Was just listening to the deluxe edition of Singles: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, which is to be released tomorrow, May 19, when the news of Chris Cornell's unexpected death was announced. Very sad news and our sympathies go out to his family and all who loved his music in Soundgarden and Audioslave, and on the solo records.
On Small Town, Bill Frisell's latest album, a program of duets with bassist Thomas Morgan recorded live at the Village Vanguard in NYC and produced by the founder, owner, and visionary behind ECM Records, Manfred Eicher, Frisell again shows his affinity for American roots music.
"Phase 4 stereo can only be described as a marvel of sound, a radically new and dramatically potent concept in the art of high fidelity reproduction . . . it stands for motion and an uncanny sense of spatial realism unapproached by conventional disc standards."
Uh huh. And we have a miraculous vintage tube amp out in the swamps, spanned by the Brooklyn Bridge, that we want to sell you!!!
Is there such a thing as a bad Lightnin' Sam Hopkins record? No, but there are a lot of badly recorded Hopkins records. Happily, Goin' Away originally released in 1963 on the Bluesville label (an imprint of Prestige Records) isn't one of them. And the already good sonics have even been improved in yet another superb 180gram Analogue Productions LP reissue.
Put the expression "crate-diggers" into any sentence and it will catch my eye. The Warner Music Group has launched Run Out Groove, a new fan-driven, vinyl-only label that is going to let the public, or more accurately the crate-diggers among us, choose which records from the WMG trove of labels this new label will release.