Philips CitiScape Downtown
I’ve been curious about Philips’ new CitiScape Downtown headphones ($99) ever since reading Tyll Hertsens’ review, so I ran into Best Buy this afternoon and checked them out.
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Sight + Sound Gallery Opens in Atlanta, GA
Photo by Terrell Clark
Friday, May 11, at 5pm: Sight + Sound (Studioplex, G8, 659 Auburn Avenue, Old Fourth Ward, Atlanta, GA) hosts its grand opening as both a contemporary art gallery and high-end audio equipment retailer. The gallery will showcase artwork from local artists while exhibiting gear from T+A, Nordost, and Elipson.
Papa Grows Funk
Just the other evening, a friend, coworker and fellow old record enthusiast, Brian Laboe, and I were saddled up at our neighborhood watering hole, sipping overpriced craft beer and talking about funk bands from the 70’s which happens to be a passion we share.
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Video: Eric Chenaux, "Put In Music"
Eric Chenaux, at Casa del Popolo, Montreal, performing "Put In Music" from the beautiful album, Guitar & Voice.
Video: Neneh Cherry and The Thing, “Accordion”
My review of Neneh Cherry and The Thing’s upcoming album, The Cherry Thing, is scheduled to appear in our August issue. Last month, we heard the band’s version of Suicide’s “Dream Baby Dream.” Now we can check out the video for “Accordion,” a selection taken from MF Doom and Madlib’s 2004 album, Madvillainy.
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Quad Reference ESL-2805 loudspeaker
I gasped. An almost perfect 300Hz squarewave had appeared on the oscilloscope screensomething I had never before seen from a loudspeaker.
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It was the spring of 1982. John Crabbe, then editor of the British magazine Hi-Fi News & Record Review, and I had driven up to Quad's factory in Huntingdon, England. The ESL-63 electrostatic loudspeaker had been launched the previous summer, and we were to interview its designer, Peter J. Walker, for an article that would appear in the July 1982 issue of HFN/RR. Peter set up a pair of ESL-63s on wooden kitchen chairs, fed one of them a 300Hz squarewave, casually placed a mike before it, and showed us the result on the 'scope. "Of course, why should a speaker being able to reproduce a squarewave matter at all, hmmm?" he rhetorically asked us.
B.M.C. Audio Amplifier C1 integrated amplifier
B.M.C. Audio GmbH (the initials stand for Balanced Music Concept) designs its high-performance audio products in Germany, where the company was founded in 2009, and has them manufactured in its own wholly owned factory in China. The design team is headed by Carlos Candeias, whose earlier designs included a belt-driven CD transport for C.E.C. and, for Aqvox, a high-performance, current-gainbased, balanced phono preamplifier that's reasonably priced. These have won him a lot of attention, and made him something of a celebrity in certain sectors of the audiophile world.
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Loudon Wainwright III: a Biography in Song
Photo: Aiyana Elliott
Even when Loudon Wainwright III (left in photo with Ramblin' Jack Elliot) was a young man he was writing autobiographical songs, and his old themes of family, sex, and death resonate more deeply on his new record, Older Than My Old Man Now. He usually performs solo, armed with just an acoustic guitar or a banjo, but most of his recordings present more heavily produced versions of LWIII's music. When I chatted with LWIII in late April I wanted to explore that dichotomy and how those transformations take place.
Record Store Day 2012: The Haul
Steve Gritzan stands before the beautiful green gates of his shop, Iris Records, at 114 Brunswick Street in Jersey City, NJ.
Initially, I had planned on enjoying a low-key Record Store Day, visiting my local independent shop, Iris Records, and simply leaving it at that. But things never go the way I plan. The allure of J&R Music World in Lower Manhattan, just a short trip across the Hudson, was too great to resist. And if I was going to be in Manhattan, how could I not head over to In Living Stereo? The hi-fi shop was hosting an all-day event with live music, sales on used records, and free beer. It was my duty to attend. And, of course, In Living Stereo is just steps away from my very favorite record shop, Other Music, so I would have to drop by there, too.
Here’s what I picked up along the way: