LATEST ADDITIONS

You will have to hunt far and wide for a finer-sounding recording of Mahler's final Tenth Symphony than this one of the Deryck Cooke completion from the Seattle Symphony under Principal Guest Conductor Thomas Dausgaard. Captured in 24/96 hi-rez by Dmitry Lipay and Alexander Lipay, and available as both a 5.1 surround sound and stereo 24/96 download as well as in 16/44.1 on CD, the recording stands apart for the richness of its lower midrange, the impact of its bass drum thwacks, and the supremely saturated colors.

The second best hug I received at CAF came from the towering and lovable Klaus Bunge of Odyssey Audio…

If you must know, I do in fact maintain on my desktop computer a file-folder labeled Vintage, which is where I put all my audio porn…

Carla Bley, Andy Sheppard, Steve Swallow: Andando el Tiempo
ECM 2487 (CD). 2016. Manfred Eicher, prod.; Stefano Amerio, eng. DDD. TT: 47:19
Performance ****½
Sonics *****

Resistance is futile. From the moment she dropped out of high school in Oakland, California and headed for New York, nothing was going to stop Karen Borg, the daughter of a church organist, from evolving into one of the most influential jazz composers of her generation in her new identity as Carla Bley. While working as a hat-check girl at Birdland, she met the brilliant avant-garde pianist Paul Bley (1932–2016), married him in 1957, and kept the surname when, in 1964, they divorced. She began composing during that period, transforming the music she'd learned from her father into a jazz language rooted in the numinous depths of devotional music, but capable of the free expression absorbed from compatriots of her husband such as Ornette Coleman and Charles Mingus.

Stax Kogyo, a small audio company by Japanese standards, has been for the past 15 years steadfastly refining and redefining the electrostatic headphone. The SR-Lambda Pro is their current flagship model, and at a 1984 US list price of $780 it also represents a very substantial investment in headphone technology.

Every good show has a vibe, and the vibe at Capital Audiofest owes a lot to the region's very spirited DIY community…

At 5pm on a Thursday, some Thursdays ago, Robert Baird and I embarked on a post-work record hunt in Brooklyn. More specifically, we explored Williamsburg, otherwise referred to as "Hipster Land" (footnote 1). Aside from being an all-round neat neighborhood, Williamsburg is also home to quite a few record shops. This trip, we decided to keep our stops to a minimum and focus on two of our favorites: Rough Trade (64 N 9th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11249) and Earwax Records (167 N 9th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211).