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Stephen Mejias

The Erotic Downbeat of Wild Beasts

Stephen Mejias Apr 08, 2011

The elegant, languorous video for Wild Beasts’ “Albatross,” the first single from the band’s upcoming album, Smother, is filled with images that are like Wild Beasts’ music: surreal, delicate, physical, painful, and, at times, painfully lovely.

With its gentle dance rhythms, memorable melodies, and heavy, overcast skies, Wild Beasts’ 2009 album, Two Dancers, which was nominated for 2010’s prestigious Mercury Prize, continues to find a place near the front of my vinyl stacks. The girls like it, too.

Smother promises to fall even closer to my heart. From the press release:

Stephen Mejias

Wretches & Jabberers

Stephen Mejias Apr 07, 2011

In support of National Autism Awareness Month, McIntosh Laboratory and songwriter/producer J. Ralph have come together to create a spectacular new album, the original motion picture soundtrack to Academy Award winning director Gerardine Wurzburg’s Wretches & Jabberers. The feature-length documentary, in theaters now, follows the paths of two men with autism, Larry Bissonnette and Tracy Thresher, as they travel around the world determined to increase autism awareness and refine our ideas of intelligence.

From the film’s dedicated web site:

Growing up, Thresher and Bissonnette were presumed “retarded” and excluded from normal schooling. With limited speech, they both faced lives of social isolation in mental institutions or adult disability centers. When they learned as adults to communicate by typing, their lives changed dramatically. Their world tour message is that the same possibility exists for others like themselves.

Yesterday evening, I met with composer J. Ralph and McIntosh’s Global VP of Sales and Marketing, Linda Passaro, for an intimate listening session.

Stephen Mejias

Kanibal Home Presents Rose Cottage (but no hi-fi)

Stephen Mejias Apr 07, 2011

Kristen is hot. I mean, seriously: smoking, sizzling, flame-broiling, momma-said-knock-you-out, one-hundred-and-fifty-five-degrees-in-the-shade, incomprehensibly, unavoidably, uncomfortably hot. Yow! But, excuse me, that’s not what I meant to write about.

Let me start again.

SSI 2011

The 2011 SSI: a Show of Shows

Robert Deutsch Apr 07, 2011

It was a really good show. That was the opinion of the people I spoke to at the 2011 SSI, including veteran as well as first-time exhibitors, and members of the public. Even the Trade Day, which in the past was not very popular, was busy enough that it felt like it almost could have been one of the public days. The Lifetime Achievement Awards ceremony was extremely well-attended, as the above photo illustrates. There was a kind of back-to-the-basics feel to the show, with a strong emphasis on music presented in two-channel stereo, and almost nothing in the way of surround sound. (Sorry, Kal!)

SSI 2011

Homeland Security

Art Dudley Apr 07, 2011

I was never happier to be an audiophile than when my train stopped at the US/Canada border on my way home. The customs officers who boarded our train were quite serious-minded, and as I waited in my seat I heard them grill other passengers regarding the precise nature of the Canadian goods they harbored. When it came my turn, a surly-something man in a black uniform examined my Customs Declaration, saw that I was bringing some new LPs into the US, and broke into a friendly smile: “What vinyl did you get?” We chatted amiably for a moment about old Quads and Garrard 301s before he went on to crack other skulls than mine. (Just kidding. In fact ours was the rare trainin my experience, at leastfrom which no passengers needed to be removed for lack of a passport.)

SSI 2011

Wilson–VTL–Transparent–Beethoven

John Atkinson Apr 07, 2011

My best sound at the 2011 SSI? No doubt about it, it was the late Leonard Shure performing Beethoven's Op.109 Piano Sonata courtesy of the immense VTL Siegfried tubed monoblocks driving even more immense Wilson Alexandria X2 loudspeaker via Transparent Audio cables in Coup de Foudre's large room on the Hilton Bonaventure's mezzanine floor. This was the last room I visited at SSI and provided a fitting climax to what had been a great Show.

SSI 2011

Orange Men and Green Amps on Boxes

Art Dudley Apr 07, 2011

Let’s get right to it: The Coup de Foudre system comprising DeVore Fidelity Orangutan O/96 loudspeakers ($12,000/pair), Leben CS300XS integrated amplifier ($3795) and RS30EQ phono preamp ($2795), Hommage T2 phono transformer ($4995), EMT TSD-15 phono cartridge ($1800), Brinkmann Bardo I turntable with Origin Live Encounter arm ($7990 and $2000, respectively), and Box Furniture 3S3 stand ($2300) was nothing less than wonderful: easily in the show’s Top Five, and quite possibly the best of the bunch. The star was the latest pre-production iteration of the O/96, a 96dB sensitive (geddit?) loudspeaker that uses a 10" paper-cone woofer and a 1" silk-dome tweeter in a wide-faced (geddit?) box with a birch-ply baffle and MDF everything else. Their presentation was solid, substantial, rich, and colorful, with great touch, timing, and, above all, dynamics. Flesh and blood? The system was like a day at the butcher shopbut everyone was smiling, and there were no straw boaters.

SSI 2011

Audio Note: Arming the Natives

Art Dudley Apr 07, 2011

The trouble with audio showsapart from the cheap call girls and the occasional gangland-style executionis the fact that, even in nice hotels, the smallest rooms tend to sound like crap. So it was at the Hilton Bonaventure, where acoustical challenges plagued no exhibitor more than Audio Note. Their excellent AN-E loudspeakera pair of which I own and loverequires that both units in a stereo pair are sited close to their respective corners. That proved impossible at the Hilton, but Audio Note’s Dave Cope compensated brilliantly and made a fine sound nonetheless with a pair of AN-E Lexus Signatures in striking maple veneer ($15,200/pair), photographed here by JA and driven by the Jinro integrated amplifier that I reviewed in the March 2011 issue of Stereophile.

SSI 2011

JA Explains Speaker Measurements

Robert Deutsch Apr 07, 2011

On Sunday at 2pm, John Atkinson gave an illustrated talk entitled "How to measure loudspeakers and what the measurements mean." The scheduling was not ideal, just three hours before the show's closing, and the door to the meeting room where the talk was held was locked, and could be opened only from the inside or with a special card, which was not provided. As a result, attendance at the talk was not as great as it might have been, but the people who were there listened with rapt attention. One person told me afterwards that he has a book on loudspeaker measurement that he's had difficulty understanding, but, having heard JA's presentation, it made much more sense to him. Other than the specifics of how loudspeakers are measured, I thought the most interesting part of JA's presentation was . . .

SSI 2011

New Planets discovered

Art Dudley Apr 07, 2011

Master recordist Rene LaFlamme of Fidelio Records marked the release of his first LPa remastering of Melanie Barney’s and the Buzz Brass Ensemble’s colorful recording of Holt’s The Planetsby adding to his demonstration system an interesting new turntable called the Kronos. Designed and manufactured in Montreal by Louis Desjardins and photographed here by JA, the Kronos is described as the first commercial turntable to use both a fully sprung suspension and a system of twin counter-rotating platters. (The perpetually fascinating 47 Laboratory 4724 Koma turntable, reviewed in Stereophile by Michael Fremer, pioneered the latter but lacked the former.)