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It was around 9:30am on Monday, November 12, when my plane landed in gray and chilly London. I managed to get through Customs with nothing more than the usual amount of stress and embarrassment, satisfactorily answering all of the agent’s odd questions. That out of the way, I next had to find my host—KEF’s head of brand development, Johan Coorg. Because my cell phone wasn’t working, I was worried that I’d be left stranded at Heathrow, but I recognized Coorg immediately: At the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show, he had introduced me to the stunning KEF Muon, and, at KEF’s lavish 50th…
A little over two years ago, I raved in this space over Rhino's 180-gram vinyl pressing of Ornette Coleman's 1959 album The Shape of Jazz to Come, one of the greatest and most important in all of jazz. Now I'm here to rave louder still (with one frustrating caveat) about another reissue, mastered by Bernie Grundman at 45rpm for the audiophile label ORG.
In my earlier post, I said the Rhino "sounds in every way better than the original pressing, which itself sounds quite good," adding, "Everything is clearer, highs are extended, bass is more defined, dynamics are wider."
Double all…
While John Atkinson, Jason Victor Serinus, and many more of our friends and colleagues prepare for Axpona in Chicago, where they’ll face what we all hope is this winter’s last frigid gasp, I’ve got my eyes set on this summer’s Pitchfork Music Festival, to be held Friday–Sunday, July 19–21, at Chicago’s Union Park.
I hear it's gonna be hot.
Tickets are on sale now, with single-day passes priced at $50 and three-day passes selling for an attractively discounted $120. But, taking into consideration the outstanding headliners and the well-rounded initial lineup, I suspect most music…
Shlohmo! I had a Hebrew School teacher who went by Shlohmo. He smelled like fish skins and wore square, camel-toned, thick-rimmed glasses. Random gray strands of hair dangled from his chin as he tortured us with lessons on silent vowels and morality. His neck bounced when he talked, and he wore his armpit sweat stains like badges of honor. Not sexy, right?
That's why I'm always surprised to hear very sexy music from electronic beat maker Shlohmo.
His release with How to Dress Well “Don’t Say No” makes my pants feel funny. The second the beat kicks in hard, How to Dress…
You should know, I'm an absolute sucker for pop music. You should also know, I'm an absolute sucker for love. Or better put: "love".
In the video, Nash contrasts the feeling of "love" versus the exhilarating release that comes from letting go of "love". "3AM" encapsulates both moments within Nash's joyous melody. The song begins with a self-accelerating punk drive. Nash delivers soft and quivering vocals over the fast-paced snare and kick beat with a femme fatale edge, but the submissive lyrical context:
You are the one I think ofAll the night
And all the night it…
Let's say you're lucky enough, or just plain old enough, to have bought a copy of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood on January 12, 1966. Let's say you're lucky enough or just plain smart enough to have held on to it and kept it in perfect shape for the past 47 years. And let's say it was one of the first 500 copies, which the author signed. If so, congratulations: For once in your life, even the smuggest collector can't claim that his copy of a book is "better" or more valuable than yours.
Of far greater importance, of course, is the artistry between its covers: The person who, in 2013, buys…
The next album up, Beatles for Sale, sounded decent—but no better—in its new vinyl guise. Compared with my German EMI/Odeon copy, the new LP was slightly veiled and lacking in physical impact. For its part, the new version of Help! lacked the easy, natural treble quality I heard in Please Please Me and With the Beatles, although it had good clarity, immediacy, and touch—the raking of guitar strings in "Tell Me What You See" came across well, as did the irregular emphasis Ringo Starr applies to some snare beats in "You Like Me too Much." My old Parlophone mono copy was better still in this…
Sidebar 1: Fave Fake Fabs
For those of us who wish the Beatles had kept on making records beyond 1969, here are nine Beatles-esque tunes of note by other artists:
1) "The Mole from the Ministry," The Dukes of Stratosphear
2) "My Train Is Coming," Andy Partridge
3) "The Minister," The Move
4) "Now You're Gone," Jeff Lynne
5) "Pandora's Box," Procol Harum
6) "When the Damsons Are Down," Martin Newell
7) "Only a Broken Heart," Tom Petty
8) "From a Window to a Screen," The dB's
9) "She's the One," World Party
The Spendor S3/5R2 loudspeaker reminds me of Art Dudley. My friendship with Art began more than 25 years ago, long before either of us joined Stereophile. Frequently, we would sit down to discuss music, guitars, and audiophiles. Art didn't have much patience for a certain category of audiophile who would evaluate an audio component based on how many points on their sonic checklists they could tick off. Image specificity? Check. Soundstage depth? Check. Lower-bass extension? Check. Art thought these guys would have a much better time if they'd just sit down, listen, and determine if an audio…
The S3/5R2's reproduction of bass was pleasing overall. Ikue Mori's deep-bass, electronic-percussion transients in Zorn's Orphée were at times startling. However, in "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground," from the White Stripes' White Blood Cells (CD, V2 63881-27124-2), I felt I'd heard Meg White's pounding bass drum with more drama. And while the title track of Charles Mingus's Pithecanthropus Erectus (CD, Atlantic AMCY-1036) had a nice, linear, dynamic envelope through the S3/5R2s, and J.R. Monterose's tenor-sax solo was lyrical and dimensional, I've heard Mingus's walking-bass lines on this…