Little Fwend, the automatic tonearm lifter made by Lasse Gretland of Norway, has grown into a niche success story. Unparalelled product quality and usability – plus attention from Technics – has turned the device into a cult favorite among turntable enthusiasts.

It’s a remarkable moment to be a record collector. Music lovers have never had more ways to hear their favorite albums in whatever format feels right: hi-res files, streaming on the move, sometimes reel-to-reel and cassette tape—the whole buffet. And yet, there’s a meaningful difference between a solid pressing and a pressing built to be the definitive document of an album. Audiophile labels have chased that ideal for decades: each working to deliver versions that... Read More

This interview with recording engineer Shawn Murphy originally appeared in The Tracking Angle print magazine published right around this time 30 years ago. This weekend, the L.A. & Orange County Audio Society will present Shawn with a "Record of the Year" award for his recording of Yuja Wang performing Shostakovich's Piano Concertos 1 and 2 reviewed on this website. More significantly the recording is up for a Grammy Award. We published it back in September, 2022 as the new website was going live but I thought it a good idea to bring it now to the front page.

“The Statue of Liberty said, ‘Come!’”—John Lennon, “New York City,” 1972It was sobering to stroll through the halls of the Brooklyn Museum last spring for Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm, which captured the Beatles’ culture-exploding first U.S. visit with unprecedented intimacy.Through McCartney’s lens, Lennon, peering at New York through his thick glasses, looks half-incredulous, half-haunted — the gleam of Beatlemania flashing in his eyes even... Read More

"The Jazz Detective" Zev Feldman best known for his worldwide vault discovery jazz issues on Resonance, Elemental and other labels, just announced a new venture: Time Traveler Recordings —a wide ranging program of reissues and newly discovered recordings that will cross over beyond jazz to other musical genres. For starters though Feldman is reissuing, in association with Craft Recordings, titles from the long dormant Muse Records catalog. The "Master... Read More

dCS's Managing Director David Steven was among the industry leaders I interviewed this past spring at Imacustica in Lisbon, Portugal. The store is one of the best I've ever visited and the event was a multi-day celebration of great music and audio. In addition to David, D'Agostino Master Audio's Dan D'Agostino was there to introduce the $150,000 stunning sounding Relentless preamp (I reviewed it for The Absolute Sound) and Bill Peugh was there... Read More

Mr. Guarducci asked to interview me recently and here's thevideo he posted to his ANA[DIA]LOG YouTube channel that he's kindly sent me so I can post it here as well. You never know how people are going to react nor did I know how many of his large subscriber base (he's based in (Italy) was going to react but so far the comments have mostly been positive over the few days the video's been up on his channel. It's a long interview (he kept it... Read More

The San Francisco Audiophile Foundation recently invited me to interview John Curl—a true audio designing legend whose decades spanning career includes working for Ampex, Mark Levinson, Parasound, Constellation and many other companies as well as designing a few equally legendary products he self-marketed like the Blowtorch and Vendetta Research preamps. Phono preampfification is a particular Curl speciality.Keeping Mr. Curl on the "straight and narrow" was... Read More

The introduction most often associated with producer—and champion of unfairly unheard music—Zev Feldman, compares him to an archaeologist: the “Indiana Jones of jazz,” as The New Yorker wrote in 2023. Fittingly, Feldman’s occasional SiriusXM radio show is cleverly titled Jazz Detective. In a reissue landscape often focused on bringing listeners albums they may already own in triplicate, Zev shines his producer’s flashlight into unexplored corners of the archive:... Read More

Above photo credit: Ana GibertShow business is packed with success stories born not just from talent, but also by being in the right place at the right time—backed up by a relentless work ethic. That’s how Joe Chiccarelli got his audio engineering start, setting him on a path to become a Grammy-winning producer. As the story goes, when Frank Zappa’s regular engineer couldn’t make a Sheik Yerbouti session Joe was called in as the backup and grabbed on to the... Read More

I’ve conducted over 2,500 interviews with musicians, songwriters, poets, actors, movie directors, documentarians, authors, record producers, sound engineers, and novelists. Every year since 1975 I’ve talked to or emailed an interviewee about Bob Dylan.

As Bob’s 84th birthday looms on May 24th, I thought it was appropriate to display their reflections, observations and excerpts from emails in my archive, which houses a signed copy of Dylan’s Chronicles: Vol One.

Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige, an American professional baseball pitcher who first played in the Negro Leagues, and then in the majors, in a 1953 Collier’s magazine article quipped, "Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you." A reminder to live in the present. Oscar-winning filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker would title his 1967 Bob Dylan documentary "Don’t Look Back".

(lead photo: Bob Dylan, Robbie Robertson, Sandy Konikoff, Santa Monica Civic Center 1965—Photo by Rodney Bingenheimer)

By Harvey Kubernik © 2025

George Brown was affectionately known as George “Funky” Brown and provided drums and percussion to Kool and the Gang’s many funky forays. He co-wrote some of the band’s hits which have woven themselves into the greater musical consciousness such as “Too Hot,” Summer Madness,” “Celebration,” “Jungle Boogie,” and “Ladies Night.” Of course, his musical influence did not end with Kool and the Gang’s releases, some of his drum samples became staples on many hip-hop and pop... Read More

The legendary Strata-East label started by Charles Tolliver and the late Stanley Cowell recently signed a long-term licensing deal with Mack Avenue Music Group, now owned by Exceleration Music. (L-R in photo: Kevin Gray, former Mack Avenue CEO Denny Stilwell and Charles's son Ched Tolliver, who is also the company's CEO).The label asked me to help co-ordinate the all-analog vinyl reissue process utilized for the first four titles, and to offer the label... 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

Blondie released its fourth album Eat to the Beat in 1979. No way then could the band have known that nearly a half-century later it might be possible to press beats onto records made of beets that, at least theoretically, one could actually eat! Thermal Beets Records is a partnership founded by Larry Jaffee, the author of "Record Store Day: The Most Improbable Comeback of the  21st Century" and co-founder of the Making Vinyl conference, and Kevin DaCosta, a vinyl manufacturing consultant and the technical director for Evolution Music.

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

Patrick Leonard's new "prog rock" extravaganza It All Comes Down to Mood, released at the end of August is now on sale at www.acousticsounds.com, www.elusivedisc.com and at www.musicdirect.com. It's a double LP 180g vinyl set with cover art by Storm, which did DSOTM all those years ago, and features Tony Levin and John Patituchi on bass, plus Martin Barre, Ian Anderson many other greats and of course PL himself is a multi-instrumental keyboard wiz.... Read More

An exclusive transatlantic video discussion including an essential new historical video covering the original DGG production of Herbert Von Karajan and the BPO's Bruckner Symphony cycle, hosted by Deutsche Gramophon's Johannes Gleim with Emil Berliner Studios' Tonmeister, mastering engineer and Managing Director Rainer Maillard, cutting engineer Sidney Meyer, Tracking Angle's contributing writer Mark Ward and editor Michael Fremer. This box set is... Read More

Our friend Charles Kirmuss appeared on The Audiophile Junkie YouTube channel recently and claimed the superiority of tangential tracking arms without explaining the negatives. There are positives and negatives to everything in this hobby so J.R. and I asked to make a joint guest appearance to "cavitate" the situation.The video is below. The comments so far are interesting. My favorite is this one: "Excellent information. Very enjoyable. I sent this... Read More

Tracking Angle west coast correspondent Michael Trochalakis recently visited Levi Seitz's Seattle based Black Belt Mastering where the new Because Sound Matters Linkin Park "One Step" released were cut. Olivia Rodrigo's "Sour" and Beyonce's "Renaissance" are among the many other well regarded vinyl issues and reissues Seitz cut at Black Belt. Seitz gives Michael a tour of the facility and discusses his three lathes, then... Read More

Musician, recording artist, label owner, Gillian Welch partner in life and in the studio, and all around analog aficionado Dave Rawlings invited me to visit his Woodland recording Studio during last June's Making Vinyl where we finally sat down face to face to talk about the things we both know and love. This meeting—something we both talked about doing for almost five years now—was worth the wait as you'll see and hear. Over the past almost half-decade... Read More