Saturday, March 29, 2014

Veteran Hi Fi from Stockholm, Sweden






Superb...



Lenco and RF 297 replica... Switzerland and Sweden partnership






Ortofon RF 297 replica...



The simple elegance of Lenco 75



Cantus by Opus 3 on steroids... but not so much...








Friday, March 28, 2014

Marina Abramovic - The Artist is Present at MoMA - NYC





Can art be compassion? Is the artist a mirror? Is life a performance? Why nudity is so offending for someone? Why looking in each others eyes can be painful? ... or wonderful?



What's a poem? Image or word?

Sound or music?

What's silence?

What's beauty?

... a tear... 

Truth.


Mystere






Impressive is the comment which comes to mind... but also elegant and soooo understated in hiding all its technical secrets.







At Lumen White they know how and what to do to capture audiophile attention.



Nice, indeed.




Industrial design, from Switzerland.










Thursday, March 27, 2014

EMI EPU 100 arm and EPH/S variable-reluctance matching cartridge






From England... yes, the EMI of cool arm logo is the same EMI - Hayes, Middlesex of The Beatles' fame...






... the coffin-shaped EPH/S cartridge... a cart 2die4:-)))










Thanking Mark... 





Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Tiny homes: a new movement?






Cool idea... also for vacationing.





Clever couple and pup.






Ste & Stella




A Stella 12 strings... ladder braced... WOW!






... aehm, well... not really a Stella's, but a Blazer & Henke "Savannah" 12 strings, actually... 





B&W




... I'm very fond of Todd Cambio's dad tailpiece...



Love it!







Saturday, March 22, 2014

Site of the Month - Original Sound Art Iwakura Aichi from Japan







Norma-Hylee Tonmechanic's plinth and arm, with overhauled 301.





The elegant Norma-Hylee 12" arm, respectfully hinting to Neumann's arm... both from Berlin.












The John Fahey Handbook - Vol. 1 by Claudio Guerrieri (2013)









A masterpiece... an absolute must for any John Fahey's scholar... almost 500 pages of in-deep info and trivia, records covers piexes and more... MUCH more...




I bought it!


... and cannot wait for Vol. 2...







Thursday, March 20, 2014

Amarcord Dept. - The Zeiss-Ikon "luggage" speakers and pre-seismic base EMT 930st...





It was only a few years ago, before Gotorama... 








... and these leather handles...










Compact and WAF-friendly... and... this nice copy of Robert Wyatt's "Dondestan"...






Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Bass' bass - superb low-end and seldom heard music by Rob Mazurek - "Calma Gente" (2010)






A lovely disk by Rob Mazurek, thanking my friend Edo's good taste...






Tough guy... and music and subterranean low-end, to par.

Enjoy!








Song of the Day - Else Torp & Christopher Bowers-Broadbent - My Heart's in the Highlands (written by Arvo Part)




An amazing, circular, haunting superbly eerie, loop-like song heavenly performed by a soprano and organ...

Italian film-director Paolo Sorrentino used it as part of OST on his "The Great Beauty",  the  movie which recently won the Oscar Award as Best Foreign Movie...




Toni Servillo's character, a dandy moving in decadent Rome's high society walks along Tevere river, early morning and this very song captures the attention and put mind and soul in a dream-like mode to fully appreciate the whole movie.

Amazing the power of such a piece of music... but maestro Part is a master of apparently simple melodies and sound clusters.

Find this and taste and enjoy on YouTube or in complete Arvo Part's 'Creator Spiritus"... but best sipped watching at the above mentioned movie.




Saturday, March 15, 2014

Zen amp by Nelson Pass






Enlightening!






Worth further investigation... it's a single SIT transistor amp and the four glasswares are light-bulbs, used as resistors in circuit, NOT tubes!



Pass is now designing power amps based on the new SIT (static-induction transistor), a variation of the JFET (junction field-effect transistor) and MOSFET (metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor) fabricated from silicon carbide. Originally developed for radar applications, the SIT turns out to be ideal for audio amplification, providing the closest thing to triode-tube characteristics without the vacuum.







Piers Faccini




This artist is a maven... hinting - talking about guitar playing style - to Ali Farka Toure, Tinariwen, Bert Jansch, Nick Drake (for the voice, as well)... BUT still remaining Piers Facccini...


... an angel-like voice and... hey... are these wings, behind Piers?



A great concert yesterday night in Mantua, Italy... easy and warm on stage, emphatic and friendly, like your neighbor musician pal...



Accompanied by a nice Guild Aristocrat hollow-body '50s guitar and a Danelectro... and this voice - warm, expressive, smooth gravel-like... supported by some percussions, a marimba and polite drums.




Cool, indeed... 

Thanking my friend Arnaldo for joyining and the above pix of Piers and me, chatting before the show... and (again) to Silvia Boschero and her Moby Dick for airing Piers' music, only some weeks ago... my first exposure to Piers.