Bass' bass or the lowest note you ever listened to: salt to everyone life!

Few evenings ago, during those pleasant musical evenings with a bunch of trusty hard-core friends, we began jokingly, but soon in orgiastic-mode, a sort of survey in search for lowest recorded low note ever... the best, lowest, most musical, natural bass note to overwhelm the whole listening panel... and the results have been surprising, both from disc and diskette
Here it is a sort-of list, to begin... but the search is still open for me, my pals and to anyone interested:
Didier Malherbe - Zeff CD Tangram
incredible percussions - defined and detailed, not simply boomy sounds, and bass clarinet, tablas, gongs, down, DOWN to earthquake - the best, almost a winner, Track 2
Pierre Bensusan - Spices LP and CD CBS
a fretless bass recorded with an unbelivable trueness, harmonics, finger noises, etc. Amazing!
Koechlin - Bandar-log LP on Decca Head - percussions and full orchestra at the maximum levels. Big, BIG drum and double-basses. Superb...
Britten - Death in Venice - Double LP on Decca - Orchestra e percussions, timpany e simphonic BIG drums to be heard...!!!
Dafos - LP Reference Recordings - an evergreen classic, and a well-known TAS' falling Kodo drum test in HP hey days... listened mostly to judge Harry Pearson's good taste... VERY low sounds, as you're aware... BUT musically nasty, IMHO...
Rudolf Streicher - Bottesini - LP Telefunken - solo double-bass (with piano accompaniement) from the VERY BEST soloist ever... I'm a double-bass esoteric-music collector... own more than 60 different recordings and I'm not tired, yet... the most musical involving of the bunch - also piano low octaves are superbly captured. a perfect disc. My Best Choice.
Wendy Carlos - Beauty in The Beast - LP Audiogon (?!?) Computer Music and sampled analog sounds... weird, etc. etc... a record I so deeply LOVE... but I already talked you about it... only, must add... LOW, LOW notes...
Paul Bley - Tears on OWL 034 - the great canadian piano player, playing an Imperial Bosendorfer's... strumming, feet tapping, noises, and one of the best piano lowest register I ever listened to. Great music, too...
Shaken down to the lung, at the end of our listening session we were tired like after some miles jogging... BUT satisfied... Bass are really salt to life.

... to be continued...



... yesterday evening, following the stream... I listened to a rare underground CD by Canterbury/English Progressive veteran Pip Pyle titled "7 Year Itch"... with Barbara Gaskin , Phil Miller, Richard Sinclair and... Hugh Hopper. The record is quite various, from experimental to melodic... on Track 9 we find "L'Etat des Choses" an experimental exercise where Hugh Hopper, bassist and looper extraordinaire, almost shake the house down... very LOOOOOW bass with fuzz and loops and reversed bass lines interwoving... a very nice, intriguing little piece.
Again not only boom boom, but... modulating bass sounds.

... to be continued...

Yesterday evening... mo' bass!

While listening to the nice double cd boxset Oregon - In Moscow http://www.mymusic.com/product.asp?curr=1&myptr=galaxie&muzenbr=387191, beside the ever beautiful Klotz '700 Glen Moore double-bass, as always tuned with lower string to a mighty "C" note, in disk 2 - track 3 and 4, you'll listen to one of the very best captured double basses you'll ever heard!
Deep, ringing, full-bodied with correct amount of strings, wood, room and fingers... a dream!
Don't forget I own a century old, inherited double-bass which I unfortunately only play badly, as a beginner... and I know that a string bass isn't a boom box but an harmonically verious and complex instrument.
FANTASTIC!
... then, three more, different records: a disk and two vinyls I cherished since early '70s and '80s... vinyl first, noblesse oblige
Again by Hugh Hopper, "1984" based after the G. Orwell seminal novel... Minitrue, Miniplenty have soo perfect bass sounds, Fender Jazz Bass with fuzz, again loops, and cymbals shimmering with detail 2D4... it's not easy music, but music for the mind, a soundtrack to a world we hope we'll never see... the Day-After-like... but for our purpouses, the 35 hertz we're seeking for... nothing better to know "why" we can't live forever with a Stax F-81's speakers pair.
Later, I had a listen to a superb ECM by Steve Tibbets and Marc Johnson... "Northern Song": acoustic and electric guitars loops, congas and assorted percussions... a very very nice recording, atmospheric, yet meaty sounds. I love Steve's music... I own everything he recorded.. we're also both fond of Himalayan trekking... he contributed to a Lonely Planet's book devoted to Tibet I used myself on Tibet travelling... for a man with three twins kids - thrins, is it correct?!? - it's a miracle he find the time for all his activities.
... and finally, a disk: Christina Pluhar and L'Arpeggiata "Los Impossibles" http://www.christinapluhar.com/... ancient music, theorbo, chitarra battente and baroque guitar, big frame drums, voices, viole da gamba... the frame drums are AWESOME... a minimalist recording with two Bruel & Kijaer 4006 mikes... and voilà - musically involving and pleasing... also - as a plus - the King's Singer voices in Villancico Catalan - the disk last track - are blissful and magical as ever.



... to be continued...

I wrote:
"... and finally, a disk: Christina Pluhar and L'Arpeggiata "Los Impossibles" http://www.christinapluhar.com/... ancient music, theorbo, chitarra battente and baroque guitar, big frame drums, voices, viole da gamba... the frame drums are AWESOME... a minimalist recording made with two Bruel & Kijaer 4006 mikes... and voilà - musically involving and pleasing... also - as a plus - the King's Singer voices in Villancico Catalan - the disk last track - are blissful and magical as ever."

I was lazily re-reading the above mentioned bass' notes, when I noticed the above musical hinting... and I guess a quick add is due... on the very disc I quoted, on the last track, Villancico Catalan, a capella male singers singing like angels, I've been AMAZED in the last months from what suddenly appeared from the recording digital mist.

At the very beginning of the song, and only after I finally completed and finely tuned my (now) full Goto speakers system using IVIE IE-20B pink noise generator and IVIE IE-30A real-time analyzer, something new for my previously by-ear-only tunings, I've been able to hear a new level of details resolution previously non-audible.

There is a far, I mean FAR, burglar short noise from outside the recording venue quite present among singers voices!

For whom do not know, own or listened to this nice disc the above may sounds at least weird... but when I repeated this very test on SEVERAL friends system, also during Berlin Audio Tasting and Munchen Schall und Rauch Tasting, and in other domestic listening at friends homes and combos... WELL... I never, NEVER heard this details again... which is still, firmly "here" in my room/system.

In my music-room the IVIE 30 reads a ground-ambient noise level of 39 db (42 when the central heating system in ON...), while yesterday evening while listening at a friend music system, I measured 52-53 db... yes, now I always travel with my IVIE gears and it's quite amusing what happens using it...

Provoking: what's going on, in your opinion? It's my ears, my "cleanliness" in carefully listening, dope abuse, Laphroaig single malt drinking, Gotorama or... maybe, yes: it's the mighty suberb quality of my EUR 39,99 "Just Quality" DVD/CD player - proudly Made in China!!!

... to be continued...

... maybe I'm a bit late, BUT I'm still a Deadhead in my soul... for thread-sake: there is a tune on Grateful Dead's "So many Roads 1965 - 1995", a superb cloth-linered 5-disks box-set FULL of gems, in the Dick's Picks vein, which shaken the Heaven's Doors, where Jerry Garcia is, since he departed from Earth...
Wash your hands to do not mar the classy clear linen while handling ... and on disk "2", track "5" - you'll find the Watkins Glen's Sound Check!
It isn't a simple, conventional "sound-check", but a jam of the highest quality, followed by a Dark Star Jam to die for... anyway: on Watkins Glen's, Phil Lesh's hollowbody, super-duper custom-made bass is REALLY going down... I measured a true (-3 dbs) mighty 40 hz on my IVIE IE-30... it's growling, rumbling, yet clear and first quality bass notes, scales, harmonics... my speakers smile, the Westrex' woofers are smoothly massaged down to every Alnico cell from the very Best ever.
Really superb music... BUT you're already aware of this, don't you?!?!
A winner!