… not the Thorens’ or the (black) Ortofons’, but that modified “soap” butter-color Ortofon cartridge
💫
Yesterday, June 1, 1973, British art rock pioneer and former Soft Machine drummer/singer Robert Wyatt broke his spine after attempting to leave a party by climbing down a drainpipe and falling three stories. It left Wyatt permanently crippled and confined to a wheelchair. Despite his handicap, he began a forty-year solo career that included critically acclaimed albums and a hit single, a cover of The Monkees "I'm A Believer".
A key player during the formative years of British jazz rock, psychedelic rock and progressive rock, Wyatt's own work became increasingly interpretative, collaborative and politicized from the mid 1970s onwards. His solo music has covered a particularly individual musical terrain ranging from covers of pop singles to shifting, amorphous song collections drawing on elements of jazz, folk and nursery rhyme.
Wyatt had been a member of influential Canterbury band The Wilde Flowers and later, after Soft Machine, put together Matching Mole before his accident.
Soft Machine, photo below, toured the US accompanying friends The Jimi Hendrix Experience.
Matching Mole were about to record their third album when, on 1 June 1973, during a birthday party for Gong's Gilli Smyth and June Campbell Cramer (also known as Lady June) at the latter's Maida Vale home, an inebriated Wyatt fell from a fourth-floor window. He was paralyzed from the waist down and has used a wheelchair for mobility ever since. On 4 November that year, Pink Floyd performed two benefit concerts, in one day, at London's Rainbow Theatre, supported by Soft Machine, and compered by John Peel. The concerts raised a reported £10,000 for Wyatt.
Wyatt released his solo album Rock Bottom on 26 July 1974. The album was largely composed prior to Wyatt's accident. The album was met with mostly positive reviews. Two months later Wyatt put out a single, a cover version of "I'm a Believer", which hit number 29 in the UK chart. Both were produced by Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason. There were strong arguments with the producer of Top of the Pops surrounding Wyatt's performance of "I'm a Believer", on the grounds that his use of a wheelchair "was not suitable for family viewing", the producer wanting Wyatt to appear on a normal chair. Wyatt won the day when he and the band all appeared in wheelchairs.
Throughout the rest of the 1970s Wyatt guested with various acts, including Henry Cow (documented on their Concerts album), Hatfield and the North, Carla Bley, Eno, Michael Mantler, and Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera, contributing lead vocals to lead track "Frontera", from Manzanera's 1975 solo debut Diamond Head. Wyatt continued to appear with other artists and release solo albums.
The verb "Wyatting" appeared in some blogs and music magazines to describe the practice of playing unusual tracks, in particular songs from Wyatt's album Dondestan, on a pub jukebox to annoy the other pub goers. Wyatt was quoted in 2006 in The Guardian as saying "I think it's really funny" and "I'm very honoured at the idea of becoming a verb."
Thanks to John Einarson for the above 🖖🙏🖖
Almost an art-installation.
Such a cool, elegant S150 pylon and… look at the impressive Goto SGs’ collection and the vibes taming black rope around the horn instead of the extremely low WAF, utterly unfriendly, sticky yet effective bituminous material usually found.
Very elegant, also if drivers phase alignment could improve overall sound.
Fussy me 😉
💫
After some pondering, I decided to don’t attend to the Vienna HiEnd Audio Fair.
The reasons are many and all absolutely legitimate: first, comes my oblomovism, then the distance, costs, physical fatigue due to inexorably advancing age... but above all, after eight editions of the Munich fair, I feel a very significant, perhaps incurable, psychological fatigue: I know exactly how many people I know will be dressed, I know exactly the exorbitant price of a sandwich or a bottle of mineral water, I know that at the Silbatone stand, Maria Callas and Led Zeppelin records will be played at impossible volumes on unattainable cinema speakers and everyone will be elbowing each other over the high cost of amplifiers and preamplifiers... Aries Cerat will almost certainly present impressive new speakers, which, like ACapella, will cost millions... an absolutely embarrassing, painful sense of déjà vu, with flocks of audiophiles of different nationalities mingling in the corridors mostly talking about the sky-rocketing high prices of this or that and the Chinese stands always impeccably kept and sadly empty.
It will certainly be hotter than expected and - aside from the pleasure of greeting some friends who will be exhibiting for the first time - a fair like this represents a niche sector whose target audience ages year after year, without any real generational turnover… looking at elder people (so similar to me) spending in vintage discs at inflated price-tags sums worth the life and care of many children in war-zones makes me sad and guilty.
I'll definitely miss chatting with Joe Roberts, Beau Ranheim and JC Morrison, greeting Michael Fremer and a few others... but this feeling of having to "participate to exist" is frankly pointless!
I don't need or haven’t to buy anything, I have more records than I can listen to for the rest of my life, and—frankly—audio and music are a solitary, poetic, almost mystical journey that doesn't fit well in the glittering world of the contemporary audio industry.
My personal parameters differ from others, and I'm not seeking approval or proselytes as my actual frailty and disenchanted and realistic (pessimistic?) approach is my very own, period.
Let's just say I feel more like an ascetic with a deep love for music than a tycoon with a fat wallet and that my home audio system never sounded this good, also without spending millions.
~~~
According to rumors, I believe (and hope) the fair will return to Munich in a few years... we'll see what the future holds.
Personally, I hope fair attendees in Vienna’s HiEnd will find reasons to be interested and learning how to better enjoy music.
💫
Further insight about the new turntable by Jean Nantais:
“A quickie post on my new model, The Archivist! Sorry for the late report, still more to post after this but I'm so busy building various idlers I don't have time and most of all this new model was a shock! The first customer, who owned TWO two-tonearm Ultimates sums it up perfectly here: "All bets are off. I don't know what any piece of equipment sounds like. I don't know which records sound best. Reborn. I don't know which records sound best for demo because all hold surprises."
A well-known and loved client had bothered me for years to improve on the Ultimate, which I answered repeatedly couldn't be done as, after all, the Ultimate Lenco was the ultimate, combining the strengths of digial (perfect speed stability thanks to the much greater inertia of the 14 1/4" platter, razor-sharp transients) with the best of analogue, (silkiness, much more information including sustains and decays, resonances, a realistic soundspace etc.).
But increasingly, with the development of my own Mighty Mite and lately the Mighty Mite Super which was a smash hit at the recent Montreal Audio Show ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io1UBQXzC1I ) , and my work on older idler-wheel drives like the Rek-O-Kut Rondine, the aesthetic of a simple tall platter on a flat plat/chassis appealed to me.
Then two clients at the SAME time wanted an Ultimate Lenco built for FOUR tonearms! Since this couldn't be done with the Ultimate Lenco design for a variety of reasons, I decided it was time to design a turntable homage to the '50s,!!
And I couldn't do this without at least attempting an improvement in sound. Since the Ultimate already had all the elements of taking an idler-wheel drive all the way (extremely low noise floor, off-the-scale inertia/speed stability imparted by the 14 1/4" diameter platter) I simply increased the Direct Coupling (greater expanse of chassis to plinth contact) and inertia (add more mass to the rim). I also developed a new bearing to handle the greater stresses of the platter. The new bearing also was an imrpovement on the Ultimate Lenco, I learned something new here as well!
Since it was literally impossible to even imagine improving on the Ultimate, I had no idea what better would even sound like. Would the greater inertia even be audible? Could the noise floor - already impossible to hear - be even lower and the difference audible?
When I finally had the 'table up on the stand and playing, I literally could not believe what I was hearing: STUNNING dynamics I wasn't sure wasn't an exaggeration, bass reach and detail I couldn't be sure wasn't a colouration, the smallest details emerging clearly from LPs I had played thousands of times, resonances and decays permeating the sound room, incredible depth and placement of the soundstage, even in comparison to the Ultimate Lenco!
And so began several months of testing, to be sure the Archivist was "telling the truth": it seems it is, but perhaps this is irrelevant given the performance! As the client said above: "All bets are off. I don't know what any piece of equipment sounds like. I don't know which records sound best. Reborn. I don't know which records sound best for demo because all hold surprises."
As you can see the visual design owed a LOT to the Rek-O-Kut Rondine, HAD to have the big knob, had to have the level, had to have the Art Deco lettering 😃
More later on the journey with more sonic details, it took years for me to design and make reality the Ultimate, had to find all the suppliers and businesses needed along the way, this one I realized in a record year because most of that work was already done.
Enjoy the music, I'll end with another quote from the same first Archivist client: "How foolish to worry about pressings. Just put anything on. Enjoy it. Archivist is the cure for audiophiles. It is Freedom." Couldn't have said it better myself! But still trying to get to the bottom of it.”
Well done, Jean 💫
I recently visited - after some years hiatus - a friend, an audiophile who’s using some nice audio gears and, most of all, owns an impressive records collection.
He invited me for some music and chatting, expressly asking to bring some disks or CDs (something I don’t really often do) and so I grabbed the three ECMs’ disk I was listening to a few hours before…
When I arrived, he let me “enjoy” an orchestral tympani infused crescendo at deafening SPL, with a level of distortion and booming seldom experienced… this appetizer forced me to handle one of my ECMs’ (I won’t disclose which one on the attached picture) and…
Three ECMs’ and… an intruder 😉
… something worth sharing happened: my friend exclusively listen to classical music on vintage nice pressings (Decca, RCA, Mercury) and after a few minutes (maybe seconds) of a nice ECM atmospheric, eerily impressionistic and dreamy soundscapes, I looked at my host face: the eyes wide shut 😳, the sweaty forehead and the thinned lips… everything suggested a cultural short circuit of-sort!
As I didn’t want to be cruel, the aural torture was abruptly interrupted by me and I felt the need to ask about my friend’s feelings: his words left me speechless i.e.- I don’t understand, really I don’t understand! and myself trying to explain the how and why - IMHO - about ECM’s raison d’etre and aesthetics, the soundtrack-like quality to moods and thoughts… but, no! my friend went ahead saying he didn’t understand, period.
Manfred Eicher’s ECM truly invented a sonic and aural world of beauty, a soundtrack to eyes wide dreaming, a safe harbor.
As a music lover, I find deep inspiration and enjoyment, as an audiophile I cherish the virtually infinite variety of timbres, tones and overtones, decays, dynamics and everything in between, falling in love for the Sound of Music.
Also if I badly failed my proselytism with my livid, victimized friend, I’ll be forever deeply grateful to a lifetime-worth of… beauty (my limited skills don’t allow me to better argument the concept with deeper, more redundant words) to Manfred Eicher and his monumental ECM: a true world heritage…
P.S. - The disk I used to torture my pal was the one with music score cover.
💫
A single note. For hours.
Not a scale, not a chord, not a whole piece.
Just one note.
Yet from there was born one of the strangest and most beautiful ideas of the twentieth century.
Giacinto Scelsi, born in Pitelli in 1905, then a hamlet of Arcola and later of La Spezia, doesn't take music to make it "flow well."
He takes it and looks at it closely.
So closely that he ends up hearing what everyone usually misses: the breath of the sound, the weight of the key, the trembling of what lies within a note and is not immediately visible.
After his wife leaves, he sits at the piano and plays a single note for hours.
Hours.
Always the same.
Not to show off how good he is.
Not for show.
Because in that gesture he finds a kind of door.
And once opened, there is no turning back.
For many, music is movement, a race, melodies chasing each other.
Not for Scelsi.
For him, a note isn't a dead end.
It's a world.
The color, the pressure, the pitch of a breath, the vibration change.
The same note, if you listen carefully, is never truly the same.
There's a whole life in it, if you know how to sit still.
His style is born from this obsession.
A style that's stubborn, but never impoverished.
Repeating doesn't mean copying.
It means digging.
It means staying there until the sound opens up, until it reveals its folds, until it becomes something else.
This is why his pieces seem frozen, but instead they move under your skin.
In 1959, one of his most famous titles was released: Four Pieces on a Single Note.
The name itself says it all.
There's no need to decipher the trick.
You have to accept the idea that a single note can be enough, if you look at it the right way.
Within that gesture lies a huge challenge: to remove the superfluous, to keep only the essential, to listen to the smallest detail as if it were the center of the world.
Then come the micro-intervals, the changes in timbre, the minuscule variations.
Stuff for the distracted ear? Not at all.
That's where Scelsi makes the leap.
He doesn't want to fill.
He wants to reveal.
And when you get to that point, music stops being just a sequence of notes and becomes a kind of meditation.
It forces you to slow down.
It forces you to stay.
It catches you off guard, because while you thought you'd heard little, you were actually listening to a lot.
Scelsi died in 1988, leaving behind a vision of music that few initially understood.
Then, in 1989, the Ensemble Scelsi was born in La Spezia.
A sign that this discreet figure, so difficult to pigeonhole, ultimately left a true mark.
One of those who don't make a noise right away.
But they remain.
Scelsi is one of those people who make you understand a simple thing: sometimes the revolution doesn't start with much.
It starts with a single note.
Then with another, identical one.
Then with the desire to understand what's in between.
Thanks to: Wikipedia, ilsaxofonoitaliano, Durand Salabert Eschig
About same feeling I so often experience while seating in my Eames Lounge chair (and ottoman), listening in awe - as I’m doing right now - to Piers Faccini’s music.
Just an example ☺️
💫
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
