CHARLES MINGUS: News

JAZZWISE: Bassist Charles Mingus shook up the jazz world like few others, Kevin Le Gendre assesses his legacy and speaks to contemporary bass stars Christian McBride and Boris Kozlov about his influence Instruments owned by famous musicians have been a staple at auctions for many years. When a rock star guitar goes under the hammer […]

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This post-war Japanese sound, primarily sung by ladies in their 50s and 60s, is adapting to seek a younger audience. My besotted daughter is first in line

DANIEL ROBSON / THE GUARDIAN Since her father is a longtime music journalist and her mother is a musician, it was inevitable that my 10-year-old daughter would fall in love with music. But I never imagined that the music she would fall in love with would be enka. Enka is often considered “traditional” Japanese music […]

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SPOTIFY: News 02

THE GUARDIAN: Sped-up versions of existing songs are becoming more popular than the original versions. But who’s behind the trend? I’m listening to the accelerated, chipmunk voice of the British singer Raye on Escapism, a rebound-sex anthem that’s currently climbing UK pop charts. Raye actually has a low, brassy singing voice, but I’m not listening […]

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THE CURE: News

FRED THOMAS / ALLMUSIC.COM The Cure’s 1989 album Disintegration was the band’s inarguable artistic peak, and surprisingly also their biggest commercial success to date. A rare feat for any group, but especially unexpected when considering how Disintegration abandoned much of the pop excitement the Cure had been working with through the mid-’80s and returned to […]

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THE INTERNATIONAL SUBMARINE BAND: News

MARK DEMMING / ALLMUSIC.COM Safe at Home, Gram Parsons’ first full-length album (and the only LP he would record with the International Submarine Band), today sounds like a dry run for the country-rock he would later perfect with the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers; it’s also a major changeup from the psychedelically shaded pop/rock […]

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HENRY THREADGILL: News

Kevin Le Gendrte / THE INDEPENDENT Chicago is one of the great musical powerhouses of America. Since the Twenties, its Black population has produced colossal talents, such as classical composer Florence Price and soul singer Curtis Mayfield, not to mention any number of jazz pioneers, from Sun Ra to Quincy Jones to Herbie Hancock. Less […]

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BEST OF THE REST: The classical CDs we missed in 2022

THE GUARDIAN / Andrew Clements It took Maurizio Pollini more than 30 years to complete his recordings of the Beethoven piano sonatas for Deutsche Grammophon. The first instalment of that series, which appeared in 1977, was devoted to the last five sonatas, including magisterial performances of the two paired on this new release, which was […]

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MQA: The Rolling MQA Debate: A Sound Quality Test on TIDAL That Leaves More Questions than Answers – writes Trav Wilson

A recent video published (on April 15, 2021) by GoldenSound has once again stirred up the MQA pot. In the last couple of weeks, the video made the rounds (again, and again) through most audiophile groups, and, as of writing, has racked up about 150,000 views. Additionally TIDAL (the main distributor of MQA) has announced […]

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HARVEY MANDELL: News

THOM DUREK / allmusic.com Who’s Calling is the 16th solo album by guitarist Harvey “Snake” Mandel, and his second for Tompkins Square. He is widely considered one of the most innovative guitarists to emerge from Chicago in the 1960s, alongside icons Charlie Musselwhite, Barry Goldberg, Steve Miller, Michael Bloomfield, Paul Butterfield, and Corky Siegel. Along […]

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192kHz: What’s this fuss about it?

Have you ever wondered why there are so many different sample rates and why? The compact disc samples at 44.1kHz/16 bits. But then there’s these other rates like 48kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz, 176.4kHz, 192kHz. Wow, that’s a lot and the spacing doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. How did we get to these numbers […]

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FRANZ LISZT: News

isa’s Piazza dei Miracoli, also known as the Piazza del Duomo, contains the Cathedral, the Baptistry, the Campanile (aka the Leaning Tower) – and the Camposanto Monumentale. Among its murals is an impressive fresco entitled Il trionfo della Morte: ‘The Triumph of Death’. Once attributed to Orcagna, nowadays to Buonamico Buffalmacco or, by some scholars, […]

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INDIGO GIRLS: News

STEPHEN THOMAS ERLEWINE / allmusic.com Look Long, the title of Indigo Girls’ 15th album, appears to be an imperative to their audience and a creative challenge to themselves — an attempt to look beyond the internal and familiar. Reuniting with producer John Reynolds, who previously produced the duo’s 1999 LP Come On Now Social, Indigo […]

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