Patrick Leonard and I Discuss His New Album "It All Comes Down To Mood"

and you get to hear some of the tracks

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.

Leonard co-wrote and produced songs for Leonard Cohen's final three records, all of Madonna's early records, Roger Waters' Amused to Death and Elton John's Songs From the West Coast, and Bryan Ferry's Bête Noire (he co-wrote five songs), among his many writing and producing credits. It's a musical and sonic spectacular and has enthusiastic endorsements from Elton and Todd Rundgren among others.

You'll hear for yourself as well spin tracks in between talking about Leonard's incredible career as a musician and producer. Kevin Killen engineered and mixed, Bob Ludwig mastered, Chris Bellman cut the lacquers, Dorin Saurbier at RTI plated and RTI pressed. I'm credited as "Vinyl Shepherd", meaning I produced the vinyl version of album, seeing it through from files to finished record. .

Also, you'll have an opportunity to hear the new Audio Technica ART-1000x cartridge and McIntosh's $2000 MP100 phono preamp with defeatable built-in A/D converter. I'll review that as soon as possible.

I couldn't use my Lynx HiLo converter because the Thunderbolt cable went bad and they are not made anymore so I had to order one from China that may or may not work, but this $2000 McIntosh piece borrowed from my friends at SkyFi Audio is USB-based and sounds really good. You'll hear both its phono pre and A/D in these recordings.