Elegance contest

 

… and the winner is… 

🥇

Is audio healthy?

 

(Throaty-voice, à la Tom Waits 😏

Keith Jarrett’s Bordeaux Concert (ECM 2022)

 

The music on this disk is just awesome, quite different from the long improvisations Maestro Jarrett became world-famous - i.e. a collection of miniatures very different in mood and texture.

The recording is also very nice, with a full-bodied piano... BUT the applauding audience is very annoying, greatly disturbing the music intimacy at the end of all short pieces and extremely badly captured... most of the several KC’s live recordings I own and cherish are so vastly better sounding, even hand-clapping is much more natural, not a strident thunderstorm!

La Scala, Paris/London, Carnegie Hall, La Fenice and many others have that sincere audience gratefully exploding yet smooth applauses... not last ECM’s.

Just a personal complaint... music is gorgeous and disk is a must-have 🥇

AES/EBU XLR/Lemo patch-bay

 

It’s still possible to make good deals on eBay!

I found this beauty on eBay sold by a German seller and was thinking to use it for parts… BUT!

… when I got it, safely crated, I realized it was a one of a kind, truly gorgeously made, self-contained unit, ready to use.

After a quick calculation, I paid a very fair price for the patch-bay… only the 40 Lemos’ made in Switzerland female sockets are worth thrice the cost I paid.

Sound-wise, once I learned the logic (thanking my pal Francesco priceless support), it’s sooooo gooooood, so transparent.

A very nice addition to my studio… a wooden cabinet is almost ready to complete the combo.

The Holy Grail

 

Thanking Robert Crumb 

Sade

 

❤️

Centipede - Septober Energy

 

The masterpiece mastertapes 🥇

🥇🔝🥇

Dubbing for a friend

 

MCI JH110C playing and ReVox G36 Mk IV HS recording 😏

Petra Haden goes to the movie

 

A nice disc, an homage to classic movie OST/themes 🥇

Eric the (serious) Engineer

 

Dead Can Dance - Dionysus🥇

 

ReVox ancient archeological vestige?

 

One day, some archeologist will debate about this… 

Lyritas’ Galore

 

A Nimbus’ and a Decca’s pressing: which’s best?

Keith Jarrett & Lou Harrison

 

A seldom seen disc 🥇

RIP for Pharoah Sanders

 

China Girl

 

Zoot Horn Rollo

 

'We're talking 1968 when that photo was taken. I'm 19 years old, coming down from taking acid two or three times a week -  like i gave a shit. Those were my clothes, actually. The cape was something some woman had given me, and i thought it looked fine. Black fingernail polish? That's cool. Lipstick? That's cool, too. I'm breaking it all away at that point. Nineteen years old - who had brains at 19?' - guitarist Bill Harkleroad aka Zoot Horn Rollo speaking to Mojo magazine in 1995.

Decca secrets’ give-away

 

A word about 'Pancake' pressings: 

In some cases as this Decca SXL edition, its very first pressing can't be deep grooved on the label. In case of 'edge groove’ it's the circular indentification about 1cm from the edge of the label. 

Apparently this groove was caused by the conversion of old 78rpm pressing plants to the production of 33rpm LPs - the groove coincides with the label position of old 78s. Sound wise these are stunning, real valve technology stuff.

 

However, these other very first pressings, (with the text 'original recording by' at eleven o'clock on the label, like the WBG SXL ED1 issues) were stamped with a groove 2-3mm in from the label edge. 

Known as the 'pancake' pressing these editions are more usually found in boxed sets, thought to be pressed on machines used by Decca for London pressings from 1958.

Thanking Saulo Zucchello 🥇🥇🥇

Daniel Lanois - Piano, Player

 

Press play on Lanois’ captivating new instrumental collection, Player, Piano, and you’ll be transported, too. Each song here is a portal, an invitation to lose yourself in the moment and disappear into a world of imagination and memory. Lanois recorded the entire collection himself, capturing a series of gentle, exotic piano performances at his studio in Toronto with the help of co-producer Dangerous Wayne Lorenz, and the results are both intimate and expansive all at once. Melodies unfold slowly with patience and grace; ethereal arrangements drift around them like fog rolling through the mountains. More than just an album, Player, Piano is a gateway into a cinematic sonic universe full of mystery and wonder, a place where the lines between reality and fantasy blur and deep truths and desires reveal themselves in profound and unexpected ways.

“Making this record transported me,” says Daniel Lanois. “I got to travel to Cuba and Mexico and Jamaica. I got to visit with the ghosts of Erik Satie and Oscar Peterson and Harold Budd. I got to go back in time to my work with Brian Eno and Kate Bush and Emmylou Harris. And I did it all without ever leaving my studio.

Anne Briggs

 

I love this woman ❤️