LATEST ADDITIONS

Meeting strangers at social events, I've learned not to say that I write about hi-fi for a living. It's generally a conversation killer&mdash;unless your idea of scintillating repartee is "People make a <I>living</I> doing that?" (Short answer: Not many, and not really.)

The Jeff Gauthier Goatette’s <I>House of Return</I>, on the L.A.-based <A HREF= "http://cryptogramophone.com/"&gt; Cryptogramophone</A> label, is one of the most sinuously pleasing albums I’ve heard in a while. I confess that I haven’t followed this quirky label or its roster of musicians as closely as I should have, but I intend to make up for lost time. The Goatette (don’t ask me why it’s called that—there are five musicians, so it’s not even a Dada play on “quartet”) consists of Gauthier, violin; Nels Cline, guitar; David Witham, piano; Joel Hamilton, bass; and Alex Cline, drums. The way each of them weaves in and out of different tempos, rhythms, and chart-parts (shifting effortlessly from melody-line to chords to between-bar filigree to sonorous atmospherics) is astonishing. The songs range from mysterious ballads to electric rock, with much in between, sometimes within the same song. There’s wit in the compositions and breeziness in the ensemble work, but there’s no fooling around; the air is loose, but the motion is surefooted and the hand-offs are tight, like a Mondrian painting but with more indigo color. Nels Cline is the player I’m most familiar with; he may be second to Marc Ribot as the most versatile jazz guitarist on the block, and it’s due mainly to him that, when the band rocks, it really does rock; it doesn’t sound like some tame fusion-y rock. But the softer tunes have a rich melancholy, an off-centered swing, and a hazy core of blues. The engineering is very good, capturing the tones and overtones of all the instruments and the bloom of the mix.

Reader BeeJay DeeJay would like to know if readers can hear a faint "background" ringing or hissing in their ears when it is dead quiet? If so, what is the extent of that hiss or noise, and is it bothersome when listening?

Steinway Musical Instruments, Inc. announced May 19 that it was acquiring online classical retailer ArkivMusic, LLC for $3 million in cash at closing and three annual payments of $500,000.

<i>This isn't "perfect sound," it's perfect life.</i><br>
<b>&#151George Reisch, <i>Stereophile</i>, Vol.20 No.9</b>

Part of the problem is that I'm almost always thinking about what I should, or could, be writing here on the blog. I'll be in the shower, thinking: "Man, I haven't written anything <i>good</i> lately. Haven't written anything that's inspired discussion. Maybe, today, I'll write about my father and how his alcoholism relates to speaker cables…."

The conventional wisdom in publishing is that magazines are dependent on scoops&mdash;that getting the news out to the readers first is of primary importance. Yes, being timely with what it has to say is important for any publication. But soon after I joined <I>Stereophile</I> in 1986, a series of negative experiences with review samples that were little better than prototypes led me to rethink the need for scoops. As a result, I decided to impose restrictions on what we chose to review; this would allow us to focus the magazine's review resources on products that were out of beta testing and were ready for prime time, and, most important, would be representative of what our readers could audition for themselves at specialty retailers, confident in the knowledge that what they heard would be what we had reviewed.