If you read between the lines, you can actually hear JA's heart beating like mad,…
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At around this time last week, John Atkinson and I left the office and headed out to Bay Ridge to pack up the large and lovely Revel Ultima Salon2, voted our "Joint Loudspeaker of the Year" for 2008 and a speaker that JA absolutely adores. He selected it as his overall product of the year:
I was won over by the Salon2's combination of superb speaker engineering, top-to-bottom balance and sonic coherence, and apparently unlimited dynamic range, with nary a trace of compression or distortion.
I have an article in the Arts & Leisure section of today’s New York Times about Andy Warhol’s album covers. Everyone’s seen the covers he designed for The Velvet Underground & Nico, with the banana that peels, and the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers, with the zipper that unzips. But who knew that the pioneer of Pop art designed over 50 covers over the entire span of his career, and not just for pop albums but also for jazz, classical, and opera? His work, often signed, appeared on Blue Note, RCA, Columbia—all the giants—and echoed, or often anticipated, the style that he would…
Sky & Country (on the ECM label), the new CD by Fly—the trio that consists of saxophonist Mark Turner, bassist Larry Grenadier, and drummer Jeff Ballard—is a deeply pleasurable album. It’s a tricky thing to improvise sinuous, crisscrossing lines over the span of an hour-long record, with neither a piano to lay down harmonic signposts nor a second horn to pick things up when the pace slacks off, yet still manage to keep a listener’s attention. Some have done it, and brilliantly: Sonny Rollins (A Night at the Vanguard and Way out West), Lee Konitz (Motion), Ornette Coleman (At the Golden…
Now compare the exquisite packaging of the Revel Ultima Salon2 with this pathetic excuse for a shipping carton. I mean, seriously. Come on, now.
God damn. I said, god damn.
These broken bits of board and fluff were holding on to the Audio Valve Conductor preamplifier—desperately, tentatively, gingerly, hopelessly grasping for life around a chassis made of clear glass and so much generously lacquered stainless steel. You'd think someone would care enough about the thing to protect it properly. The Audio Valve Conductor preamplifier costs $14,000. It comes from…
We've been talking about this in the forum, but I think it's worth posting here, too. Jonathan Scull sent out this video yesterday, in an e-mail that read:
You'll feel better after you watch this. Let it develop, and have a beautiful day.
So many things race through my mind as I watch this and the chills sweep over my skin. Thinking, first: God, this is so beautiful. And then: How is it that music, in its simplest form, is always so similar, no, the same, all over the world? And: Why do we—people, humans—make music at all? What does it do for us?…
I hope all you dudes are enjoying the same sort of sweaty sweet record-breaking weather we're experiencing here in NYC this week (until tomorrow when it gets cold again).
And I also hope you've taken advantage of Matador's Buy Early Get Now plan, and have begun your love affair with Sonic Youth's latest mind-melter, The Eternal. It's the perfect music for this summery heat.
It should be called The Fucking Eternal. I am streaming the hell out of it right now, and it's tossing my flabby body all around the suffocatingly hot office.
It's always so easy to say that…
Yesterday's New York Post ran a brief story on Best Buy's decision to stock vinyl LPs.
The consumer-electronics giant, which happens also to be the third-largest music seller behind Apple's iTunes and Wal-Mart, is considering devoting eight square feet of merchandising space in all of its 1,020 stores solely to vinyl, which would equate to just under 200 albums, after a test in 100 of its stores around the country proved successful.
Not bad, considering that a typical Best Buy carries just between 16-20 square feet of music merchandise.
Francois Caron of the Canadian Public, Canada's national public access television station, has done a wonderful job of piecing together highlights of the recent Salon Son & Image.
For those who were unable to attend the event, Francois's video coverage will offer an interesting and intimate look at the overall experience, while those who were in attendance now have an opportunity to relive the experience through Francois's eyes. He shares some of his invaluable SSI survival tips, takes you on a tour of his favorite demonstration rooms, attempts to get inside the audiophile mind…
I now pronounce this Sonic Youth Month. It will be good. To celebrate the release of their new album, The Eternal, the band visited their old friend, Jools Holland. Here they are, the greatest band of all time, performing "What We Know."
And here they are again, seventeen years earlier, making their "Later" debut with the freestyle classic, "Sugar Kane," from the titanic, Butch Vig-produced, double LP Dirty. I think Steve Shelley is wearing the same shirt. (Because he is keeping it real, yo.)
Watch for Robert Baird's interview with the band, along with a…
Finally, any real high end hi-fi event will also have booze. On this occasion, Stereo Exchange's jovial staff members, Nelson and Tim, were happy to serve.