Stephen Mejias

Strange thing about cassettes and vinyl records: Every now and then, while listening to them, I find myself wondering what’ll happen to them when I’m dead and gone. These beautiful things will outlive me and someday someone else will “own” them. What will that person think of me? Will that person think of me? What do my records say about me?

We were bummed out when we heard that Steve Gritzan was closing down his wonderful and dusty record shop, Iris">http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/iris_records_closes/">Iris Records, in downtown Jersey City, but heartened in knowing that he’d continue to sell albums at street fairs and at his outstanding Brooklyn Record Riot conventions.

Hey kid, you think that’s oil?

Man, that ain’t oil, that’s blood.

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The June 2010 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. It opens with John Atkinson’s “iPad Daze,” an exploration of a print magazine’s inherent value in this digital age, and a piece that JA’s been thinking of writing for at least two years. He figured it’d be controversial, perhaps setting the entire World Wide Web against us, but I don’t think he expected to be criticizedhttp://forum.stereophile.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=88273&an=0…; for his application of Sturgeon’s Law to today’s popular music:

This sexy album cover, making glorious the embrace of sanctity and lust, belongs to Rene Hell’s Porcelain Opera. Rene Hell is the latest guise of noise artist Jeff Witscher, whose overwhelming mass of work, under names including Impregnable, Deep Jew, and Marble Sky, has been documented mostly to cassettehttp://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/why_cassettes/">cassette;, while utilizing high-quality production. The curious might take a chance on his latest Night">http://www.raccoo-oo-oon.org/np/">Night People release.

Sommer from German electronic duo Klangwart (Markus Detmer and Timo Reuber) includes rare compilation tracks, remixes for other artists, and previously unreleased studio recordings.