LATEST ADDITIONS

As I started to write this review, the news broke that Sound United, the owner of Boston Acoustics, Bowers & Wilkins, Classé, Definitive Technology, Denon, Marantz, and Polk, was going to be purchased by a corporation that makes medical instruments. Such consolidation is not new. China- and UK-based International Audio Group (IAG) was one of the first organizations to acquire iconic audio brands. IAG owns Audiolab, Castle, Quad, Leak, Mission, and Wharfedale. In 2009, they purchased Luxman.

Oswalds Mill Audio's products espouse a sort of steam-punk-meets-modern visual style, but the company's philosophies are straight from hi-fi's '50s and '60s glory days, an era when idler-drive turntables, low-power tube amps, and horn-loaded loudspeakers were the norm. That history and hi-fi's future fascinate and inspire Jonathan Weiss, OMA's proprietor.

John Mellencamp: Strictly a One-Eyed Jack
Republic (16/44.1 stream, EMI/Qobuz). 2022. John Mellencamp, prod.; David Leonard, eng.
Performance ****
Sonics ****

You might think an artist with 22 Top-40 hits would identify his winning formula and stick with it. Instead, John Mellencamp's long career has been a tale of determined development and often improvement. On his latest album, the 70-year-old Indiana native has nestled deeper into his rural Midwestern roots, eschewing rock defiance for folk philosophy. The result is a powerful baring of the soul, which, to many Americans, will also be a glance in the mirror.

Mendelssohn: Violin Sonatas, The Danish National Vocal Ensemble, Marcus Creed, Cond.: Lux Aeterna, Bruckner: Symphony No.2 and Marcel Zaes: Parallel Prints.

Harold Mabern: Mabern Plays Coltrane, Paul Jost Quartet: While We Were Gone and Various Artists: Buena Vista Social Club 25th Anniversary Edition.

Celebrated New York City–based jazz drummer Billy Drummond recalls his first visit, with the group OTB ("Out of The Blue"), to the Mount Fuji Jazz Festival in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan. It was 1988. The Festival's elite drummers ranged in age from 69 (Art Blakey) to 26 (Ralph Peterson). In between were Roy Haynes, Tony Williams, Clifford Barbaro, Victor Lewis, Lewis Nash, Kenny Washington, Cindy Blackman—"and me," Drummond told me, by phone.

One day in the mid-1990s, my friend J and I sat sprawled on the carpeted floor of a hi-fi shop in lower Manhattan, playing records. J, who was employed there as a salesperson, had dimmed the lights and locked the door of the listening room behind us to make sure we wouldn't be disturbed by actual customers. Earlier, he had lugged in a pair of homemade speakers that an elderly woman brought to the store, hoping to sell some of her late husband's gear.