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Focal Chorus 826W 30th Anniversary Edition loudspeaker

Does spending more money on audio equipment get you better sound? Some audiophiles assume that anything that costs more must be better—and that if it's relatively inexpensive, then it can't be any good. Others hold the opposite view: expensive components can't possibly be worth their prices, and those who manufacture them—and audio journalists who report on them—must be charlatans.

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Henry Threadgill, old and (perpetually) new

Henry Threadgill should be better known than he is. A topnotch musician on alto sax and flute, one of the more innovative composers in jazz, a veteran of the Chicago avant-garde and a revivalist of ragtime improvisational styles (the two are not so contradictory, as he was the first to demonstrate), Threadgill started out on small labels, briefly landed contracts at RCA Novus and Columbia during their brief flirtations with experimentalists (in the late ‘80s and mid ‘90s, respectively), then went back to the indies—all the while retaining, even advancing, his spirit of adventure and his restless but disciplined innovation.

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Saturday Night at the Monkeyhaus, Part II

The self-titled album by Guano Padano, released earlier this year by Important Records, is a joy. The band, an Italian three-piece (Alessandro Stefana, Zeno de Rossi, and Danilo Gallo), is joined by Alessandro Alessandroni (whistler, best known for his work in Ennio Morricone’s soundtracks), Gary Lucas (Captain Beefheart/Jeff Buckley guitarist), Chris Speed (clarinet player with Tim Berne, Uri Caine, and John Zorn), and Italian singer, Bobby Solo, who does a fine rendition of Hank Williams’ “Ramblin’ Man.” Awesome album; great sound, too.

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Saturday Night at the Monkeyhaus, Part I

On Saturday, November 6, John DeVore of <a href="http://www.devorefidelity.com/">DeVore Fidelity</a> hosted a <a href="http://www.monkeyhaus.net/">Monkeyhaus Listening Party</a> at his Brooklyn Navy Yard factory. If not for the pictures, a selection of which I’ll post over the next three days, I might not remember the event at all&#151not because the party was forgettable, but because we had <i>so much</i> fun.

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