ortofon Cadenza Black cartridge.

The opening-day buzz at CAF was all about the Mk.2 version of KEF's giant, chromed Muon loudspeakers. Styled by Ross Lovegrove, the Muon is like those concept cars we all love at the car shows—it had a big quotient of wow-factor—but everyone in the room knew they would never get to drive them home. But with the Muon, at least we could touch and listen.