LAJ's Five Favorite Recording Projects (footnote 1)
Ferron Shadows on a Dime (engineer)
Kronos Quartet Nuevo (engineer)
Rosemary Clooney Dedicated to Nelson (engineer)
Laura Karpman & Langston Hughes Ask Your Mama (engineer)
Unbreakable, Original Cast Recording, featuring the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus (producer/engineer)
LAJ's Five Most Recent Projects
Jake Heggie Songs for Murdered Sisters featuring Joshua Hopkins (producer/engineer…
The 50th anniversary of the release of David Bowie's The Man Who Sold the World was marked last year with a remastered reissue that restored Bowie's desired cover art and intended title: Metrobolist. Parlophone has followed that up with a worthy two-disc set charting Bowie's early course.
The first CD contains an hour-long radio appearance from February 1970, presented by BBC legend John Peel. On four songs, Bowie plays…
Luaka Bop's 2017 release of the compilation The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda renewed interest in the singular work of the harpist/ pianist. Reissues of her self-produced cassettes have largely replaced the previous narrative—jazz widow who faded into irrelevance—with a new one: vital voice who followed her faith without faltering in her art.
The loss of husband…
These three symphonies, all dating from the first half of the 20th century, comprise so apt a program that I'm surprised no one did it before. The striking contrasts among them—Barber's First unusually angular (for him), Sibelius's Seventh rugged and forward-looking, the Poem of Ecstasy (Scriabin's Fourth) mystical and impulsive—serve to underline their common features. Who knew, for example, that Barber could sound…
I like it despite having lived most of my life in places where the…
Six weeks after the world's biggest pop group broke up, the "Quiet Beatle" began work on a monumental three-LP album that stands tall a half-century later. George Harrison's first solo album (his third if you count a movie soundtrack and an experimental-music record) is a masterpiece, a musical minestrone of influences and timestamps. For the artist, it was a sprawling release of creative energy…
Within each category, products are listed by class; within each class, they're in alphabetical order, followed by their price, a review synopsis, and a note indicating the issues in which the review, and any subsequent follow-up reports, appeared. "Vol.44 No.9" indicates our September 2021 issue, for example. "WWW" means the review is also posted online.
Stereophile's Recommended Components list is concerned mainly with products available in the US…
Class A
Capable of producing the best…
A+
OMA K3: $363,000 including power supply and K3 tonearm
See Michael Fremer's review in this month's Analog Corner. (Vol.44 No.10)
SAT XD1: €150,000 without tonearm
This extraordinary and extraordinarily expensive Swedish turntable begins life as a Technics SP-10R direct-drive motor system, which is stripped down to a handful of essential components, reimagined, reengineered, and rebuilt to much higher mechanical standards. Mark Gomez focused on isolation from external disturbances, speed stability, rigidity, and vacuum hold-down. There are "pods" for…
A+
SAT CF1-09: €48,000
SAT CF1-12: €50,000
In 2018, after selling 70 of his original Swedish Analog Technologies Tonearms, designer Marc Gomez discontinued it and replaced it with two new tonearms. The more expensive, the CF1-09, is now the company's flagship. The CF1-09's tapered, hand-lapped, "naked"-carbon-fiber armtube has an effective length of 9" and incorporates a number of parts machined from solid stainless steel—including a new vertical bearing yoke that's far more massive than that of the original SAT arm and makes the CF1-09 too heavy for turntables…