… or better: the Kid plays the Abbott’s music.
The level of musicianship is so high, showing an intimate, deep love, respect and knowledge of John Renbourn’s unlimited and untamed art, always so various: every aspect of JR’s music are covered with passion and philology, confirming the immortality of music.
The 2 disks-set is a joy to listen to, indeed.
A labor of love and a must-have for any acoustic guitar lover and scholar.
Bravo, Clive!
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“Everyone stands alone on the heart of the earth pierced by a ray of sunshine: and suddenly it's evening.”
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… and worth it.
All this mess “only” to improve cables layout, to gain a shelf, to avoid having to kneeing to change a CD… the installation of my own designed H-shaped risers to my gears cabinets proved to be quite challenging and demanding for my back.
… but the result is what I wanted.
We've got a 1923 Gibson F-5 Lloyd Loar Master Model Mandolin!
https://www.elderly.com/products/gibson-f-5-90u-224384?variant=46073041682623
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In Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 1923, Checker Cabs first arrived on the city's streets, and Lloyd Loar completed this F-5 Master Model mandolin. Signed July 9th, this model was made during Loar's last two years at Gibson. This historic mandolin features a carved spruce top with figured maple sides, back, and neck, beautifully paired with an ebony fingerboard and adjustable bridge. It comes equipped with four-on-a-plate tuners with pearl buttons, original "The Gibson" stamped tailpiece, and a raised pickguard. Pearl dots adorn the fingerboard, perfectly complementing the multi-ply purfling and binding. The methods refined by Loar during this era persist to this day, establishing the industry standards for the F-model mandolin. Early, influential features on this piece include a tuned soundboard, parallel tone-bar bracing, dual F-holes, and an adjustable truss rod, all finished in a stunning sunburst. A Calton hardshell case and Small Dog case cover are included. Gibson and those same Checker Cabs shuttered their Kalamazoo factories in 1982, 59 years after this mandolin was made. Now, 103 years later, this legendary F-5 has returned home to Michigan, available on consignment for your enjoyment at Elderly Instruments.
Apparently, it is sold out, already!
A closer-view at the new ivory heel-cap on my ‘07 Martin OM-42 💫
An American aßhøle on a Facebook Martin’s group doubted this to be pre-ban/CITES certified legal ivory (something my luthier and myself are 110 % sure, but - most of all - why should I lie on this?!?) and when I disproved, he reminded to me it’s an illegal material: while well-aware of rules on the matter and apologizing to the elephant donor, I reminded him Steinway and Bösendörfer specifically asked to their ivory wholesalers for a grain-free material for their premium keyboards and CITES-certified ivory is tolerated in luthiery.
As I was strongly tempted to open a nasty confrontation, before writing it’s also illegal bombing Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq, for example… but I resisted the delicious temptation, remaining verbally non-violent 🤣😇🤣 and got my temper, just canceling the post on FB.
A lesson: never offer pearls to swine… they won't appreciate them!
😉🤭🤔
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A beauty!
Look at this spruce top “silk” and these Frank Lloyd Wright inspired fingerboard 🥇
Thanks to Steve Hoffman for the following 🙏🖖🥇💫🙏
“I was asked again about what projects I used the Teletronix LA-2a compressor on in disk or digital mastering. No problem answering one more time.
My units are ganged for stereo or mono reproduction via the handy toggle switch in the center of the two units.
Never far from my work space, always dependable, always beautiful sounding, more subtle than any Fairchild, responsive no matter how hard it's pushed.
I've used it on countless projects:
Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, The Beach Boys, Doors, Eagles, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, Fleetwood Mac, Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, Peggy Lee, Jethro Tull, Chuck Berry, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Van Morrison, White Stripes, Tom Petty, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Ella Fitzgerald, YES, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Steely Dan, Steppenwolf, Bad Company, Jim Croce, Elvis Presley, Billie Holiday, Judy Garland, Dave Mason, Paul Simon, America, The Band, Crosby, Stills & Nash, The Cars, ZZ Top, James Taylor, Art Pepper, Steve Miller Band, Queen, Rod Stewart, Duke Ellington, John Lee Hooker, Al Jolson, Roy Orbison, Bing Crosby, Sammy Davis, Jr., The Who, Lightnin' Hopkins, Bill Haley & his Comets, Miles Davis, Mamas and Papas, Blue Öyster Cult, The Byrds, Eric Clapton, Bill Evans Trio, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Phil Collins, Alice Cooper, Deep Purple, Jeff Beck, Doobie Bros., Faces, Grand Funk, Heart, Billy Joel, Linda Ronstadt, Ten Years After, Grant Green, Wes Montgomery, Pat Benetar, Elton John, Leon Russell, Metallica and more.
You name it, if needed, I've run it through the Teletronix LA-2A. My (no longer) secret weapon since 1982. Here's a tip, turn the peak reduction all the way off and use it as a preamp, like Ken Perry used to do at Capitol. Adds that great sound without compression. A true genius invention. Thanks, JIM LAWRENCE and BILL PUTNAM!”
Amazing, indeed: technology meets music at its best.
SHARE THE NEWS!
NEW RELEASE!!!
https://sublime-frequencies.bandcamp.com/music
MEKONG SHELLAC: Cambodian Artifacts from the 78-rpm era
SF135
Mekong Shellac is an extremely rare collection of classical and popular styles of Khmer music from the 1930s to the 1950s. Restored from the few original remaining copies, this compilation reveals a remarkable world of early 20th-century Cambodian folk music previously lost in time through war, cultural shifts, and modernization. These recordings were selected for their distinctive musical qualities, the physical condition of the 78 rpm records from which they were sourced, and the circumstances of their survival.
The selections span a range of Khmer musical forms, including Chapey, Romvong, Lakon Basak, Pleng Khmer, Ayai, and Ayai Reung, as well as classical and court-derived traditions such as Pinpeat and Mahori, alongside popular and regional styles including Lamleav and Pleng Ka. It's a miracle these discs have survived at all throughout the past century. Restoration of these 78-rpm artifacts was a challenge, but considering that, of most songs appearing on the album, less than 5 copies are known to exist worldwide today - with only two known copies of three tracks presented here, the songs survive magnificently. Produced by Adam Fargason with the critical assistance of Sam Touch and Mai Viết Cường, this limited-edition vinyl pressing comes with a deluxe 16-page booklet insert including highly detailed liner notes, essays and historical information about the recordings, and a selection of vintage photographs.
“It's foolish to think you have to read all the books you buy, just as it's foolish to criticize those who buy more books than they can possibly read.
It would be like saying you have to use all the cutlery, glasses, screwdrivers, or drill bits you've bought before buying new ones.
There are things in life that you always need to have in abundance, even if you only use a small part of them.
If, for example, we think of books as medicine, we understand that it's better to have many at home rather than just a few: when you want to feel better, you go to the "medicine cabinet" and choose a book. Not just any book, but the right book for that moment.
That's why you always need to have a large selection!
Those who buy only one book, read only that one, and then get rid of it, simply apply a consumerist mentality to books, that is, they consider them a consumer product, a commodity.
Those who love books know that books are anything but a commodity.”
Umberto Eco
This ECM disk from 2011 was suggested by Stefano Amerio - the sound engineer extraordinaire who recorded this and hundreds more ECMs’ - when I interviewed him, years ago.
At my (legit but a bit childish 🤭) question about “the best” ECM’s recording he made, ever, Stefano thought about it for a moment and answered without hesitation.
This disk is a masterpiece of sweetness and beauty… the recording is - truly is - F A N T A S T I C in every parameter: timbre, spatial and ambience informations and micro-dynamics.
I’m floating with a silly smile on my face.
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These three double disks, actually six SACDs’, box-sets made in Austria by Col Legno label are a compendium of concrete and avantagarde electronic music truly worth having and listening to.
Recording is first rate, sometimes amazing and a sonic rollercoaster for any audio system!
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“Cane che lascia” (or popularly known as “Il cane che caca” - The Pooing Dog), created around 1880 by the Italian artist Adriano Cecioni (1836–1886), a painter and sculptor associated with the Macchiaioli movement.
Created in terracotta and later cast in bronze, it represents the most mature and provocative expression of Cecioni's anti-academic realism, focusing on anecdotal and natural scenes devoid of idealization. It is part of a series of studies and sculptures dedicated to hunting dogs, a beloved theme of the artist. Sargi wrote: "...it nevertheless displays a surprising elegance in the way in which, by arching its back, it transfers its weight from the front legs to the hind legs, which are held wider and slightly raised, allowing, under the tense rib cage, the contraction of the muscles involved in the expulsion of feces, while the tail, straight back, admirably balances the energy of a movement that, starting at the height of the neck, then flows downwards, sinuously crossing the entire body of the animal."
I’ll be grateful forever to the renditions/transcriptions for acoustic guitar of Duck Baker of “Tintiyana” by Dollar Brand which made me - forty+ years ago - to discover South-african jazz music.
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Sufi musical brotherhood that includes three-fifths of the disbanded Mighty Baby!
Confortable with ethnic influences, the only album of Habibiyya shares similarities with L.A.'s Kaleidoscope, London's Third Ear Band, Milan's Aktuala, with the use of instruments such as koto and shakuhachi sometimes creating oriental rather than arabic-inspired atmospheres.
Susan Archuletta in the line-up is none other than Susan Graubard in Pat Kilroy's band years before. Rare original U.K. Island Help 1972.
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Swordfishtrombones - the eighth studio album by Tom Waits was released on September 1, 1983 on Island Records. It was the first album that Waits self-produced. Stylistically different from his previous albums, Swordfishtrombones moves away from conventional piano-based songwriting towards unusual instrumentation and a somewhat more abstract and experimental rock approach.
Swordfishtrombones, was Waits's turning point and he has never stopped reinventing. To begin with, on a very basic level, Kathleen Brennan opened him up to new influences, he suggests.
"Her record collection and her library were both impressive compared to mine. When I met her most of my records were kind of stuck together with cheese and hair and oil and stuff. She had hers not only still in the cases but still in the little paper sleeve too. That in itself was something of a revelation."
In a 1983 interview with Edwin Pouncey for Sounds, Waits explained that he was interested in exploring “how your memory distorts things. It’s like an apparatus that dismantles things and puts them back together with some of the parts missing. When you remember something it’s always a distorted impression…It’s like when you misunderstand somebody or you’re eavesdropping and you only hear part of a conversation, you reconstruct the rest of it around that. Or you read a magazine article that says ‘continued page 23’ but that page is torn out so all you had was those two paragraphs to go on.”
The carnival of the mind that Waits constructed by applying these ideas to music is matched by his narrative approach. Instead of following the standard singer/songwriter template and using each song as an outlet for his personal reflections, Waits embodies a different character on each track, and it’s always one with a wild tale of their own to tell.
Photo by Lynn Goldsmith
The company Live Recording in Gothenburg (Sweden) rebuilt Revox A77s for professional use.
Fantastic machines.
A lot of extremely well sounding records were recorded with thise machines.
In the 1st century BC, Vitruvius described a hidden acoustic system in theaters, visible to all: large vases placed between the tiers of seats to modify the way sound propagated.
There were no microphones. There were no loudspeakers. There was no electricity.
There was stone, terracotta, bronze, and a surprisingly refined understanding of sound.
Vitruvius, in his treatise De Architectura, speaks of echea: resonant vessels that had to be placed in special cavities of the theater, according to precise proportions.
The idea was fascinating. The theater had to be more than just beautiful to look at: it also had to be designed to allow the actor's voice to reach the greatest possible number of spectators.
And here comes the most interesting part.
For a long time, these vases were described almost as a sort of "sound system" of antiquity. But the reality is more subtle.
Modern studies suggest that their acoustic behavior depended on shape, size, position, and the characteristics of the surrounding space. It's therefore incorrect to imagine them as ancient loudspeakers capable of simply amplifying the voice.
Rather, they were elements of a complex acoustic system, in which the architecture itself became part of the instrument.
And perhaps this is the most surprising detail.
The ancients designed space by thinking about something they couldn't see.
Sound.
A voice spoken on stage traveled through the air, struck the surfaces of the theater, was reflected by the stone, and interacted with the structure.
Every wall, every step, every cavity could contribute to the perception of the scene.
Today, we no longer have to rely solely on Vitruvius' descriptions.
The VOICING SPACES project at the University of Palermo studies the relationship between architecture, sound, and perception in ancient spaces, also using digital tools and simulations to acoustically reconstruct environments from the past.
In other words, we are using computers and three-dimensional models to try to understand how a theater built almost two thousand years ago might have been heard.
It's a strange inversion of history.
We've lost the voices of ancient actors, their intonations, and the audience's reactions. But we can still study the stones through which those voices passed.
And perhaps, when we enter an ancient theater today and pause in silence among the stands, we're not simply looking at a monument.
We're entering an acoustic machine designed by people who understood the power of space.
This detail doesn't mean that every ancient theater necessarily concealed resonating vases, nor that these functioned like modern amplifiers.
But the question remains.
How many of the things we consider "technology" today were, for the ancients, simply architecture?
The theater could already have been a machine for transforming a voice into something capable of spanning the centuries.
And we, after almost two thousand years, are still trying to hear its echo.
Beneath the stone.
Inside the cavities.
In the silence.
Perhaps the real secret wasn't the vase.
It was the way the ancients learned to build around sound.
A voice.
A stone.
An echo.
And time has not been able to erase it.
This is JR’s first eponymous record on Transatlantic’s safety-copy master-tape from 1965.
Notice the “Renbourne” typo, a sort of old Anglo-archaism (i.e. towne, shoppe, etc.) quite often found on ‘60/70s English magazines when writing about John.
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Talking about something extraordinarily pleasant that just happened seems annoying and redundant to me, useless.
The silence and the contemplation of an event which simply doesn’t need any further word whatsoever, is a one-of-a-kind condition which seldom happens: I can say I experienced when reaching an hiking spot and looking at a broad landscape of mountains.
To same extent, there is absolutely no need for ebullient prose with high-sounding words: silence is noble enough to describe (my very personal interpretation of) musical perfection.
Recently, forced to be stuck at home due to the very unpleasant heatwave and humidity, I more and more intimately entered into the really amazing introspective capabilities of my “new” audio system and I found myself - usually quite prone to hype here and there - speechless and content about this condition.
Not a passive condition, but something VERY similar to the above example of gazing at a hard-earned view of an amazing, unique landscape achieved after hours of arduous walking.
The Gotorama 2.0 system provides such a primitive and primordial joy that transcends words that too often mislead or mask the true essence of feelings and sensations.
To my HUGE surprise, the daily use of the recently overhauled Meridian 500 Mk I/563 transport/DAC combo gave to the whole system a synergy and an extremely relaxed, yet detailed and not euphonious character, where music flows effortlessly and deeply involving.
I still remember Jean Hiraga, who visited my Studietto on August 2013, wrote in his review about my system on his “Stereo Prestige” magazine something similar about the old trusty Meridian’s, which surprised him for its top-notch sonics despite its venerable vintage… something even more impressive and surprising nowadays, 13 years after JH’s considerations, which I heartfeltly and completely subscribe.
My recent addiction to Eberhard Weber’s music - after having appreciated him for years as an excellent double bass player without fully understanding his unique qualities as a composer - brought me to re-listen to his ECM ‘70s production and I don't remember ever having "entered" so intimately into the music of a musician and composer... I mean that deep and complete, complex understanding of the ineffable beauty of sound world created by the pure and beautiful mind of a unique musician.
Words - which I am necessarily using - are sometimes overrated, indeed.
I’m right now listening to some Eberhard Weber’s music… and if I stop writing, immediately my mind get empty and still, in awe: for the beauty of sounds and of melodies… but - almost instantly - I’m not able to argue, anymore: just an urgent, soft, sweet need to timidly and privately cry with joy… but, just enough time to think about this feeling, and a timid tear to moisten my eyes.
Inexplicably, innocently, ineffably…
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