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Chrysta Bell: “Real Love”

This seems right for a Friday afternoon: The video for “Real Love” from Chrysta Bell’s This Train, the new album produced by David Lynch and available now from La Rose Noire.

(Before clicking below, please note that this video contains "sexual situations." It may not be appropriate for certain younger viewers, certain older viewers, those with heart conditions, or those who, I don't know, hate life and stuff. I, however, like it a lot and I hope you do, too.)

The deluxe 180gm, 45rpm double LP package is limited to just 500 copies and includes an old-fashioned Real Love…

Sex With Something You Love

Okay, so now that we’ve all done our duty and held new babies, eaten dry turkey, listened to insane political diatribes and generally spent nothing but super terrific quality time with our families, not to mention paid fealty to the whole “it’s more blessed to give than to receive” rot, it’s time to get serious and talk about what WE want. No, not that, but something you can hold in your hands…well, yes, I guess you can hold that in your hands as well. Actually that’s the point really isn’t it with those perfectly teardropped mounds of soft, warm…. Sorry! Need to watch that.

What I meant…

Preparing for Las Vegas

The Consumer Electronics Show takes place January 10–13 in Las Vegas.

Have I mentioned that I hate Las Vegas? My hatred for Las Vegas is juvenile and irrational and represents what is probably the last strand of my nearly resigned defiance for all things bourgeois, fascist, bogus, and generally lame. I’ve softened up a lot over the last 10 years, but Vegas hardens me anew. I hate Las Vegas. The place is soulless, hollow, utterly putrid, infested with sickness, vice, and abandon, driven by all that is dirty and unholy (I kinda like that part, actually), and, above all, fake. So…

Music in the Round #52

In my last column, in November 2011, I mentioned that preamplifier-processors are generally at a price disadvantage in comparison to the same manufacturer's A/V receivers. The economies of scale almost ensure this. Typically, to design a pre-pro, a manufacturer uses one of its AVR models as a platform; the result is most distinguished from its parent AVR by its lack of power amplifiers.

Anthem is different. The company has long enjoyed success as a manufacturer of high-end pre-pros, and only recently has introduced its first range of AVRs, whose technology and philosophy are derived from…

The Entry Level #13

One gray and rainy day, just weeks before I sat down to write last month's column, DeVore Fidelity's John DeVore zipped across Brooklyn, through the Holland Tunnel, and into downtown Jersey City, where I sat waiting for him at a gas station on the side of the highway. He slowed down just enough that I could jump into the car through the passenger-side window. We traveled west along Route 78, through dairy farms and deep woods, to the home of Michael Lavorgna, editor of AudioStream, Source Interlink Media's exciting new website devoted to computer audio. Our mission: to help Michael set up a…

The Entry Level #13 Page 2

To offer some perspective, that same track played back through the Sony PS1 sounded far less energetic and insistent, but did have a sweet darkness that complemented Standish's lascivious disposition.

So I was wrong again: Evaluating a power cord could be fun. The AudioQuest NRG-X3 delivered more music, made more sense of the music, managed to more fully convey the artists' intentions, and made me a happy guy. If you already own an Emotiva ERC-2, does this mean you have to buy a new AC cord? Of course not. It simply means you have the option. You can wrest even greater performance from…

The Entry Level #13 SM's 15 Favorite Records of 2011

Sidebar 1: SM's 15 Favorite Records of 2011

(In descending order of preference)

Gang Gang Dance: Mirror Eye (LP, 4AD CAD 3107)
Wild Beasts: Smother (LP, Domino DNO297)
Radiohead: The King of Limbs (LP, Ticker Tape Ltd. TICK001LP)
Zomby: Dedication (LP, 4AD CAD 3119)
Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto: Summvs (CD, Raster-Noton R-N 132)
Mogwai: Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will (LP, Sub Pop SP895)
Fucked Up: David Comes to Life (LP, Matador OLE-952-1)
Thundercat: The Golden Age of Apocalypse (LP, Brainfeeder BF023)
Amon Tobin: ISAM (LP, Ninja Tune…

Chad Kassem Brings the Blues to Salina

Up on the old church altar, under the ceiling's massive and ornate wooden arches, in front of an array of stained glass whose center panel has been replaced with a modern rendering of a trio of bluesmen, singer and harmonica player Phil Wiggins and singer-guitarist Corey Harris are nearing the end of their set. Wiggins pauses, looks at his watch, and smiles.

"Time flies when you're playing blues in a church."

Blues in the Church of Chad. Most audiophiles, and especially the readers of this magazine, know that, out on the Smoky Hill River plains of Kansas, in the town of Salina, a…

Chad Kassem Brings the Blues to Salina Page 2

Kassem gives me a tour of what is easily the cleanest, most comfortable, most intelligently organized record warehouse in the history of the music business. "If you buy the best, you only cry once," he says, showing me the $50,000 in ductwork he had to add to the 28,000-square-foot space to keep it climate-controlled. We move on to the genuinely impressive UPS and FedEx pack-and-ship line he developed "just from trial and error, dude." Finally, back in the stacks, among Japanese single-layer SACDs that we agree are not worth the 60 bucks, no matter how much you want to hear Lynyrd Skynyrd's…

Listening #109

"Have you really listened to all those records?"

My guest, an occasionally nice person, didn't mean her question in a nice way. It was pointed and derisive: a needle intended to burst whatever it was that made me think filling a room with thousands of LPs was a good idea. She didn't wait for an answer—it would have been "Not quite"—but I half think she half expected me to see reason on the spot.

That would have been unlikely. And the fact that she was technically right, if rude, doesn't matter: Virtually all of us are collectors, because our crazy minds are sick with the…