Register to win an autographed Pat Metheny The Orchestrion Project Blu-ray disc (MSRP $24.98) we are giving away.

"The Blu-ray features amazing Dolby TrueHD with advanced 96k Upsampling and 7.1 surround sound, immersing you in the concert and taking full advantage of Blu-ray disc capabilities for optimal play in home theaters. In addition, Dolby conducted a special interview with the star of The Orchestrion Project, Pat Metheny."

[This Sweepstakes is now closed.]

I've already admitted I have a live music problem, OK? I don't need something awesome like GigFi making my addiction worse. Much much worse.

The name Joseph Grado is certainly not new to the transducer field, but the HP 1 is his first entry into the headphone market. The HP 1s are billed as "Professional Recording Monitor Headphones," and Grado is clearly targeting professional recording engineers and equipment designers in need of an accurate monitoring tool. Joe's designs, whether they be phono cartridges or tonearms, have never been ho-hum also-rans when compared to their competition. His products have invariably shown unique design ingenuity, often radically departing from accepted practice. His Signature Tonearm (the last such product he made, now discontinued), which I still use as a reference, is a case in point. The HP 1 headphones are no exception, being rather unusual in design, physical appearance, and construction.

At its onset, screeching and chopped vocals, a melody cracked off like a piece of firewood from Crystal Castles "Pale Flesh" from their record (III), play catch up with with a deep rubber-band like bass pulse. Crystal Castles' shrieks echo of Lizzi Bougatsos tribal and petrified screams from Gang Gang Dance's Glass Jar, but as the snare guides you to the turnaround and into the verse, a crackling fire-pit of of diced synthesizers and reversed vocal loops, it becomes clear were dealing with something much more electro, something much more IDM-based than the primal screams indicated before.

My column on the best jazz albums of 2012 is up on Slate this morning. Here’s the list (readers will note that I’ve written about all the albums in this space over the past 12 months):