Stephen Mejias

During a recent e-mail exchange with Music">http://www.musicdirect.com">Music Direct's Josh Bizar, the topic turned to record cleaning. Josh shared with me his "Secret Record Cleaning Method."

Last night, before heading over to Other Music for Julia Holter’s in-store performance, I stopped by In Living Stereo and had a nice conversation with sales manager Steve Cohen. I got to hear a few of Steve’s own recordings through a system made of Dynaudio loudspeakers and Rega electronics, including the new, slick-looking Apollo CD player ($1095). Though the recordings were made using simple keyboards and sent straight to 4-track, the richness of the music and balance of the system far overshadowed any sonic limitations. It sounded great.

I was also pleased to see that In Living Stereo now carries Wharfedale’s affordable overachiever, the Diamond 10.1 loudspeaker ($350/pair), and its considerably bigger brother, the 10.2. At just $100/pair more than the 10.1, the 10.2 at least looks like it can provide a much bigger, more solid and controlled sound.

Julia Holter hit my radar in November 2011, while I was preparing my year-end list of favorite recordings.

One of my favorite albums of the year comes from Brooklyn-based artist Julianna">http://www.myspace.com/juliannabarwick">Julianna Barwick. The album is called Florine. Michael Lavorgna told">http://www.twitteringmachines.com/2010/03/julianna-barwick/">told me about it. It was months ago and I remember leaving work that day and rushing over to Other">http://www.othermusic.com/">Other Music to buy the album. I got one of the first 200, pressed on white vinyl. Karenhttp://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/last_night_in_other_music/">K…; congratulated me and told me that I’d be very happy with the music.

On June 14, 2004, I made a silly, little mistake.

It's just after 10pm, here in Las Vegas. The moon is an eyelash.

I mentioned bluelines earlier.