Stephen Mejias

The November 2010 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. Immediately after shipping the issue to press, we had to redirect our focus to shipping the 2011 Stereophile Buyer’s Guide. And almost immediately after shipping the Buyer’s Guide, we had to redirect our focus to shipping the December 2010. While the December issue was in its very final stages, we had to fly to Denver to cover the outstanding Rocky">http://blog.stereophile.com/rmaf2010/">Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. It’s been a whirlwind and I can honestly say that I hardly remember working on the November issue.

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Tomorrow afternoon, John Atkinson, Jason Victor Serinus, and I will meet in Denver, Colorado, for the Rocky">http://audiofest.net/2010/index.php">Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. If you're at the show, please say hello.

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.

Photos courtesy Peter McGrath.

Me, listening to old MPS songs with the V-MODA Crossfade LP headphones and the HiFiMANhttp://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/the_hifiman_hm-801_portable_m…; portable music player. Photo by intrepid Ariel Bitran.

Returnal (Editions Mego EMEGO 104), the fourth full-length release from Oneohtrix Point Never, explodes into the listening room (or out from the speakers or out from the headphones) with real violence and penetrating force. We are thrust into a heavy storm, a maelstrom; we find ourselves standing beneath an ocean of falling glass, falling sky, falling electronic haze. If instruments could scream, their screams might sound like this, like the opening few moments of Returnal, moments that don’t seem like an opening at all, but someplace else, some other time that escaped us, that started without us, before we were ready. I don’t mean scream in the way that guitars and saxophones and other instruments can and do scream. I mean that if instruments could be dealt such pain that they were brought to life, given sentience, to wail with wonderful suffering, it might sound like this, like the opening few moments of “Nil Admirari.”