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The Tracking Angle published its premier issue in January 1995 as a digest-sized, stapled, two-color, sound-conscious music magazine edited by Michael Fremer. It quickly became a full-color, glossy, perfect bound, full-sized magazine featuring an impressive roster of music reviewers and...Read More

June 8, 2023: When Joni Mitchell mesmerized the Newport Folk Festival audience last summer with a surprise performance, she “breathed new meaning into some of her most famous lyrics” (New York Times). Today, the powerful live recording of her beloved hit “A Case Of You” is available digitally. Originally released in 1971 on Blue, this new live recording features vocals by Marcus Mumford and Brandi Carlile.

Many have long forgotten, if they ever knew, but for a brief spell in the mid-to-late 1950s, André Previn was one of America’s most popular jazz musicians, at least judging by record sales, and his cover of West Side Story, released in 1960, marked his high point in that realm. It was his 6th and final album devoted entirely to a Broadway score—the first, in ’56, was My Fair Lady, which remained the best-selling jazz album for the next three years. It also marked pretty much his farewell to jazz, after which he turned to arranging unabashed mood music and then, in a total switch, to conducting classical symphonies.

Following High End Munich, I took a train ride to Zurich, Switzerland with members of the CH team: CEO and founder Florian Cossy, publicist Louise Ford, Head of International Sales, Kevin Wolff, and software developer Eduard Kohler. Then, in a whirlwind visit to the heart of Swiss watch making territory, I toured CH Precision in Préverenges as well as Telsa, the company that does CH's "board stuffing". Also in this video you'll see the machine shop... Read More

The Stillpoints Aperture Acoustic Panels, available for quite some time now in their original or Series II form, have been reviewed numerous times including by our own Michael Fremer. These reviews have consistently praised the panels' positive impact when placed at the first point of reflection, between or behind the speakers.Over the years, I have utilized them in my listening room in all these positions. However, during AXPONA 2022, when I entered the... Read More

Like most "overnight successes", the individual members of The Cars knocked around for years working to find the right setting and musical formula before hitting it big with their debut album. Ric Ocasek and Benjamin Orr met in Cleveland, both moving to Boston in the early '70s and releasing non-charting albums in various "folkie" type groups including Milkwood and Cap'n Swing. The Cars formed in 1976 with guitarist and Berklee student Eliot Easton joining Ocasek and Orr (the three had been in Cap'n Swing) and keyboardist Greg Hawkes, who had been in a previous group with the duo but left to tour with musical comedian Martin Mull plus drummer David Robinson late of The Modern Lovers. Hawkes didn't join until early 1977. Whew!

Universal and The Beach Boys organization tasked mix master Giles Martin to produce a Dolby Atmos edition of the iconic album Pet Sounds. There were big differences between doing this mix and Mr. Martin's previous remix work on albums produced by his father George Martin, and in his ZOOM call presentation before the Dolby Screening Room playback in New York on Tuesday, May 30th, he addressed them. Nonetheless, Martin's larger than life on-screen image amplified a level of discomfort with this project not evidenced in any of the Beatles re-mix events I attended. Following the full album playback, he returned to take questions from the audience.

In the mid-1960s, just as rock ‘n’ roll was displacing jazz as America’s foremost popular music, Blue Note Records took a bold but commercially disastrous foray into the avant-garde, signing such adventurers as Andrew Hill, Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Graham Moncur III, and Cecil Taylor. It was a similarly risky move for today’s corporate-owned Blue Note to start reissuing some of these artists’ albums, a few years back, and on deluxe vinyl no less, but... Read More