When my friend Robin Wyatt (Robyatt Audio) and I decided to release this live performance on vinyl we vowed to produce it "cost is no object" and we didn't do it to make money—not that we are against making money and we actually did make some. I sent as a gift to the about to retire Bob Ludwig what I thought were the finished, ready to be cut to lacquer files but he got back to me and insisted that he'd like to master it and have his name on it... Read More

The top photo was taken back in 2005, at the Stereophile Home Entertainment Show, New York Hilton Hotel, where Garth Leerer raffled off this swell Clearaudio turntable and I hosted the giveaway. Beginning in the late 70s/early 80s, Musical Surroundings' Garth Leerer has been an eye witness to and participant in the growth of high performance audio. I've known Garth for more than thirty years but mostly we're like two ships passing in the day and night... Read More

The TT-Hub turntable and its included isolation base are constructed of bamboo ply—a material chosen for acoustics, durability, and sustainability. The belt drive turntable features a quartz clock-regulated controller with fine speed tuning, feeding an outboard AC-synchronous motor housed in a heavy aluminum chassis. A precision bearing, consisting of a PEEK (polyetheretherketone) thrust pad and jeweled ball, supports a 30mm thick acrylic platter with a special... Read More

This was a difficult piece to write. I had to do more than my usual amount of listening, swapping gear, and thinking about how best to convey the Audio Note UK sound if such a thing exists. Many thanks to Peter Qvortrup and Adrian Ford-Crush of Audio Note for their help and patience.Audio Note has been on my radar for quite some time. I’ve read a bit about the origin of Audio Note Japan and, later, Audio Note UK - it’s an interesting and somewhat usual story. I’m not... Read More

I can't better describe this than the annotation's second sentence, but might as well begin with the first: "The celebration of YULE in Northern Europe harks back to a transition from ancient Pagan Germanic culture to the more formal spirituality of the newer Christian rite. Christmas, as we mostly now call it, gave us hymns, processions and chants, and in between, silence in church. Yule meant a vibrant pre-Christian secularity, with feasting and... Read More

Christmas comes early for followers of the spectacular Original Source vinyl reissues.  Prime your bank accounts for preorders starting December 13th… (Plus the winners of the OSS Test Pressing raffle are announced - in a unique way...)

(December 10, 2024 - Los Angeles, CA) Rhino Entertainment is proud to announce the launch of a new audiophile vinyl series, Rhino Reserves, offering legendary albums on 180-gram premium-quality black vinyl. Ensuring the highest audio quality, Rhino Reserve will be pressed locally at Fidelity Record Pressing’s brand-new plant in Oxnard, CA, and cut by renowned mastering engineer Matthew Lutthans at The Mastering Lab. For these inaugural releases, however, the lacquers... Read More

My main job in real life (to the extent any of our lives are real) is national-security columnist for Slate. Around this time every year, since 2003, its indulgent editors have let me write a piece on what I see as the year’s best jazz albums, usually the 10 best new recordings and the three best historical releases (which I have usually confined to music that for the most part hasn’t been issued before—in other words, excluding mere reissues). This past Wednesday,... Read More

This past Wednesday (December, 4) at Tribeca listening bar All Blues, Analogue Productions’ Chad Kassem, reissue supervisor Steve Berkowitz, and jazz scholar Ashley Kahn presented Birth Of The Blue, the new compilation of the Miles Davis Sextet’s May 26, 1958 session. Recorded almost a year before Kind Of Blue and featuring the same lineup—Miles, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers, and Jimmy Cobb—this set of four songs has never seen its... Read More

Costly, exotic phono cartridges are fun to write about and of course to listen to and own but they represent a tiny fraction of the business for large, "industrial grade" producers like Audio-Technica. Though most of the company's cartridge output centers on "bread and butter" models like the AT and VM 95 series, maintaining high precision, manufacturing excellence requires exercises in forward thinking design and execution.... Read More

By 1971, things were finally starting to come together for Genesis. Vocalist Peter Gabriel, keyboardist Tony Banks, and guitarists Mike Rutherford and Anthony Phillips initially churned out short baroque pop pieces on their 1969 debut, From Genesis to Revelation, while they were still pupils at England’s prestigious Charterhouse boarding school. Producer Johnathan King fought to keep the group’s arrangements concise to a simple pop formula, but Genesis was keen to... Read More

Somehow, it’s already the end of November, which means that the holiday season is upon us. “Finding good gifts for picky vinyl obsessives can be hard,” goes our gift guide intro year after year. Thus, Michael Fremer and Malachi Lui (with the consideration of other writers’ most enthusiastic reviews this year) have compiled a list of recommended records, gear, and accessories. All products are independently selected. We hope this helps at least someone.iFi Zen Phono 3... Read More

A relatively lackluster set of RSD Black Friday offerings had me staying home. There were a few interesting items but nothing that had me running to the store, especially pre-dawn to wait on line. Your reaction may have differed and for all I know you are reading this standing on line at your favorite record store. These three were sent my way, so of course I listened.Resonance HLP-9074The Sun Ra Arkestra played Warsaw while I was there covering last October's... Read More

Bill Evans in Norway is a double album with a never before heard recording of an excellent 1970 concert from the Kongsberg Jazz festival featuring the Evans trio with bassist Eddie Gómez and drummer Marty Morell.

Veteran music journalist, author, Zelig-like scene schronicler Harvey Kubernik has seen it all, (or at least much if not most of it) and over the decades has managed to be the man on the ground for the most momentous events in rock history. The genre may be fading but interest in it, and its history has not, as the excitement surrounding this new documentary that covers the same time frame as the recently released The Beatles 1964 US Albums in Mono box... Read More

Part 2 of my examination of this landmark release of Furtwängler's wartime recordings with the BPO continues with a detailed discussion of the music and performances contained on these records, and of their cultural, historical, and political context and significance.

You can read Part 1 here. 

You needn't read the liner notes to feel from where drummer/composer Jacob Wendt draws his inspiration. The front cover photo and art direction offer a hint. The back cover does not, but drop the stylus on the title track opener and you'll hear Rudy's classic Blue Note stereo spread and feel Horace Silverness of it. The "Sidewinder"-ness of the follow up tune, "New Groove" is even more obvious, but on neither tune nor on any of... Read More

In this limited edition 8-vinyl LP set of recordings drawn from its epic 22 CD/SACD of the wartime recordings of Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, we have a unique and compelling portrait of music-making as an act of cultural and political assertion, latterly embodying defiance in the face of defeat and fear.  These were also recordings made with a higher level of sonic fidelity than hitherto available, made possible by the new technology of tape and tape recorders developed and built in Germany in the 1930s.  That any of the original master tapes themselves survived the fall of Berlin and their removal to the Soviet Union is just one aspect of the fascinating tale told by these legendary recordings and the beautifully presented accompanying materials in this remarkable set.  Part 1 features an overview of the set, a discussion of Furtwängler’s unique place amongst conductors, and the story behind how these recordings came to be made, and the technology developed to make them.  Part 2 continues with a detailed discussion of the music and performances contained on these records, and of their cultural, historical, and political context and significance.