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Cole was a piano master in the small-group swing idiom, but he gained far greater fame as an Eckstine-style crooner. After Midnight finds him straddling both worlds, and in some ways this makes it the…

Leonard Feather once famously described Hank Mobley as "the middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone." Middleweights never get much respect. But before drugs and general dissipation got him, Mobley recorded some albums for Blue Note in the 1960s that make time stand still. Soul Station…

Something old: A lot has been said about the gnarled, bass-heavy sound of this, the first proper David Bowie album (his previous records being opportunistic collections of styles with no real center), which kick-started the glam era. But I love it. The project was assembled and recorded by producer and bassist Tony Visconti in Bowie's recently purchased gothic manor, and Visconti was not shy about shoving his bass guitar up next to Mick…

Hanson's "Romantic" symphony was commissioned for the Boston Symphony's 50th anniversary, in 1930. It achieved widespread popularity for a time, but then its fortunes waned, perhaps because its "modernity" began to sound dated, or because its openhearted accessibility worked against it. Perhaps, too, the fact that the producers of…

MOZART: Requiem (ed. Levin)
Sir Charles Mackerras, Scottish Chamber Orchestra & Chorus
Linn CKD 211 (SACD/CD/Hi-Rez Download). 2002. Tim Oldham, prod.; Philip Hobbs, eng. DDD. TT: 54:48

MOZART: Symphonies 38–41
Sir Charles Mackerras, Scottish Chamber Orchestra
Linn CKD 308…

Wow, look at all the pretty boxes.

Maybe I'll finally find that Nakamichi CD-1 cassette deck I've been waiting for.

Note: As you'll see in the comments section, Stereophile's John Marks suspects something here is fishy. If you watch the entire video, you'll see that many of the components mentioned are actually from the late 1980s and early 1990s&#151not quite vintage. Interesting, nonetheless. But, as always: Buyer beware.

I’ve discussed my (apparently controversial) attraction to cassettes. Besides being affordable, fun, pretty, and filled with interesting sounds and art, cassettes provide a direct and meaningful connection between artist and audience: The person releasing cassettes in 2012 is likely doing so out of passion, with a spirit for adventure, perhaps even a with a distaste for modern technologies and conveniences; the person purchasing cassettes in 2012 probably has similar motivations and interests.

I like cassettes. Most important to me,…

Here at the Stereophile office, we listen to lots of different tunes ranging from Bach to Fucked Up to Sylvester, but in the Bitran/Mejias cubicle, there has been a recent resurgence in our passion for POPULAR music. Thanks to SM’s discovery of Jay-Z and Kanye West’s Watch the Throne and Drake’s Take Care, and my irrational passion for Rihanna and her latest Talk the Talk, sometimes walking into our cube can be like walking onto the set of MTV’s Total Request Live or a nightclub in Hoboken.

I could enumerate the reasons why these artists and their most recent records have…

Coaxing a singer to "stretch" always sounds like a good idea—that is, until the singer is standing in the same recording booth used by Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett, and suddenly her confidence, never brimming to start with, drops through the floor and she can't or won't sing a note. Add to this that Dusty Springfield was already a…

Of the latter, hardcore audiophiles such as you and I are the most extreme: We wish we could return to the womb of normalcy, if only to hear "She Loves You" again for the first time, with all the wonder and astonishment and full-body glee that has been beaten out of us by disease and baldness and unpleasant companions.

We want to go…