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Details: Vinyl music

October 2024

Sam First Records—SFR 006
Format: LP

Musical Performance

Sound Quality

Overall Enjoyment

Earlier this year, on February 16, I followed a link to a live stream of a performance by alto saxophonist Devin Daniels at Sam First, a bar in Los Angeles that I wrote about that same month. Sam First sells tickets to its shows online. If you’re in Los Angeles, you can attend a performance at the bar for $25. If you’re somewhere else but want to see and hear the musicians, you can pay $10 for access to a live stream. Daniels did a two-night stand at Sam First, with shows on the 16th and 17th.

Details: Pulse!

October 2024

The day the news of John Mayall’s death appeared, my sister called to ask if I knew who he was. I’ve had Mayall records in my collection as long as I can remember, and I’m sure she must have heard at least some of his music while we were growing up. Most of the obituaries I have read have highlighted the many well-known musicians who passed through his bands, but they also did a good job of covering Mayall’s own accomplishments in music.

Details: Art+Tech

October 2024

It’s easy to fall into the trap of returning again and again to the artists who have already caught your ear. Take, for example, saxophonists Chris Potter, Charles Lloyd, and Miguel Zenón. When these endlessly expressive musicians release new albums, which they do at least once a year, I feel compelled to listen to them. Dozens upon dozens of other great musicians I follow, across a wide spectrum of instruments and music genres, also release albums regularly, and as a professional critic, I receive an average of 400 unsolicited recordings a year too, mostly as digital files. As much as I’d love to, I can’t possibly listen to them all.

Details: Vinyl music

September 2024

Anti- Records 88009-1
Format: LP

Musical Performance

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Overall Enjoyment

Singer-songwriter Katy Kirby’s debut solo album, Cool Dry Place (2021), was released on the independent label Keeled Scales in 2021. The album received warm reviews and made the end-of-year best-of lists of several magazines. Kirby moved to Anti- Records for Blue Raspberry, but she stayed with Alberto Sewald and Logan Chung, the two producers who worked on the first album. Cool Dry Place was a good showcase for Kirby’s songwriting talents, but her sophomore album brings her voice forward in the mix and contains a richer instrumental and sonic palette.

Details: Pulse!

September 2024

Each month, Stereophile magazine opens with an opinion column called “As We See It.” Usually editor Jim Austin writes the column, but occasionally he gives the space over to a guest writer. For the August 2024 issue, contributing editor Tom Fine joined Austin to write about the demise of the Compact Disc. They begin with a firm prognostication: “When the CD is gone, and it will be soon, we will miss it.”

Details: Vinyl music

August 2024

Cuneiform Records Rune 530/531/532/533
Format: LP

Musical Performance

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Overall Enjoyment

Since 1996, Cuneiform Records has released quite a few previously unavailable recordings by the English prog-rock band Soft Machine. Most of them have been live albums sourced from soundboard recordings, or from performances filmed for European television. Two years ago, Cuneiform released Facelift France & Holland, containing recordings of 1970 live shows by a short-lived quintet version of the band. Last year, the label unveiled The Dutch Lesson, a 1973 performance in Rotterdam by the group’s second quartet lineup.

Details: Pulse!

August 2024

As I’ve noted many times in this space, I started collecting records when I was about 12 years old, and I’ve never stopped. I’ve also written on several occasions about my initial dislike of CDs and my continued commitment to vinyl—even when the experts proclaimed that CDs would banish LPs from the earth.

Details: Art+Tech

Note: for the full suite of measurements from the SoundStage! Audio-Electronics Lab, click this link.

August 2024

For the three years following late September, 1970, not a day passed without me listening to Jimi Hendrix. For various reasons, I had missed most of the guitarist’s supercharged, stratospheric rise to fame. I only began seriously listening to his music with the release of Hendrix’s final official album, Band of Gypsys (1970), and then I couldn’t get enough. I’d begun buying LPs—just $3.33 each for the stereo versions at my local discount store—in 1965. Within the year I had a small stack of vinyl: Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited; the Rolling Stones’ 12 × 5 and The Rolling Stones, Now!; the Dave Clark Five’s Glad All Over; and Beach Boys Concert. Ironically, it was the lovable Monkees—whose 1967 US tour had featured the newly formed Jimi Hendrix Experience as an unlikely opening act—that led me to overlook the guitarist’s earlier work.

Details: Vinyl music

July 2024

Polydor Records 5888429 (CD), 5885024 (LP)
Formats: CD and LP

Musical Performance

Sound Quality

Overall Enjoyment

English singer-songwriter Paul Weller turned 66 on May 25, 2024, the day Polydor released his 17th album. Weller began writing and recording the songs for 66 in 2021, during the COVID-19 lockdown, and collaborated with other songwriters on most of the album’s 12 tracks. He also pulled in a long and varied list of musicians to help with the sessions, which took place over a three-year period at his Black Barn Studios in Surrey, UK.

Details: Pulse!

July 2024

A few weeks ago, my wife and I pulled into the parking lot of Rogue Audio, which is located in the Pocono Mountains region of Pennsylvania. We were camping at a nearby state park, and when I found out the park was only about a half hour from Rogue, I thought it would be a good idea to arrange a visit. I had purchased a Rogue Audio Sphinx v3 a few months earlier and wanted to see where my integrated amp was born.

Details: Art+Tech

Note: for the full suite of measurements for the PSB Imagine B50 loudspeaker performed in the anechoic chamber at Canada’s National Research Council, click this link.

July 2024

In last month’s column, I looked at two jazz recordings released in the early ’60s and how they represented part of the last wave of releases before the onslaught of the British Invasion. If anyone took that as my agreement with the “jazz is dead” trope, this column should serve as a spirited rebuttal.

Details: Vinyl music

June 2024

Blue Note Records 00602445525539
Format: LP

Musical Performance

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Overall Enjoyment

One Deep River is Mark Knopfler’s tenth solo album and comes six years after his previous outing, Down the Road Wherever (2018). A promotional video for One Deep River captures the spirit of the LP. It shows Knopfler and his band seated in the studio, playing “Two Pairs of Hands” in a confident, relaxed manner. The song eases us into the album with flowing rhythm guitars, percussion, and solo guitar lines that are immediately recognizable as Knopfler’s.

Details: Curator

June 2024

The Doors seemed to fade in people’s memories in the years following lead singer Jim Morrison’s death in 1971, but returned to popularity in 1980. In his 1979 movie Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola used “The End” from the Doors’ debut album to powerful effect, and the following year the publication of a Jim Morrison biography, No One Here Gets Out Alive, brought Morrison and the band renewed attention. Written by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman, it presented a sensationalistic portrait of Morrison, and its reliability has been questioned. It was a massive seller, however, and its descriptions of rock-star debauchery probably helped solidify Morrison’s place in the pantheon of 1960s heroes.

Details: Art+Tech

Note: for the full suite of measurements from the SoundStage! Audio-Electronics Lab, click this link.

June 2024

At the beginning of 1961, four decades after the dawn of the so-called Jazz Age, it seemed like the art form would continue to dominate American popular music for the foreseeable future. Despite the commercial hiccup that accompanied the rise of artists like Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard in the mid-’50s, jazz had weathered the storm and appeared well positioned to be the soundtrack of the ’60s. Youth culture was on the rise, jazz was the music of choice at US universities, and as a handsome young president took the oath of office on January 20, what was becoming known as “America’s classical music” seemed primed to continue its dominance.