Music Reviews: Vinyl

Berlin, the city where I was born, grew up, and still live today, was divided for three decades. The Berlin Wall stood here, and the city was perhaps the most famous border between East and West. The Wall completely enclosed West Berlin, but also ran right through the middle of historic Berlin. The Wall separated not only the country and its people, but also its culture. Most of the theaters, opera houses, museums, and libraries were located in East Berlin, which was... Read More

Deep Purple’s Mark II lineup of Blackmore/Lord/Paice/Gillan/Glover, strayed from the group’s psychedelic origins, adapting to the harder-rocking style of contemporaries like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, which became the pillars of what became heavy metal. Fueled by lengthy and dynamic improvisations, the group was an untamable force on the live stage, something that worked in favor of their reputation and against the notion that it would translate efficiently on... Read More

Okay, here's my sub mission: I'm spoiled. I have the original 11 track Virgin U.K. release (A2/B1) issued in haste and quickly corrected to the 12 track standard version. You want Steve Jones's snarling, fibrillating singular animal guitar (arguably the glue that holds the record together, created by reproducing his guitar part an octave down as explained in Chris Thomas's notes in this reissue) make your ears sizzle. You want Lydon/Rotten's... Read More

If the music wasn't so interesting and singular, the story behind the album recorded in 1967 and released in 1968 would easily be more so. Dumped by Decca after having a string of great singles including "She's Not There", the group self-financed this project, recorded much of it at what later would be called Abbey Road Studios (with some at Olympic), signed to CBS, put out two singles and then this album released April, 1968 a month after the band... Read More

Back in 2016, while interviewing her for a New Yorker profile, I asked Cécile McLorin Salvant, who was 28 years old and just emerging as the era’s greatest jazz singer, whether she might cover contemporary pop tunes. The question made her wince. “There are some new songs that I really like,” she replied, “but I never think, ‘Maybe I’ll sing this song.’ I don’t care whether what I do is modern or of our time. I want to sing songs that have this timeless quality… I love... Read More

Jazz Patterns is a live album recorded in 1970 by the same great Joe Henderson band that recorded the classic Milestone album, If You’re Not Part Of The Solution, You’re Part Of The Problem. Since its release in 1982 on the Everest Archive of Folk and Jazz Music label, Jazz Patterns has always been an elusive and mysterious album. Everest, once highly regarded by audiophiles, had by 1982 long fallen into the deepest depths of the budget label netherworld and... Read More

Last month, Sacramento Nu-Metal band Deftones dropped their 10th studio album Private Music. Coincidentally, this album also marks nearly 30 years since their debut LP Adrenaline released in 1995. Deftones have come a long way in 30 years, and their longevity is rare, especially for a band associated with a style of music that mostly died off in the mid 2000s. But part of their staying power has been the musical creativity that has long elevated the group far above... Read More

To be brief: compared to the version included in the deluxe box set of a few years ago, this re-mastered One-Step version cut by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering sounds soooo much better, it's kind of ridiculous.I took it to my friend Anthony Chiarella's (he's CEO of Specialty Sound & Vision, which distributes Gryphon among other products) and played it on his system during a meeting of the New York/N.J. Audio club and the reaction in the... Read More

Following Roxy Music's epic and successful 2022 world tour, Phil and Andy decided they'd not had enough and so the two, along with original Roxy drummer Paul Thompson, went into the studio and in October 2023 released AM PM. They decided in March of 2024 to do some live shows based on the album and this is the result.Frankly, it's reassuring to know that Andy survived the Roxy tour because he appeared to be blowing his brains out and as cosmic,... Read More

Along with an Acoustical-Systems A*Stellar turntable to review, company founder and designer Dietrich Brakemeier brought along a remarkable sounding solo piano record his company sponsored produced and released on vinyl and CD last year, created using a purist minimal microphone technique, and Studer tape recorders. The venue was an old brewery—the Sudhaus—(which I assume translated to "suds house", the name given to my college fraternity living room), now a... Read More

If you were a suburban white kid of a certain age and remember when Elvis appeared, seemingly from outer space, everything in your world changed (unless your parents were into Black music). Of course there was an Ed Sullivan, Steve Allen, and Milton Berle show "pre-reel" that you may have caught, but this person looked and sounded like no one else you'd ever seen before on television and it didn't appear to be an act. Even when Elvis goofed around... Read More

The lack of archival Led Zeppelin releases in recent years makes the divided 2014-15 remaster campaign, complemented with unreleased studio rarities, a treasure trove in hindsight. Scholarly knowledge of seasoned collectors on what’s presumed to exist in the archives and what’s leaked in bootleg circles makes the group a no-brainer candidate for being one of rock’s most preserved acts. Nonetheless, Jimmy Page’s itch for perfectionism has left so little released in the... Read More

Purple Rain arrived in 1984 two years after 1999, Prince's first big critical and commercial success. With songs like "Little Red Corvette" and the title track, It was the record that established his stardom and eventually in the year 1999, it was certified quadruple Platinum. Following his passing in 2016 it again charted, peaking at #7—better than when it was originally released.Quick aside: I was in Minneapolis on April 21st, 2016, the day Prince... Read More

In the audiophile ghettos otherwise known as "hi-fi shows" Hip Hop music rarely if ever gets played. Blues? Yes. A lot of blues. Jazz? Yes a lot of jazz. Some classical too, but Hip Hop? Not that I can recall. Some say it's the coarse language. Around the time this now classic Hip Hop album was released late 1992, a Howard Stern Show character named "Stuttering John" (Melendez) stuck a microphone in Walter Cronkite's face at a press event... Read More

Wishbone Ash’s Argus was made in rock-and-roll’s golden age; when labels pelted fistfuls of money at any band with guitars, bass, drums, someone who could shake a tambourine, and someone who could sing harmony. This is evidenced by a minor-gods-canon band like Wishbone Ash getting the esteemed honor of a Hipgnosis cover. Assistant Bruce Atkins was dressed up in a costume borrowed from The Devils and posed over the Verdon Gorge in France. When folding out the jacket,... Read More

Deutsche Grammophon rounds off its new cycle of major works by the Russian composer from Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony with another essential purchase for lovers of this composer’s music and dedicated audiophiles.  Digital done right.  

Our reissue story starts May 27th 2015 at Bernie Grundman mastering, Gower Avenue, Hollywood, CA. Chad Kassem is there, Contemporary Records founder Lester Koenig's son John is there, I am there. Most importantly the master tape of Sonny Rollins' Way Out West is there.

Where, in 1980, was there room for The Soft Boys? The U.S. charts were distended with the dregs of Disco while England was being detained by the onset of synthpop. No one particularly wanted to know about a band of Cambridge smarties who wrote songs that sounded as if they’d be drawn from a tincture of Yves Tanguy.Still, they had their admirers. And when Robyn Hitchcock leant starboard towards a solo career, most of them disembarked with him. That left two albums and... Read More

The Buckingham-Nicks, Fleetwood Mac hook-up post the Bob Welch exit created a monster rock group but it took more than a year following the July, 1975 release for Fleetwood Mac to reach No. 1. Fans of the original blues group Fleetwood Mac were mostly disenchanted if not disgusted (my wife), but this group's success cannot be denied. It gave 1975 rockers what they wanted and at this point why it did is a waste of time to reiterate.If you think this release is a... Read More