Maximinus Thrax, a Roman emperor from the third century after Christ, was supposedly eight feet tall and possessed of superhuman strength. It was a bold move for Rumen Artarski, the head of Thrax audio, to name his company after this legendary emperor, but he and it have more than lived up to the challenge. After listening to Artarski’s formidably powerful tubed equipment for several weeks, I half expected to hear it ask through my loudspeakers, “Are you not... Read More

Like Sabbagh's award winning Heart, Keepers of the Eastern Door was recorded live to 2-track 1/2 inch tape at 30 ips by James Farber at Power Station C, to the label's custom Ampex 351, and mastered and cut all analog by Bernie Grundman. Like Vintage and Heart, this one is being pressed at Gotta Groove on 180g vinyl. In an email, Sabbagh told me he's been experimenting with 140g vs 180g and 1-step versus "regular" 3-step pressings. He prefers... Read More

One of the most important - and least known - artifacts of 1970s jazz/rock fusion, Neil Ardley's Harmony of the Spheres, arrives in an exceptional AAA limited edition reissue from fledgling label Analogue October Records in the UK. I delve into the background and history of this groundbreaking record, assess the new reissue, and talk in detail with label founder Craig Crane about how this project came together, and his future plans for this label - one to watch.

The Electric Recording Company announced today the "true mono" reissue of John Coltrane's Lush Life cut "tape to lathe" fitted with a mono cutter head. It's how they roll.From the ERC press release:John Coltrane’s “Lush Life”, originally released in 1961 by Prestige Records, is a remarkable snapshot of a transitional moment in the saxophonist’s career. Released over a year after Coltrane had signed to Impulse! Records and compiled from... Read More

How would I define the BMR Monitor’s “Personality”? How about “This loudspeaker sounds like it was designed by an orchestral string player who knows enough engineering to achieve his goals with admirable economic efficiency.” The BMR Monitor is especially remarkable for its timbral and temporal coherence; midrange and treble articulation and detail; and its extraordinary soundstaging and imaging.

Switzerland may be the land of neutrality, but its audio gear has been steadily invading my audio system. It started with a CH Precision P1 phono stage. Next came a DartZeel preamplifier and monoblock amplifiers. Now a new entrant has arrived—the dual mono HSE 7 Masterline phonostage with separate power supply.Fans of Michael Fremer, the head honcho of this website, may recall that he reviewed this phonostage in The Absolute Sound, the very magazine where he commenced... Read More

Nagra today announced the release of a new "Compact Phono" phono preamplifier now available in The United States for $4950. Here's the Word Doc that somehow didn't make it into our "in-box":Romanel, Switzerland – 25th March 2025 —Perpetuating a long legacy of excellence in phono stages since the Nagra PL-P, the new Nagra Compact Phono offers the greater part of its predecessors’ quality and performance in a compact and elegant housing.... Read More

In just under ten years, songwriter/instrumentalist/vocalist Kevin Barnes transformed Of Montreal from a unified collective to a one-person operation. Having churned out whimsical baroque pop albums like Cherry Peel and The Gay Parade within the confinements of a band, Barnes took to working solo by dabbling in sonic experimentation and, inspired by their first marriage to Nina Grøttland, started writing in a more personal style. The initial fruits of this new... Read More

Teamwork - as they say - makes the dream work. Over the last several years, Org Music has been quietly amassing a catalog of well-produced reissues and original recordings in all genres. On the reissue front, however, the label has reached its goals by employing a select group of audio specialists all working toward the same goal: to find forgotten music deserving of a second chance to reach an audience, and to approach its restoration with straightforward respect and... Read More

Here are my reviews of three new Resonance Records offerings: Charles Mingus’s In Argentina: The Buenos Aires Concerts, Kenny Dorham’s Blue Bossa in the Bronx: Live from the Blue Morocco, and Freddie Hubbard’s On Fire: Live from the Blue Morocco. All three are due out on Record Store Day, April 12; you can pre-order them now.It’s not Charles’ Mingus’s final set of performances, but it’s close. On June 2 and 3, 1977, the Angry Man of Jazz was nearing the end of the... Read More

This latest batch of Original Source releases shows that Deutsche Grammophon has been listening to collectors of this series who have been clamoring for more chamber and instrumental music.  Here we have two such peaks of the 70s catalogue in superb performances, plus two blockbuster orchestral releases that will seriously put your system through its paces.  All in all it’s a list of releases I am salivating over - and you should be too!

This is a good time to be alive if you are a Neil Young fan. For years, Neil Young, an archivist like few others, has saved everything. And when I mean everything, take a gander at the Neil Young Archives. Here we find photographs, original lyric sheets, ephemera, videos, and all the music. The music quality, it goes without saying, is also presented in a similarly archival manner. For those who stream, you are treated to a digital source that is as close as you can... Read More

Recorded in stereo at the Saal Studio 3, RBB, Berlin, The Lost Recordings claims "These recordings were captured in the iconic Studio 3 of the RBB in Berlin, the first recording hall in music history to feature adjustable acoustics. These state-of-the-art settings enabled extraordinary recordings, preserving every nuance of her sound and intonations with remarkable fidelity."Yes, these tapes were digitized, "restored" and cut by Kevin Gray.... Read More

In Greenwich Village, directly across from The Red Lion on Bleecker Street, an unremarkable mixed-use building conceals an extraordinary legacy.From 1964 to 1970, the basement of the defunct Garrick Theatre housed the Café Au Go Go — a pivotal New York club that welcomed legends ranging from Jimi Hendrix and B.B. King to the Grateful Dead. It opened with a bang: in its first year, comedic groundbreaker Lenny Bruce was arrested by undercover police after a performance... Read More

Tracking Angle contributors Michael Johnson and Mark Ward sit down to discuss the music of French composer Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) in anticipation of the upcoming DG Original Source box set release of the composer’s Complete Orchestral Works performed by Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Read More

To Nick Finzer, the pioneering trombonist J.J. Johnson is often taken for granted. A standout among the new generation of trombonists, Finzer released Legacy — a full-album tribute to his hero, last year — “He’s one of those figures where people know and are familiar with his name,” he told me. “But when you start to dig a little deeper below the surface, people don’t realize how transformative he was.”Transformative indeed: in retrieving the trombone from its... Read More

The third volume of the Blue Note Review, limited to 2,000 copies and entitled Truly Madly DeepLee Morgan is devoted to the music of the trumpeter Lee Morgan. Included in the box set is a Tone Poet style reissue of his 1967 recording, Sonic Boom, a reissue of a 45 RPM single of two tunes from his Charisma album, here 3 LP sides, also on a CD, of contemporary, artists playing Morgan compositions or music associated with him and a "never before released... Read More

I don't believe anyone has ever before done this! Using the Sonic Presence binaural microphone system—it creates a "dummy head" with a microphone adjacent to each ear—I recorded the room sounds at the Florida International Audio Expo. You will experience a remarkably close facsimile of what I and other attendees heard at the show in each of the rooms.You must wear headphones to appreciate the binaural effect and to fully hear the tonal balance. The... Read More

At last year's Southwest Audio Fest I was impressed with Genesis Advanced Technology's introduction of its new G7 Foxtrot loudspeaker. I recognized it as one of the notable products in my 2024 SWAF report and quickly made arrangements with Genesis owner and designer Gary Koh to review it. Genesis History The late Arnie Nudell, a renowned figure in high-end audio founded Genesis Advanced Technologies in 1991. Before establishing Genesis, Nudell co-founded... Read More