This is bracing music, with complex rhythms, brooding harmonies,…
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Chris Dingman’s Waking Dreams is a very big, pleasant surprise. I’d never heard of Dingman, who plays vibes and composed all but one of the CD’s 14 tracks. The label, Between World Music, is Dingman’s own, and this is its only release (usually a bad sign). I must confess that I probably put it on at all only after noticing that one of the musicians playing on the album (the only one in the sextet whose work I know) was Ambrose Akinmusire, the most exciting new trumpeter on the scene. And well, as I said, what a surprise.
I went to Other Music yesterday and picked up a few records:
Nicolas Jaar’s Space Is Only Noise, Jannick Schous’ Act of Shimmering, a nice-looking reissue of John Cage and David Tudor’s Indeterminancy: New Aspect of Form in Instrumental and Electronic Music, the split 12” from Grouper and Inca Ore, Amon Tobin’s “Surge” remix 12”, and another 12” featuring awesome remixes of Radiohead’s “Little by Little” (by Caribou) and “Lotus Flower” (by Jacques Greene).
With all those records beneath my happy arm, I gave up my place on line, smiled at the newsstand display, and snapped this…
I’ve listened to no album this year more than I’ve listened to Wild Beasts’ Smother. For that matter, I’ve enjoyed no album more this year than Wild Beasts’ Smother. It courses slowly and deliberately through colors and moods of pain, longing, love, and desire—all that good stuff—and it does so with such a gentle touch, a delicious smoothness, a constant, lulling pulse.
It pours from your loudspeakers and into the room.
I wanted to see the band perform live during their recent stop at Le Poisson Rouge—I had tickets, too—but I had to paint some…
Lyle Lovett: Pontiac
MCA/Curb MCA-42028 (LP), MCAD-42028 (CD). Willie Pevear, eng.; Tony Brown, Lyle Lovett, prods. DDA/ DDD. TT: 35:41
MCA/Curb MCA-42028 (LP), MCAD-42028 (CD). Willie Pevear, eng.; Tony Brown, Lyle Lovett, prods. DDA/ DDD. TT: 35:41
Jesse Winchester has been silent for seven years now, and we needed some mint-julep–voiced cowboy to write and croon such smooth, fluid, irresistible songs, no sharp edges and none needed, thanks. Thank God Lyle Lovett stepped in; we could have done much, much worse.
It would have been hard to better Lovett's eponymous 1986 debut LP (MCA 5748), a remarkable combination of state-of-the-art contemporary country songwriting, singing, and…
Around midnight, Natalie decided to move the party from her and Nicole's apartment (see last month's column) to our favorite local dive, Lucky 7, just a few blocks away on the corner of Second and Coles, in Jersey City. We threw wide the old red door and stepped into the stench of stale beer, the sound of cheap speaker cones tearing at the seams. I love Lucky's as much as anyone, but the music there on a Saturday night is always too goddamned loud.
Luckily, I'd brought along my Hearos Xtreme Protection earplugs—the best earplugs I've tried. They have a noise-reduction rating of 33dB, and…
JoLida FX 10 integrated amplifier
With its heat-resistant glass enclosure in place, the adorable JoLida FX 10 ($450; available in black, silver, or blue) measures just 8" W by 7" D by 7" H and weighs a hefty 12 lbs. On removing the amp from its sturdy packaging, I was impressed by its solid feel and fine build quality. This is an extremely huggable amplifier.
With its heat-resistant glass enclosure in place, the adorable JoLida FX 10 ($450; available in black, silver, or blue) measures just 8" W by 7" D by 7" H and weighs a hefty 12 lbs. On removing the amp from its sturdy packaging, I was impressed by its solid feel and fine build quality. This is an extremely huggable amplifier.
Claimed to deliver a modest 10Wpc into 8 ohms, the auto-biasing FX 10 uses two matched pairs of Electro-Harmonix EL84 output tubes and two 12AX7 input tubes, all secured for travel by a block of Styrofoam. To remove the foam and…
In my small listening room (10.5' W by 13.1' L by 8' H), I never felt that the JoLida FX 10 lacked power—not with the PSB Alpha B1s, and certainly not with the vibrant-sounding, high-sensitivity (92.5dB) Klipsch B-20s—but I did get the sense that music wasn't fully articulated. The highs lacked air, the mids some delicacy and voluptuousness, the bottom impact. That said, I always enjoyed music while the FX 10 was in my system. It was only in comparing it directly with other amplifiers that I remembered what I was missing. Such is life.
NAD C 316BEE integrated amplifier
And life is…
Sidebar: Contacts
JoLida Inc., 10820 Guilford Road, Suite 209, Annapolis Junction, MD 20701. Tel: (301) 953-2014. Fax: (301) 498-0554. Web: www.jolida.com.
NAD Electronics International, 633 Granite Court, Pickering, Ontario L1W 3K1, Canada. Tel: (905) 831-6555. Fax: (905) 837-6357. Web: www.nadelectronics.com.
Newk's Time was the third of four albums that Sonny Rollins recorded for Blue Note, and it's the second reissued by Music Matters Jazz, the audiophile house that does up the Blue Note classics right, each title mastered at 45rpm and spread out across two extremely quiet slabs of vinyl. MMJ has already released Sonny Rollins, Vol. 1. That leaves Sonny Rollins, Vol. 2 and Night at the Village Vanguard (itself a 2-volume album). I hope they put them out too at some point. If they do (does this need to be said?), get them all.
Rollins was signed to Blue Note in 1956–57, one of several…
The subject of the e-mail was “boobsheadphones.” Inside, a simple question (“Can you tell me if these are real?”) was followed by a link to an interesting YouTube video.
Dear reader:
I’m more of a leg man, but I sure hope they are real.
My advice? Squeeze them and find out.
Stephen