LATEST ADDITIONS

Synecdoche: That's what the Wilson WATT/Puppy is.

As I write this in the first quarter of 2007, CD sales are off over 22% compared to this time last year. The music industry as we know it, based on sales of some kind of physical medium, is over. While CDs and even LPs will remain available—they're so easy and cheap to make—they've become irrelevant to the mass market and to the future of audiophile recordings. The major labels have also become irrelevant (not to mention highly irritating).

WILCO: <I>Sky Blue Sky</I><BR>
Nonesuch 131388 (CD). 2007. Wilco, prods.; TJ Doherty, eng.; Jim Scott, mix; Bob Ludwig, mastering. AAD? TT: 51:18<BR>
Performance *****<BR>
Sonics ****

Anat Cohen’s <I>Poetica</I>, on her own Anzic Records label, is a fresh breeze of an album, and I mean that in a good way. Still in her 20s, Cohen plays clarinet with a polished edge and verve second only to Don Byron’s. Born in Tel Aviv, schooled at Berklee, honed in New York clubs, playing not just modern jazz but Brazilian Choro and Dixieland, she lets all her influences show but none of them dominate. Her tone bears something of klezmer’s lilt but none of its schmaltz. Her arrangements have the joyful-melancholic sway of Israeli or Latin folk music but none of its sentimentality. On the album, she also plays two knottily catchy original tunes, a Jacques Brel song, and a tinglingly lovely cover of Coltrane’s “Lonnie’s Lament,” the last backed by a string quartet. The sound, mixed by Joe Ferla and mastered by Sony’s Mark Wilder, is excellent.

When Fred Kaplan made his <I>Stereophile</I> debut with his review of the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/tubepoweramps/307rogue">Rogue Audio Atlas power amplifier</A> last March, our scheme was also to publish his writings on the music that fuels his soul, jazz. Starting this past weekend, you can find Fred's thoughts on recordings, concerts, musicians, and the music at <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/fredkaplan/">http://blog.stereophile.com/fr…;.

On June 15, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), US Chamber of Commerce, and the Coalition Against Counterfeiting and Piracy (CACP) announced an ambitious agenda to convince Congress and the White House to "transform the enforcement of U.S. intellectual property rights laws."

Tweeter Home Entertainment Group, Inc filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on June 11. The move was not entirely unexpected, since the company had indicated in <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/051407tweeter/">May</A&gt; that it might be forced to file if it could not access additional funding.