The FARP was a small, boundary-less airfield marked not by a runway or buildings but by a couple of scattered antennas and several large fuel blivets. At our dug-in perimeter, the desert spread bare before us in every direction—except in the center of my sector of view. There, beyond a depression in the…
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In March 2003, as news networks broadcast images of American tanks racing north toward Baghdad, my infantry platoon dug shallow foxholes in southern Iraq. We were part of a defensive perimeter guarding FARP Exxon, a helicopter refueling point for the Army's 101st Airborne Division.
Eric Whitacre: The Sacred Veil
Los Angeles Master Chorale, Eric Whitacre
Signum SIGCD630 (CD), 2020. Elaine Martone, prod.; Fred Vogler, rec. eng.
Performance *****
Sonics *****
Los Angeles Master Chorale, Eric Whitacre
Signum SIGCD630 (CD), 2020. Elaine Martone, prod.; Fred Vogler, rec. eng.
Performance *****
Sonics *****
The Sacred Veil is a commissioned piece but also a labor of love. The cantata sets poems by Whitacre's friend, Charles Anthony Silvestri, who was coming to terms with the premature death of his wife, Julie. The score also sets three of Julie's writings and two of the composer's own poems.
Whitacre's "modern Romantic" idiom takes in agreeable dissonances for expressive effect. His vocal…
Maria Schneider Orchestra: Data Lords
Maria Schneider, composer, conductor; 18-piece orchestra
ArtistShare AS0176 (CD, also available as download). 2020. Brian Camelio, Maria Schneider, Ryan Truesdell, prods.; Brian Montgomery, eng.
Performance *****
Sonics ****½
Maria Schneider, composer, conductor; 18-piece orchestra
ArtistShare AS0176 (CD, also available as download). 2020. Brian Camelio, Maria Schneider, Ryan Truesdell, prods.; Brian Montgomery, eng.
Performance *****
Sonics ****½
Maria Schneider, the most acclaimed jazz composer of our time, has been an impressionist, devoted to preserving moments of her life when the sensual and the spiritual became indivisible. Her new double album, Data Lords, is different—or rather, half of it is. The title refers to big-data companies whose binary…
Fontaines D.C.: A Hero's Death
Partisan Records PTKF2182-2 (CD). 2020. Dan Carey, prod., Alexis Smith, eng.
Performance *****
Sonics ****
Partisan Records PTKF2182-2 (CD). 2020. Dan Carey, prod., Alexis Smith, eng.
Performance *****
Sonics ****
Releasing a second album so soon after a Mercury Prize–nominated debut is the kind of action a band from a previous decade would have taken—no waiting three years between releases as is common today. But then, the brand of rock produced by Dublin's five-piece Fontaines D.C., which received much positive press for last year's debut, Dogrel, has been compared to the post-punk of the late '70s, when frequent releases were common.
Speed…
Back in the 1990s, my friend Nick Despotopoulos and I published an article in The Tracking Angle titled "Zen and the Art of Record Cleaning Made Difficult," describing author Michael Wayne's record-cleaning methodology. That regimen, like the article itself, was the most comprehensive one I knew of at the time.
Though complicated and time-consuming, Wayne's methodology produced outstanding results. His goal was not just to clean a record but to restore it to as-new condition by removing from it every contaminant found on and, in some cases, in the vinyl—impurities baked into the groove…
While Kirmuss's process is said to kill the fungus and prevent its further growth, in my experience it doesn't remove the fungus's visible after-effects: a cloudy white patch on the record surface.
Obviously, this half-hour procedure is not a casual record-cleaning process to be used after returning from a garage sale with a nice haul!
According to Kirmuss, even though new records are assumed to be free from baked-in cleaning fluids, the heat and pressure of the pressing process can cause mold-release compound—a chemical added to the PVC to make records easier to remove from…
The 1980s was a decade when I needed three jobs to support my wife, infant daughter, and octogenarian dad. My primary job was to make and sell art, and I'm sure you know how that can go. Between exhibitions, I was forced to do construction work and to find, repair, and resell old tube amplifiers.
What I remember most from that period was how much I loved Phil Rizzuto and Yankee baseball on AM radio and how often I burned myself on the soldering iron.
Except for each brand's unique wiring layout, chassis construction, and finish, the tube amps I repaired were mostly boring. Circuit…
Every image in the SV-EQ1616D's construction manual is life-size and in full color. But if I were making this kit, I would rely heavily on making my work match the photos you see with this article. If you make a mistake, no worries, because Sunvalley's exclusive North American distributor, the honorable Victor Kung of VK Music, and his cross-country crew of technicians are here to help.
The Sunvalley SV-EQ1616D uses a simple, conventional, capacitor-resistor (CR) RIAA equalizer with two switchable inputs and six selectable presets to match the various equalization curves used in past and…
Marty Krystall is a musician's musician, highly regarded and known to his peers in the LA music world as a triple-threat wind player equally adept at jazz, classical, and in the studio. He is also an audiophile, a recording engineer, and a record company owner, having created the K2B2 label with bassist and colleague Buell Neidlinger in 1979.
Krystall is a veteran of hundreds of recording sessions, in all music genres and media types. You have heard his playing even if you don't know it; in this respect, he's typical of other world-class musicians you may not have heard of:…
Matson: With your own record label, K2B2, you've got your hands in the clay of music recording.
Krystall: We started out in 1979, and we would book four hours of studio time and record a whole album. If you could edit, you could make a record—razor blade, cut the tape. The greatest records ever made were done by people with watches. The session is called, people show up at the same time, they record it, and they leave. Everything that's done is done to the clock. When you have three hours to do it, all of a sudden you become really focused. Money is at stake, and everyone's career, so…