Tom Fine explains the history in the liner notes accompanying each of these Pablo reissues, that in 1960 label founder Norman Granz sold Verve Records to MGM and moved to Europe where he promoted concerts and collected art. When his non-compete agreement expired in the early '70s he noted that many of his jazz friends, who like him, were now older but hardly "washed up", were without recording contracts. Two, Ella and Oscar, he also managed. You'll... Read More

Though most older fans today consider later albums "The Colour of Spring" (1986) and Spirit of Eden (1988) and to a lesser degree 1991's Laughing Stock to be Talk Talk's peak (though younger crowds especially prefer the last two albums), It's My Life from 1984 was the beginning of the band's rise to musical excellence (though critics mostly hated Spirit of Eden when it was first released and it was a commercial failure).Rhino Records on... Read More

Monk was born on October 10, 1917 in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Four years later his family moved to New York City, settling at the Phipps Houses at 243 West 63rd St in Manhattan, known then as the San Juan Hill area, later referred to as the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts neighborhood. When he was five years old, a neighbor gave him piano lessons in the stride style of Fats Waller and James P Johnson. At ages 10-12 he had classical piano lessons from Simon... Read More

Record plating is the "secret sauce" behind great sounding records. A great lacquer cut can be sabotaged by inept plating. Only a handful of experienced experts know how best to do this, aided by the finest infrastructure. RTI's plating expert Dorin Sauerbier is one of the world's best and the infrastructure he's built at RTI over the past 20 plus years helps produce some of the world's best stampers and thus some of the world's best... Read More

Fidelity Record Pressing, a partnership between Music Direct's Jim Davis and pressing plant veteran Rick Hashimoto and his son Edward, opened its brand new Oxnard, CA pressing plant to invited guests Friday, May 17th. I'd returned from Munich High End on the 15th after being away since the 7th of May so the idea of getting back on a plane the next day and flying cross country to attend on the 17th was out of the question. So I did something even more insane.... Read More

LOS ANGELES—Rhino High Fidelity (Rhino Hi-Fi) returns with the latest additions to its acclaimed limited-edition, high-end vinyl reissues. Bad Company’s Self-Titled(1974) debut and Yes’s Relayer (1974) are available today exclusively at Rhino.com and internationally at select WMG stores. Each release is limited to 5,000 individually numbered copies priced at $39.98Rhino High Fidelity has set the industry standard for sound quality and packaging, demonstrating... Read More

If you click on a writer's name it will take you to a page showing a clickable link to every review by that writer! Try it! You'll like it. Read More

About 23 pages into “Revolución to Roxy”, you’ll find eight-year-old Phil Manzanera carrying a small tray of cake and Cuban coffee to a man across the road standing watch over an empty house. By way of thanks the guard gives him a “broad smile” and then, as a sort of improvised firecracker, sets off a pinch of gun powder from an empty .303 shell. That’s just one charming glimpse into the life of the Roxy Music guitarist at a time that was otherwise lit up by the... Read More

Great titles, oft-released, first time on UHQR. What else is there to say? At least until we get to hear it. Read More

BINGHAMTON, NY – July 1, 2024 – McIntosh Laboratory, Inc., the premier name in audio excellence, proudly announces the release of SESSIONS Volume 1, a jazz album featuring eight original compositions by The Peter Erskine Quartet. Produced with iconic mastering studio Sterling Sound, this unique collaboration results in an album worthy of the world’s most discerning listeners – McIntosh customers – with the goal of creating the best sounding record possible, while... Read More

The plan was an on-stage interview with Patrick Leonard, whose new double LP album "It's All Comes Down To Mood" is due end of July. Patrick produced all of Madonna's early Warner Brothers Records, Amused to Death for Roger Waters, two of the final three Leonard Cohen records (he wrote or co-wrote songs on all three), as well as Elton John's Songs From the West Coast. There's more but that's enough! I wrote an essay published in the... Read More

Would you like to attend a recording session at Rudy Van Gelder's legendary Englewood Cliffs studio featuring saxophone great Joe Lovano? Of course you would! I was lucky enough to attend one—the only invited journalist—last May 19th, four days after returning from Switzerland following High End 2024. Here's the story. The old audiophile riddle "How do you make $1,000,000 in the audio business? Answer: "start with $2,000,000" didn't... Read More

Below is the press release for a new and some might think surprising "One-Step" audiophile vinyl release for three classic Linkin Park releases, under the "Because Sound Matters" banner relaunched by Warner Records, which now has an online store using that name. "Because Sound Matters" was a vinyl series originally created almost twenty years ago by Tom "Grover" Biery when he was working at Warner Brothers Records. The vinyl... Read More

Countless pieces of music written by 20th-century (and later) composers are very accessible, listenable, and rewarding. Here are a few.

Nesconset, NY, June 25, 2024 -- EAT (European Audio Team), the company whose high-performance products are designed to bring listeners as close as possible to the meaning and spirit of the original performance, offers the flagship Fortissimo S turntable in North America via VANA Ltd., its NY-based distribution partner. The Fortissimo S (SRP: $8,000, minus tonearm) is a significant step up from the company’s popular Forte S turntable, with a massive 50 lb., 15.75”... Read More

(This feature originally appeared in Issue 7, Spring 1996.)He didn’t play an instrument and he didn’t sing, but Brian Eno was in the band, and the band was Roxy Music. So what exactly did Eno (full name Brian Peter George St. John de Baptiste de la Salle Eno—wouldn’t you shorten it?) do for Roxy Music, which he co-founded in London with Bryan Ferry back in 1972? Listen to Stranded, the first Eno-free Roxy album and you’ll hear something missing. Or, listen to the... Read More

125,000 views of Steely Dan's "Gaucho" played back on Wilson-Benesch's GMT One turntable made clear that people enjoy listening to top quality vinyl playback, even degraded as it is by YouTube's meh bit rate audio. So here's another one: David Bowie's "Fashion" from his 1980 album Scary Monsters, Super Creeps from an original U.K. Townhouse mastered pressing. The record is not a "minty" copy but it still sounds... Read More