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At the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show, I spoke with Lyra's Jonathan Carr about the Atlas. He told me that, rather than having started as a blank sheet of paper, the Atlas is an outgrowth of the Kleos ($2995), which I reviewed in January 2011, when I thought it Carr's best balanced design yet, even if it didn't have quite the resolution of the Titan i. Like the lower-priced Delos ($1650, reviewed in August 2010), the Kleos included Carr's New Angle technology, which mechanically aligns the coils to be perfectly positioned relative to the front and rear magnets when the stylus is in the groove…
Sidebar: Specifications
Description: Low-output moving-coil cartridge. Nominal output: 0.56mV/5cm/s.
Price: $9500.
Manufacturer: Lyra Co. Ltd. Web: www.lyraconnoisseur.com. US Distributor: AudioQuest, 2621 White Road, Irvine, CA 92614. Tel: (949) 585-0111. Web: lyraanalog.com.
It opens in a field or maybe an orchestra house. Pastoral and slow-moving strings set the stage. Written as a musical accompaniment to Sebastian Hartmann’s theater adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Apparat’s Krieg Und Frieden is desolate yet tinged with reflection and hope, like Wyeth’s Christina’s World or the ending to a Kurosawa film. Harmonies in continuous ascent intersect with subdued blasts of air and dirt. The occasional soulful vocal provides a lyrical back-story to the desolation: “Deserted hopes / Deserted eyes / Deserted souls / Deserted lies,” and then an alternative, “Turn…
It has been another year of great torment and turmoil in the world of recorded music. The loudness wars grow ever . . . well, louder. The confusion and profusion of formats continue to roil buyers of tracks and albums. And streaming services like Pandora and Spotify continue to bleed off purchasers of downloads and physical media. Yet at the same time, the LP, once derided as dead and gone, is back with a vengeance. In short, everyone has had to find their own way—the mix of online and physical that works for them. Fortunately, all this diversity and change have not kept fans from listening,…
DAVID R. ADLER
David Gilmore: Numerology: Live at Jazz Standard
David Gilmore, guitar; Claudia Acu§a, voice; Miguel Zen¢n, alto saxophone; Luis Perdomo, piano; Christian McBride, bass; Jeff "Tain" Watts, drums; Mino Cinelu, percussion
Evolutionary Music EVMU001 (CD). 2012. David Gilmore, prod.; Tyler McDiarmid, Geoff Countryman, engs. DDD? TT: 56:24
David Gilmore's a busy and versatile cat, which could explain why he's recorded only three discs as a leader. This extended suite, presented in two multipart movements and inspired by the likes of Pythagoras and…
DANIEL BUCKLEY
Little Feat: Waiting for Columbus
Warner Bros. 3140-2 (CD). 1978. Lowell George, prod.; George Massenburg, Warren Dewey, Andy Bloch, engs. ADD. TT: 72:56
In the 1970s, Little Feat was the band to beat. Leader Lowell George's masterful lyrics and wry wit, coupled with his searing slide-guitar work and the whole band's assimilation of the New Orleans sound, made this group one of the greatest of the era.
As much as I loved every studio album, this was a live band that cooked so hard and strong that you lived to see them in concert. Rarely does…
LARRY GREENHILL
Prokofiev: Excepts from Romeo and Juliet
Erich Leinsdorf, Los Angeles Philharmonic
Sheffield Lab SL25-SL26 (direct-to-disc LP). 1977. Lincoln Mayorga, prod.; Doug Sax, prod., eng.; Bud Wyatt, eng. AAA. TT: 57:12
Direct-to-disc recordings were a revelation when they first appeared. I had never before heard such consistently rich and differentiated musical timbres or dynamic range from an LP, and they became the main reference recordings for my earliest audio reviews. As with many audiophile releases then and now, direct recordings most often…
ROBERT LEVINE
Handel: Messiah (1751 version)
David Blackadder, Robert Brooks, Otta Jones, Henry Jenkinson, boy singers; Iestyn Davies, countertenor; Toby Spence, tenor; Eamonn Dougan, bass; Choir of New College Oxford, Academy of Ancient Music, Edward Higginbottom
Naxos 8.570131-32 (2 CDs). 2006. Adrian Hunter, prod.; Jonathan Stokes, eng. DDD. TT: 2:22:19
Handel: Messiah (1751 version)
David Blackadder, Robert Brooks, Otta Jones, Henry Jenkinson, boy singers; Iestyn Davies, countertenor; Toby Spence, tenor; Eamonn Dougan, bass; Choir of New College Oxford, Academy of Ancient Music, Edward Higginbottom
Naxos 8.570131-32 (2 CDs). 2006. Adrian Hunter, prod.; Jonathan Stokes, eng. DDD. TT: 2:22:19
As Messiah-heads will tell you, there are many different versions of the work; Handel kept revising it for various occasions. This recording offers a rarity—a re-creation of performances in London in 1751 using all…
ROBERT J. REINA
Horacee Arnold: Tales of the Exonerated Flea
Horacee Arnold, drums; Art Webb, flute; Sonny Fortune, saxophone; John Abercrombie, Ralph Towner, guitar; Jan Hammer, keyboards; David Friedman, vibes; Clint Houston, Rick Laird, George Mraz, bass; Dom Um Romao, percussion
Columbia KC 32869 (LP; 2 CD reissues also available). 1974. Horacee Arnold, prod.; Buddy Graham, Frank Laico, Stan Tonkel, engs. AAA. TT: 44:43
I was a jazz-rock fanatic in the 1970s; for me, the genre was the gateway to study other forms of jazz. Today, much of what I listened to…