Dead Can Dance 💫

 

Have them all 💫

Tortoise - Touch (2025)

 

Warmth saved me 💫

 

It’s a concept that bounced around in my mind for awhile: listening to some quite definite music gives to me a very subtle (at first) cosy and warm feeling…

A sense of empathy and communion with the artist and his music filtered and enriched of personal memories and experiences.

I’m just now enjoying (deeply enjoying, I mean) Joan Armatrading’s first record and, like other times, I’m into her music with a sense of belonging to a specific era and culture.

Joan’s strong and unique voice, the amazing musicians, the cool partying atmospheres and the memory when I first appreciated this music when living in London, poor like a church mouse, but happily discovering something new every day.

I don’t know why “this” music moves me differently than others… but that’s not the only disc to be gifted by warmth: Neil Young - Harvest reminds me when I met with my girlfriend at a park and I had the newly purchased record with me.

More?

When my mom suddenly passed, I remember I was playing in loop Edvard Grieg’s “The Death of Åse” from Peer Gynt and crying in tears, in the dark.

It was a solitary, soothing self-healing technique and I still am deeply moved when listening to this immortal music.

Could go on and on… Incredible String Band’s “U” double record-set also reminds me of a period when I studied and read a lot, stuck in my little room with my audio system for days… I was in my teens and dreaming eyes wide all day.

Popol Vuh’s “In Der Garten Pharaohs” was another of many seminal discs when a kid… I was listening to this almost every day that my mom was afraid for my health: at some point, she insisted I destroyed the cover and the vinyl disc in pieces (not kidding, a truly sad and stressful moment)… a few days after the assassination of the orange disc, I bought another copy that I only listened when alone at home.

Joan Baez’s House of the Rising Sun in  “The Ballad Book” made me falling in love with acoustic guitar, which I bought when I was thirteen years old… and never quit.

The Pentangle’s “Reflections” which I bought in a long defunct bookstore in Padua (Draghi), changed my life and opened new worlds to a younger me… teaching that the best music wasn’t the one played on the radio, but something to be discovered in a personal endless searching and searching.

Many discs I own and cherish could tell a tale, a story… they aren’t material friends but immaterial part of my soul, my enlarged family.

Thanks to Joan Armatrading’s singing her “Save Me” in background, right now… very aptly, indeed ❤️

I love music, yes, I love it dearly.

Springtime

 

Colors after the Winter’s grey.

AAAAADADDDDD

 

Sound Techniques Studio 💫

 

“At the Chime of a City Clock: If those walls could sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing… 

The esteemed Richard Morton Jack will keep me honest, but if I’m tracking my London musical history spot on, through this door at 46a Old Church St. in Chelsea at one time or another walked the immortal Nick Drake, Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd, Richard Thompson and Fairport Convention, and Sandy Denny and Pentangle, as well as Cat Stevens, Elton John, Francoise Hardy, John Martyn, Elton John, Vashti Bunyan, The Incredible String Band, The Yardbirds and other musical luminaries—all to record at Sound Techniques, which was open from 1965 to 1976, with sessions overseen by the great engineer John Wood and producer Joe Boyd. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Techniques

A book worth waiting for!

It beggars belief that “Arnold Layne” and “See Emily Play”—my fave Pink Floyd tracks—were done here. 

But my mind splits open because this is where John Cale of The Velvet Underground (on celeste, piano, and harpsichord) worked with Nick on “Northern Sky”—“the greatest English love song of all time”, to quote the New Musical Express. Nick recorded all three of his genius albums here: “Five Leaves Left” (1969), “Bryter Layter” (1971) and “Pink Moon” (1972) plus his final five tracks (never released in his lifetime). 

Can you imagine watching Nick put down “River Man” live in the studio with those ethereal strings behind him?”

Thanks to Greg Ogarrio for the above text and here below freshly taken picture of the venerable bricks building.

💫

Love is in the air… core-less transformers

 

An essay by Misho Myronov 💫

It’s never too late to learn, to dig deeper, and to move to the next level.

For many years, I treated transformer cores as a necessary evil. Something unavoidable — helpful in many ways, but also inherently damaging. A compromise we could only try to balance, but never eliminate.

A few years ago, my perspective began to change.

If we cannot eliminate cores across the entire frequency spectrum, perhaps we can eliminate them where they do the most harm — in a narrover band. Exactly in the range where they stop helping and only do the damage to the signal.

Any magnetic core material introduces losses and distortions at all frequencies — even the most exotic cores. They differ in behavior, which is why certain materials are preferred in specific compromises. But the fundamental issue remains.

At low frequencies, we can tolerate these losses. In fact, we have no real alternative — a coreless solution at 10 Hz is unrealistic.

But at higher frequencies, the situation is different.

Here, we do not want anything that steals micro-details, introduces distortion, adds coloration, or affects frequency response.

For many years, I had no interest in multi-way amplification. I have always been — and still am — a big fan of full-range drivers. This realm requires the shortest and most transparent amplification path possible. I hope I’ve learned something along this way.

Discovering Altec two-way systems (and not only Altec, of course — you know), I faced a fundamental challenge: matching two very different transducers — a bass driver and a mid/high-frequency compression driver.

Compression drivers are significantly more efficient than bass drivers. Feeding both from the same amplifier inevitably requires attenuation of the mid/high band — and attenuation practically always means losses.

One solution was to use transformers for level matching. Transformation is always preferable to attenuation. This led me to design a series crossover where the transformer also functions as an inductor — resulting in a minimalistic network with only two elements, performing both frequency division and level matching.

But we are never fully satisfied, even with good results. We keep searching.

This search led me to a rather radical idea — one that seemed crazy at first (and even at second glance): using a coreless output transformer for the high-frequency channel in a two-way amplification system.

Since I had already been designing and building my own output transformers, and conducting extensive experiments, prototyping was a natural step.

This is how the first “Wooden Output Transformer” was born, along with an experimental two-channel amplifier.

It worked flawlessly with a crossover point at 2 kHz — and sounded absolutely fantastic with Altec duplex drivers. In fact, I had never heard the 604 sound this good — and I do have experience with Altecs…

Then the world changed — 2020 and everything that followed. Many things and ideas were postponed, some forgotten.

But the idea of extending the use of coreless transformers to lower frequencies — below 1.5–2 kHz — never left me.

Eventually, a new design was developed. After extensive testing, it proved to be a success.

The result: the first tube single-ended two-channel amplifier with a 500 Hz crossover point, using a coreless (air-core) output transformer.

Both objective measurements and subjective listening confirmed the result: exceptionally positive.

I will continue exploring this path — especially in the direction of multi-way amplification.

Stay tuned.

#WoodenAmp

#WoodenTransformer

Flea - Honora 💫

 

Worth digging 💫

Thanking Frank for suggesting this 💫

Moondog (Columbia 1969)

 

The self-taught music genius, the street musician beloved by Igor Stravinsky, Morton Feldman and Philip Glass.

💫

American Gothic 💫

 

Living like it’s 1970, with no regrets 💫😎☺️😎💫

 

I’m enjoying same music I was enjoying 55 years ago, and I feel so shamelessly comfortable…

Today I found three gems and couldn’t resist also if only a sought after NM copy on RCA of Steeleye Span’s “Hark! the Village Waits” wasn’t already in my collection.

Only had this amazing album on a Mooncrest reissue: this is a masterpiece and sounds like a super-disk!

Amazing appreciating the unbelievable earlier, faster and more straightforward version of “The Blacksmith” on “Hark!…” and the slower, epically majestic, richer rendition on “Please to see the King”.

This B&C 1971 NM copy (the second I buy in a few weeks!) is including the original insert… I guess it’s about time I’ll give away my Mooncrest’s copy.

A Desert Island disc, nice getting a spare… 

These records - also if half a century old - sound so different than the nowadays more commonly found reissues: the sparingly heard clicks and pops aren’t annoying but like little wrinkles on your loved one face… you loved her most of your life so you also love the time passing signs.

These discs and music are heirloom and DNA to me.

💫

David Sylvian - Camphor II (2026)

 

A David Sylvian’s new record is always a joy for the soul and ears… also if it’s “just” a compilation of remixed old music and some new material, BUT, wow!!! 

What a remix and what music: it sounds brand new and amazingly fresh and intriguing.

A kind of white 

That’s a nice one, don’t to be missed!

💫

John Coltrane - A Love Supreme 💫

 

This “Platinum Edition” 4 x SHM disks, made in Japan 🇯🇵 contains several gems: studio outtakes and alternate takes and a Seattle concert truly worth the expense.

💫

The Stooges

 

Iggy Stooge and his acolytes, produced by John Cale, in 1969: this music aged sooo well… it didn’t age, at all.

It’s fresh, raw and young, so full of life.

I never get tired of The Stooges’ eponymous one.

💫

Kuzma CAR-70 cartridge 😳

The world’s most expensive phono cartridge - a $42,000 engineering

 masterpiece (diamond cantilever!!!) that only a handful of people will ever 

see or hear.

 

🫣

Another Pentangle’s member passed away - RIP Terry Cox 💫

 

After Bert Jansch, John Renbourn and Danny Thompson… also Terry Cox left us 💫

He was such an unique drummer and musician 💫

Kraftwerk’s TEE reimagined on Reel to Reel 💫

 

Dust never sleeps 😳

 

I know, I know… those rags covering my audio gears are ugly, but better than dust-covered stuffs minutes after cleaning.

🤭

Nico 💫

 

 – Nico playing her beloved harmonium...

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Lucio Battisti and his ReVox A77

 

This (apparently) humble tape machine was enough for demos and home recordings of his masterpieces.

💫

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