I was directed to this video via the <a href="http://twitter.com/stereophilemag"><i>Stereophile</i> Twitter page</a>, in a tweet from <a href="http://blog.bowers-wilkins.com/sound/formats/to-have-and-to-hold-vinyl-… & Wilkins</a>, who’d seen it first at <a href="http://www.audiophilia.com/wp/?p=4383">Audiophilia</a>. Moments after I’d watched the video, <i>Stereophile</i> contributor Jim Austin also sent me the link.
Balanced performance isn't the be-all and end-all of product design. A person can listen to a product which balances the highs with the lows, detail with forgiveness, delicacy with dynamics, and still feel unmoved. Such a product might sound "proper," but it won't produce the illusion of a live performance. It takes a special window or two on reality to convince you you're listening to live music. Such a loudspeaker may have other deficiencies which keep it from being a universally appealing product, but it keeps reminding you of the live experience. It may appeal only to a small number of audiophiles, but their experience may well be more intense.
And on Saturday, April 24th, Attention Screen performed at Yamaha’s Artist Services concert hall. The performance was recorded by John Atkinson for a future Stereophile CD, the band’s third, scheduled to be released at the 2010 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest in October. It was an excellent night of music. Check out the images in <a href="http://forum.stereophile.com/photopost/showphoto.php/photo/2232/size/bi… Gallery</a>.
There's a fantastic new two-SACD/CD set of a demonstration-quality live recording of a rather obscure work you really should get to know, not only for its own merits, but also for what I believe is its underappreciated but major influence on music and on popular culture. The piece is by 20th-century composer Arnold Schoenberg, but trust me—it's more than "listenable." It (or, at least, the music on the first disc) is beyond engaging; it is compelling—a revelation, even. The work is <I>Gurrelieder</I> (Songs of Gurre), Gurre being a castle in medieval Denmark that was the setting of a real-life doomed love triangle, the story of which has since loomed large in the moodily brooding artistic consciousness of Danes. The 19th-century Danish poet Jens Peter Jacobsen wrote a collection of poems based on medieval legends, including this one, and a German translation by Robert Franz Arnold provided Schoenberg's dramatic texts.
<B><I>The Incredible String Band</I></B><BR>
Hannibal HNCD 4437 (CD only). TT: 45:15<BR>
<B><I>The 5000 Spirits or The Layers of the Onion</I></B><BR>
Hannibal HNCD 4438 (CD only). TT: 50:06<BR>
<B><I>The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter</I></B><BR>
Hannibal HNCD 4421 (CD only). TT: 50:12<BR>
<B><I>Wee Tam & the Big Huge</I></B><BR>
Hannibal HNCD 4802 (2 CDs only). TT: 87:49<BR>
<B><I>Changing Horses</I></B><BR>
Hannibal HNCD 4439 (CD only). TT: 50:24<BR>
<B><I>I Looked Up</I></B><BR>
Hannibal HNCD 4440 (CD only). TT: 41:30<BR>
<I>All above:</I> Joe Boyd, prod.; John Wood, eng. AAD.
Not too many years ago, high-fidelity movement was being hailed from all quarters (and many halves) as a revolution. In the sense that it took the country storm, and made billions of dollars for many entrepreneurs during heyday, it was indeed a revolution. But now the public has grown tired of high fidelity and is turning other electronic diversions—video, video games, and computering. And what, as of this summer of 1982, do we have to show for the high-fidelity revolution?
The Vivian Girls’<br>
perceptive Cassie Ramone<br>
reads <i>Stereophile</i>.
Exactly six months after we’d seen them perform in Puerto Rico, at that strange island bar, Bamboo Beach (see “Records to Die For,” February 2010, pages 71-72), the <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/when_im_gone/">Vivian Girls</a> performed on Saturday night, this time so much closer to home, at Maxwell’s in Hoboken. I bought tickets for the whole crew—Rizzo, Fritzy, Papi Chulo, Fuzzy, and Tigga—so that, together again for the first time since that memorable trip, we could <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/what_happened_in_puerto_rico/… the magic</a>. We ate well, drank too much, laughed, danced, and sang along as the Vivian Girls burned through their energetic set.
Let's face it, keeping up with new music gets harder as we get older. If you're over 30, do you still buy new music?
I hate audio shows. All those manufacturers and retailers desperately demonstrating their products, knowing how impossible it is to do them justice in a hotel room. They might be saying, "It has gold-plated circuit boards and unobtainium binding posts," but all I hear is <I>Please love it, please love it, oh puhleeze . . .</I>