LATEST ADDITIONS

As I was saying a few days ago, Bobby Bradford’s rare appearance at the Jazz Standard last Saturday was one of the most bracing sets I’ve seen in a long time. In the early-to-mid ‘90s, New Yorkers could go hear this sort of jazz—exuberant, free, but highly disciplined music—almost every night at the Knitting Factory. Just about everyone in Bradford’s band on Saturday was a regular at “the Knit” in its heyday—David Murray on tenor sax, Marty Ehrlich on alto, Mark Dresser on bass, Andrew Cyrille on drums: an extraordinary band.

Whenever anyone marvels at the enormous Genesis II.5 loudspeakers in my house, I'm quick to tell them that the II.5 is the <I>smallest</I>, least expensive loudspeaker made by Genesis Technologies. In fact, the company makes two larger speaker systems, the $33,000 Genesis II and the $70,000 Genesis I (footnote 1).

The sixth annual Rocky Mountain Audio Fest had already closed when I finally had the time to stop by Reference Recordings’ booth to check out their latest mouth-watering HRx high-resolution master WAV file DVD-Rs. There I encountered Demian Martin, who, together with Ray Burnham, has produced the Auraliti (pronounced Aurality) disc player ($800).

One of my best sounds at RMAF was the room organized by Colorado dealer Audio Unlimited featuring the Emperor speakers from Canadian manufacturer Hansen Audio that had so impressed Jason Serinus at the 2008 RMAF. The three-way speakers were driven by Accuphase monoblocks sitting on Critical Mass Systems platforms, with the front end based on a Trans-Rotor turntable. I was drawn into the room by the full-range sound of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" and didn't leave for quite a while. Wes Phillips said it best in his CES 2009 coverage of the Emperor: "the music had me melting in my chair."

I listened to <a href="http://www.myspace.com/ducktailss">Ducktails</a&gt;’ <i>Landscapes</i> once&#151<i>once!</i>&#151and was disappointed by its apparent simplicity. I set it aside while many other albums came into my life and piled atop its strange, hot pink cover art.