Art?

I really don't know if I'm infusing any "art" on these oil-on-canvas...  I sure know I'm playing with quite large canvas and oil colors and brushes while (mostly) listening to jazz... Miles, Mingus, Coltrane... and feel good!

To avoid handling turntable, arm and head shell with dirty, busy hands, I prefer "painting" (aka - playing with brushes and colors) while a reel to reel tape is spinning...

So what?

Maybe it's visual/audio... nuff said...

The Bear Tapes

Owsley Stanley was known as the foremost underground LSD chemist of the 1960s. But he was also an exacting pioneer of live concert sound, a man who helped invent both monitor systems and high-fidelity amplification. When he died in 2011 at the age of 76, Stanley left behind a breathtaking array of some 1,300 reels amassed between 1966 and 1982. Buried inside are lost concerts by legends like Johnny Cash, Fleetwood Mac, Tim Buckley, and dozens of others, alongside the San Francisco psychedelic bands Stanley is most often associated with, such as the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane.

An ongoing project (press "project" - here is the full Rolling Stone article) by the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Owsley Stanley Foundation aims to preserve the reels and release the best of what Stanley called his “sonic journals.” Available for preorder now is Dawn of the New Riders of the Purple Sage, a five-disc set capturing the Grateful Dead’s stoner-country offshoot during their formative years in 1969 and 1970. Formed as an outlet for Jerry Garcia to learn pedal-steel guitar, the New Riders would develop a life of their own as a successful proto–outlaw-country act.

Ken Ishiwata, Marantz Brand Ambassador, passed away at 72

Ishiwata-san's bright colored silk-attire - always different, perfectly co-ordinated -  and his pony-tail hairs at the several audio exhibitions around the globe during the last 20+ years were a pleasant punto fermo: like a Jedi, years passed and he was always the same.

He wasn't simply an elegant audio dandy... his curriculum is top notch... 

A nice presence.

I express my condolences to his family.

ボン航海、石渡健さん

Ballfinger reel-to-reel player

A reel-to-reel player - yes, not a recorder, just a player - for the third millennium...

Elegant.

Disc of the Month - Barre Phillips' End to End (ECM - 2018)

I recently attended to a very intimate acoustic concert of Barre Phillips, at 85 years young one of my most beloved musicians and double-bass players ever... his playing is so beautifully complex and at same time easy, straight to the soul...

The concert was a fantastic showcase, a whispered statement of class and musicianship...

Beside owning maybe 10-15 discs of the old master, I didn't resist and bought straight from him his last ECM disk, recorded in France in a nice studio near to Mr. Phillips' home in Southern France, near Toulon.

On my way back home I listened to the CD through my car audio system and it already clicked as great music... BUT... the day after, I swear, when I played through Gotorama... I listened to it three times in a row, loop-like... completely in love.

Refreshing, deep, beautiful with a seldom heard singing quality...

The playing was captured by a Neumann U47 and an AKG 414, as shown on booklet liner pixies... the Steve Lake liner notes are, as usual, an awesome compendium.

Sonically?

A masterpiece, folks...

Buy it!

Period.

Enjoy.

P.S. - A vinyl version is also available... and it's  g o r g e o u s!

Two Neat Garrards

Enjoy as I enjoyed...

;-)

L'Art du Son 501 TR - Martina Schoener's masterpiece

I recently met Martina for the first time at ETF2019 in Belleme... we had a loooong chatting and her enthusiasm and volcano-like sharing everything audio was impressive and re-freshing.

She displayed during last weekend her 501 Transcription Reference turntable at Wien's Klangbilder audio show and, thanking Gábor Tüske's nice pictures, I'm able to show this superb, world-class turntable.

Reportedly, price-tag is quite steep at € 80K, but pretty sure performance, level of workmanship, small production and premium materials explains it.

Find the "Made in Germany, England, Austria" - Brexit or not - very European.

ETF 2019 in Belleme, Orne (France)

This very year, after being invited to attend to ETFs for several years without having the chance to joining-in, thanking Timothy Gurney - the mighty force behind the event in Belleme - and my (found-again) freedom... well, you got it: this year I was a proud and loyal ETFer for four days.

I had the privilege to attend to some now-mythical events in the past: two Audio Tasting in Berlin and a superb event in Munchen, without counting other Japanese awesome and - yes! - Italian audio meeting and gatherings... all these are well carved in my memory.

... but, but... ETF is truly something special, believe me!

European Triode Festival... sure "triodes" are shown and heard... but what's here in spades is the truest, most hard-core, enthusiast heartbeat of audio!

People come from every corner of Europe and USA just to swap ideas and new music and new schematics and projects...

Chatting, sharing, chatting again... sipping chilled beer, a Lagavulin or an Armagnac... laughing, puffing while hauling a 70 kilos amp for the medieval town narrow streets...

Opening a door and finding a room with handmade speakers and amps... meeting beautiful ladies, empathy flowing...

I cannot cleverly describe the feeling of four intense days better than the following: respect, empathy, reciprocal esteem, friendship, chatting with new and old pals... JC, Bodo, Wolfgang, Peter, Tim, Avis, Giuseppe, Silvia, Roberto, Herbert, Marc, Leif, Vegard, Jeffrey, Tim, Martina, Chris...

Everyone concurred to make things going, enjoyable, perfect.

The sense of... you know: Woodstock - three days of love and music... well, the music and love (empathy) were also here in Belleme... only participants were a little older than at Yasgur's farm;-) back in 1968.

A big thank you to everyone who made this possible!