Like an immense night bird aloft in the gold'n sky.
I should like to sail off towards islands of flow'rs
While list'ning to the perverse sea singing
In its old and bewitching rhythm.

It took some time to figure out why, in the middle of auditioning Rotel's Michi S5 stereo power amplifier ($7499.99) with the room-shaking opening of Richard Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra, Ravel's far subtler and perfumed setting of Tristan Klingsor's lyrics from Shéhérazade came to mind.

Certain albums stand as monuments because of the influence they had on contemporary and future musicians despite having little commercial success. The Velvet Underground & Nico comes to mind. So do the early Ramones albums. And then there are albums that had just as much influence but were megahits—a much rarer thing.

There's an enduring debate among the turntable-tech intelligentsia between opposing theories of turntable design. Some designers, notably Roy Gandy of Rega, follow a less-is-more approach, building stiff, lightweight turntables that release energy rather quickly. Others, such as Franc Kuzma, whose Kuzma Ltd. manufactures my reference Kuzma Stabi R turntable and Kuzma 4Point tonearm, believe in heavy mass-loading to dampen vibrations, including transparency-miring resonances.

I am an artist by trade. Saws and brushes and cameras are some of the tools I use. The aesthetic quality of the things I make is determined not by my skill with tools but by the dynamic relationships I establish among space, color, tone, and shape.

Of those elements, shapes are the most important because they are the first thing a viewer notices and the chief vehicles for transmitting sentiment and artistic intent. Stylized shapes, like those in popular art, may induce superficial responses in the viewer. Taut, Euclidian shapes suggest their author is of a higher mind; the Parthenon and Pantheon exemplify this type of shape making.