LATEST ADDITIONS

Tuesday&#150Thursday, August 21–23, 7:30pm: In celebration of John Cage’s 100th birthday, The [kāg] ensemble will perform Kevin James’s 100 Waltzes for John Cage at the DiMenna Center, Mary Flagler Cary Hall (450 West 37th Street, New York).

Inspired by Cage’s 49 Waltzes for the Five Boroughs, for which a score was created by randomly selecting 147 locations on a New York City map, James’s work is said to answer the question, “What would Cage have done with the advanced technologies that have shaped our ever-expanding information age?”

I'd like to think he'd have thrown them out the window and made a score from their shattered bits and pieces. Kevin James, it seems, feels similarly:

Back when the CD was a pup, I used to hear people say, "I refuse to buy a CD player until they can record." Ha ha, I thought, smart-ass audiophile that I was, they're gonna wait for a long time—that's never gonna happen. I was half right—it has been a long time coming. But I was also, as my football coach used to insist, half-fast. "Never" has arrived.

Owning a powerful tube amplifier is like owning a classic automobile. Great pleasure may be had, but ownership involves a little more care and maintenance than usual.

Jadis, an audiophile company specializing in all-tube amplifiers and operating out of a small French town, has enjoyed a good reputation for some years, even if some of its models have suffered from the reliability problems that occasionally afflict the largest tube amps. Another problem area is that of power consumption and heat output. In common with class-A amplifiers and high-bias A/B types, including solid-state models, larger tube amps give off substantial heat. The Defy-7's 240W idling consumption may or may not be welcome, according to your location and the season.

Lenny Abramov thought he found immortality in Eunice Park, the woman who gave him the will to live. He thought he found it in his job, where he sweat endlessly soaking through his acrylic shirts while mindlessly serving Joshie, a back-stabbing “friend”. Eunice would leave him too. In fact, the only true happiness Abramov ever found and returned to were the sounds of his mother and father’s native Russian tongue, their coddling words and thick, laborious accents. In their speech, he could reconnect to the compassion they shared, the basketball they played, and his basement bedroom. Abramov’s parents were the only thing he had, until they died. He was left with bells “tolling, deep and sonorous and thoroughly Russian.” Lenny never chose his parents. He never chose their boundless affection. It was the sound of bells at their deathbeds that reminded him he was loved.

Most audiophiles know Mobile Fidelity as the record company with the philosophy of resurrecting old, important, recorded performances and re-releasing them with (hopefully) the kind of sound they should have had in the first place. Few audiophiles are aware that Mobile Fidelity is also the name of a (different) recording company which collects sound effects in four channels for motion picture and television post-production.

Cosmogramma, Flying Lotus’s adventurous 2010 release felt, and still feels, like a sonic joy ride, a fusion of jazz, pop, funk, and electronic music styles. Complex, playful, and sophisticated, Cosmogramma conjures 8-bit video games and Saturday morning cartoons as much as it does 1950s sci-fi, 1970s Impulse jazz, 1990s house&#151all while sounding entirely advanced, connected, soulful.

How do you follow up something like that?

It had been many years since Stephen or I had been to Irving Plaza, but an invitation from Klipsch would grant us another encounter. Performances that evening included neo-punk new wave group the Tom Tom Club featuring Tina Weymouth (bass) and Chris Frantz (drums), both of the Talking Heads, opening for headliner the Psychedelic Furs, a band iconic for their soundtrack chart-topper “Pretty in Pink”.

In a partnership with Live Nation, Irving Plaza, a Live Nation-owned venue, redubbed itself “Irving Plaza Powered by Klipsch” as we discovered on the billboard under the marquee.