LATEST ADDITIONS

Adam Kolker’s <I>Flag Day</I> (on the Sunnyside label) is a knotty pleasure. It may leave your head in a coil (take two tracks of hard bop to unwind), but ride with the twists while they’re winding; it’s a soft-toned heady trip. Adam Kolker, who plays tenor sax, soprano sax, and clarinet, is known mainly as a sideman, and he doesn’t try to get out in front of his bandmates on this session—John Abercrombie on guitar, John Hebert on drums, and the irrepressible Paul Motian on drums. I promised when I started writing this blog that I wouldn’t dwell excessively on any individual musician, but Motian is such a giant, I could write about him every day and not be rightly charged with excess.

The "Want to make an easy $1,000,000?" e-mail wasn't a scam from Nigeria but an alert from Paul DiComo, late of Polk Audio and now of Definitive Technology, about a double-blind cable-identification challenge made by The Annoying Randi, a magician and debunker of paranormal events who goes by the name of "The Amazing Randi."

After reviewing a long series of minimonitors, I am now working on what may well be an equally varied selection of large floorstanding loudspeakers. This trend began with <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/1207sonus">my review</A> of the Sonus Faber Cremona Elipsa in the December 2007 issue, and continues this month with the Series 2 version of the KEF Reference 207, until recently the flagship model from this English manufacturer (footnote 1). I <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/775">reviewed</A&gt; the original Reference 207 in February 2003, and was very impressed by what I heard.

At some point during my time with George ($499), I lost a neighbor. The IT guy who sat in the cubicle immediately outside my office suddenly wasn't around anymore. Weeks later, I learned that the music had been bothering him. It had been too loud, I suppose. Or there had been too much of it. I'm not sure. I started apologizing to people: "Sorry about the music. It's just that I've got this new radio in my office. It's a lot of fun. His name is George."

Beneath George's top panel, you'll find a list of his creators.

In addition to its coaxial speakers, George has a four-inch down-firing sub.

George's back panel offers an Aux input, headphone output, preamp output, USB port, and bass level control.