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The October issue of Stereophile shipped to press yesterday afternoon. (Hallelujah.) We are already deep into the November issue, while our new editorial assistant, Ariel Bitran, is tackling the 2011 Buyer’s Guide. In addition to all of that, and on top of the regular stuff, the entire office is in the process of moving onto the 6th floor of our 261 Madison Avenue location. Construction crews are tearing down walls and building new cubicles, painters are turning white and gray into blue and cream, movers are carrying tables and desks up flights of stairs. My office is cramped with…
Just like me, Belle and Sebastian write about love. The band’s new album is due out here in the States on October 12. It will be mine. You can listen to a clip on the Matablog. The song, “I Want the World to Stop,” sounds just as dark and groovy and infectious as you might imagine. I’ve listened to it about 69 times already.
For just a few days now I’ve been receiving mysterious e-mails from “Jazz on the Tube.” At first I wondered if they were spam, and I was afraid to click on the links inside. But they all seemed harmless enough: A few kind and thoughtful words, a passion for jazz, a hand held out in friendship, a smile. So I clicked the link and was taken to a simple page with a narrow, white field against a black border and a YouTube video at the center.
Each day, Jazz on the Tube sends another video, and so far they have all been excellent. Today, Jazz on the Tube is thinking about Abbey…
I’m so much more impressed by good, affordable systems than I am by those costing tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. I find it difficult to concentrate on music when I’m overwhelmed by the high prices of the gear delivering it. Price should never be the most impressive aspect of hi-fi.
When price is the most impressive aspect of a system, the system sucks. Plain and simple. Is that clear?
My first "system"—a Magnavox boombox and CDs.
If your $100,000 speakers and your $80,000 amplifier and your $150,000 turntable do not absolutely knock the…
It may be time to begin appending the words “The Great,” in front of the name of Wilco. At least that’s my unvarnished reaction to their headlining performance at the inaugural edition of their own Solid Sound Festival, held last weekend in North Adams Massachusetts. Where in the hell is North Adams you may ask, why across the Mohawk Trail is the answer. I once had a friend, upper crust Brahmin Bostonian he was, and his mother used to rhapsodize about “motoring along the Mohawk Trail. She must have been speaking about the end of the trail (otherwise known as Mass Highway 2), nearer to…
Jeff Tweedy, John Stirratt, Pat Sansone at the Solid Sound Festival, North Adams, Mass. August 14th, 2010. Photo in this and the preceding entry by Charles Harris.
Audyssey, a company specializing in room equalization technologies (ask Kal), has launched a sweepstakes for fans of high-quality sound. There are some cool prizes, including a Marantz NR1601 slimline home theater receiver and an 8GB iPod Touch. To participate, become a fan of Audyssey on Facebook and fill out a short questionnaire. For complete details, click here.
The move is going fairly well. I’m almost completely settled in. I didn’t feel like waiting for the movers, so I just moved myself. Because all Source Interlink employees at 261 Madison Avenue will now be on a single floor, some people lost their private offices. While some are now sharing offices, I took a cubicle. So I no longer have a view onto sunny decks, no redbrick walls, no green trees; the only thing I can see from my seat is a gray cloth partition.
But, as cubicles go, this one is not bad at all. I actually have more desktop space than I did in my nice office.…
Fred Hersch, one of the top handful of jazz pianists on the scene, spent several months in a coma last year, owing to complications from HIV, with which he’s been living for well over a decade. When he emerged, he had to teach himself how to play piano all over again—not the technique, but the reflexes, the timing, the coordination—but you wouldn’t know it from Whirl (on the Palmetto label), his first album since the return.
It doesn’t have quite the fluency or exuberance of Let Yourself Go or In Amsterdam, my two favorite Hersch albums (both recorded live, in 1998 and 2003, respectively…
The September 2010 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. The cover shows an extreme close-up of the Audio Research VSi60 integrated amplifier, highlighting its beautiful tubes. I was very impressed by this amplifier’s looks, as well as what I (perhaps fancifully) perceived to be its contributions to a very fine system at the 2009 SSI, so I was happy to learn we’d be featuring the VSi60 on our cover.
Our original idea was to use the feature shot (on page 53) for the cover, but we decided to go instead with the more dramatic close-up. I think it worked out. We’ve gotten…