Paul Sexton … “The rhapsodic trumpet, the dabbing handkerchief, the Grand Canyon grin across the “satchel-mouth” that gave him his nickname. To anyone that grew up in the 20th century, Louis Armstrong is as familiar as Father Christmas. But over recent months, I’ve been getting to know a side of Satchmo that’s rarely been heard […]
Month: August 2022
Found 436 results
Much of the early buzz surrounding the release of ‘East Bay Soul 2.0’ was about how a sensational campaign to raise the $25,000 necessary to record the album hit its target. However, now it’s all about the music. Make no mistake; this is a collection of the highest order and everything (plus a little bit […]
There are many reasons why we launched Octave Records, but chief among them was to add to the small supply of high-resolution recordings as well as to help set standards of what we as the high-end audio community demand in the way of well-recorded material. To that end, I think we’re on the right track. Part of […]
We are told: The Strawberry Alarm Clock made musical history with its first single, the infectiously psychedelic “Incense and Peppermints,” which topped the singles charts in December 1967. It remains one of the Aquarian Age’s most enduring anthems. And as the California combo’s debut LP demonstrates, there was a lot more to the Strawberry Alarm […]
As more opera houses broadcast their productions in the cinema is this the end of live singing, asks Rupert Christiansen Continue HERE
DYNAMIC LATE 1980S BROADCAST FROM THE TUNNEL OF LOVE TOUR For Bruce Springsteen, the 1980s were as turbulent as they were rewarding and accomplished. The release of 84 s Born In The U.S.A. and the quintuple live LP collection Live/1975-85 were met with the kind of success very few music artists ever achieve. Selling in […]
We are told ….. That rich, humid, giant sax tone blooms like on few other Webster recordings Mastered by Kevin Gray at Coherent Audio 200-gram gatefold 45 RPM double LP pressed at Quality Record Pressings! Praise for our 33 1/3 version of Gentle Ben “The soundstage is intimate and inviting, Webster’s horn beautifully […]
I once thought (wrongly, as it turned out) that basically all versions of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring sounded pretty much the same. Stravinsky had finally done something that all other composers could only dream of: he’d created a piece of music that was conductor-proof. Of course, this didn’t begin to explain why that final chord […]
Duration: 1 hour. In 1973, an album was released that against all odds and expectations went to the top of the UK charts. The fact the album launched a record label that became one of the most recognisable brand names in the world (Virgin), formed the soundtrack to one of the biggest movies of the […]
5 Show, 14CD Limited Edition/1000 only. The Grateful Dead managed to make one shrewd and long-lasting move in 1976. Everyone knew that the Dead had a loyal audience, but truthfully, even the Dead didn’t know how that would translate into ticket sales. How big a place could they really play, and how many cities would […]
One of the best ways to learn jazz is to sit down and talk with virtuosic jazz musicians. In this incredible interview we get an opportunity to sit down and explore the mind of jazz organ virtuoso Joey Defrancesco. Who Is Joey Defrancesco? Joey Defrancesco is simply one of the greatest jazz musicians alive today! As […]
The dictionary has several meanings to the word dither. The most common is to be indecisive. The second meaning is more related to what interests us: to add white noise. Dither is the addition of randomness into low-level signals. Surprisingly, we do this to lower distortion of predictable errors. Here’s a great example from a Photoshop […]
After moving to the U.S. from Canada in the 1940s, Maynard Ferguson gained prominence through his association with Stan Kenton in the following decade. Striking out on his own, he appeared on numerous film soundtracks (including The Ten Commandments), eventually forming his own band. A relocation to England in the 1960s, he became a fixture […]
John Fordham … “This is the kind of venture – with two flying-fingered virtuosi trying to out-magic each other – that can generate a lot more heat than illumination. But this effervescent double-set of acoustic-piano exchanges on a dozen pieces balances virtuosity with mutual respect, and suggests the encounter was a ……” MORE
Stephen Johnson analyses the music and the background to the music of Brahms’ 2nd Piano Concerto with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Jonathan Schiffman with piano soloist Martin Roscoe. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0249gtx
My dear friend, conductor Lowell Graham has what he calls his 30-second rule. “If something does not grab me in in the first 30 seconds of listening, I do not continue. That can be of compositional value, recording, performance and is certainly the combination of all those attributes.” Now that’s pretty sound advice though at first I […]
All•About•Jazz write ….. The trajectory of Steven Wilson’s career, since stepping away from his longtime band Porcupine Tree to go solo, has been nothing short of remarkable. Since interviewing him in 2012 for the release of Get All You Deserve (Kscope, 2012)—an audio and video document of his world tour in support of Grace […]
San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair) didn’t reflect the particular sound of the city itself. Not that this mattered – it was great pop and its idealism lives on. Rock history rightly celebrates the pioneers but sometimes the bandwagon jumpers get it right too. Whether anybody liked it not – […]
Martin Kettle writes: Unlike Angela Merkel, our leaders rarely flaunt their cultural tastes. It’s to the detriment of national life Last Saturday I sat in something very close to rapture just a few feet away from Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel. But Merkel wasn’t making a speech. She wasn’t giving a press conference. And, although I […]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3uVoid74SA Robert Plant never lost it Wow, what an awesomely diabolical riff! The song in general sounds a lot like Those Damned Blue Collared Tweakers, by Primus. вещь.лишь талант бы был