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When I wrote about The Blue Things I expressed my general distaste for cult bands and cult singers. And the reason is because mediocre cult bands cast huge shadows over great bands and singers who deserve our attention, like the above-mentioned The Blue Things. However, there are cult musicians who deserve their cult status. Emitt... Read More »

Schumann Symphony 4 (orig. vers.); Manfred Overture. Yun: Cello Concerto. Jaemin Han, cello; Korean National Symphony Orchestra/David Reiland. Decca Records (Korea). Downloads and streams: music.apple.com; plixid.net (FLAC 24/96); qobuz.com (16/44.1); spotify.com; uk.7digital.com (M4A, MP3, FLAC) Universal, the current parent company of Decca and Deutsche Grammophon, has been unusually unforthcoming about this particular production. Although it was listed in... Read More »

Four years ago, Impex Records contracted a pair of Grammy award-winning engineers and tasked them with reviving the original analog tapes for Frank Sinatra's transitional masterpiece, 1950's Sing and Dance with Frank Sinatra. Andreas Meyer of Swan Studios handled the restoration and transfer of the original tapes, and Chris Bellman of Bernie Grundman Mastering mastered... Read More »

Rhino Entertainment has launched their Roctober and Now Playing Fall 2024 LP series, which combined feature 48 limited edition LP releases, with many of them being offered in ultra-cool colored-vinyl versions. The release package covers a broad range of artists and musical genres, and includes catalog album reissues, rare and long out-of-print LPs, previously never-released... Read More »

Craft Recordings has a diverse slate of new release and reissue albums that they're offering heading into the last part of 2024, and I have a generous handful of them here for your consideration. As is typical for Craft, their new releases will appeal to a range of musical interests, and feature rare, long out-of-print,... Read More »

A little over 10 years ago, Canadian melodic hardcore band, Counterparts, released their groundbreaking album The Difference Between Hell and Home. An eleven track foray into a variety of emotional themes, death, religion, depression, love, and the lack thereof. Counterparts set the stage for an emerging genre, and continued building a musical movement today. Over... Read More »

I am not a music reviewer. Never done that before as I never saw that as something I could do with respect to being faithful to the artist and their music. Pretty much a whole different thing than reviewing audio gear. Of which, that is hard enough. But, out of nowhere I get an album... Read More »

Rhino Entertainment, in cooperation with Sunset Boulevard Records is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the release of Bob Neuwirth's self-titled debut album, Bob Neuwirth. Many of you are probably asking yourselves the same question I asked upon receiving the initial press release for this LP from Shore Fire Entertainment: "Bob Neuwirth? Who is Bob Neuwirth?"... Read More »

Roger Eno, the skies:rarities. 2024. Desutche Grammaphon. Available HERE As I am shifting away from 24 years of equipment reviews and focusing more and more on sharing music I find, I was recently afforded the opportunity to listen to a wonderful new album by Roger Eno. The album is titled the skies:rarities available on Deutsche Grammaphon. Yes... Read More »

If you're an audiophile who's under the age of eighty, you probably haven't paid much attention to Frankie Laine (1913-2007). There was a time when the dynamic Mr. Laine, who was born Francesco Paulo LoVecchio, was as popular as Frank Sinatra. In his day he was affectionately called Mr. Rhythm, and for good reason. Great... Read More »

Varèse Sarabande is a specialty imprint of Craft Recordings, and is one of the world's most prolific producers of motion picture and television soundtrack recordings. While originally established in 1972 as an avant garde classical music label, it has since found a successful niche specializing in the release of film scores, original soundtrack recordings, and... Read More »

This is an ongoing project by Claude Lemaire of Soundevaluations 241. Shelly Manne & His Men – At the Blackhawk Vol.1. Contemporary Records – S 7577 (1960), Craft Recordings – CR00601 (2024), Acoustic Sounds Series, 33 1/3 rpm. Genre: hard bop, cool jazz. As the title suggest, this is the first of four volumes of drummer Shelly... Read More »

When singer, songwriter, disco diva, and queer icon Sylvester walked onto the stage of San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House on March 11, 1979, it would prove to be not only an important pinnacle in his all too brief career, but also a historic moment for the city's LGBTQ+ community. The evening would become a... Read More »

Rhino Entertainment's High Fidelity Premium Vinyl Series continues with a pair of classic LP reissues from influential country rock performers Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, both of whose lives and music were inseparably entwined. Included are Gram Parsons' second and final studio album (and his undeniable masterpiece), Grievous Angel (Reprise Records, 1974), along with Emmylou... Read More »

Craft Recordings' revival of the Original Jazz Classics (OJC) series continues with another pair of exciting new 180 gram LP reissues. Including The New Miles Davis Quintet's classic 1956 session Miles (Prestige Records), along with a noteworthy collaboration between trumpeter Clark Terry and Thelonious Monk, 1958's In Orbit (Riverside Records). Both are landmark recordings of... Read More »

There are few if any male rock voices that I find more interesting and pleasing than the one possessed by Alex Chilton (1950-2010) during the sixties. The gritty, soulful, and expressive voice that Chilton used during his tenure with The Box Tops never, to my knowledge, reemerged on recordings after 1970. Rock historians are quick... Read More »

Mahler: Symphony 4. Netania Davrath, soprano; Utah Symphony/Maurice Abravanel. Vanguard Classics SVC-24 (CD, 1995, orig. rec. 1968). TT: 52.14 Downloads: archive.org (processed from LP); ca.7digital.com (Canada only); us.7digital.com (U.S. only) The charismatic Leonard Bernstein, with his equally prodigious gifts for music and self-promotion, has been accepted unquestioningly in many quarters as the great Mahler pioneer, but... Read More »

When I hear that Gonzalo Noqué is releasing a new Pure DSD256 recording on his Eudora Records label, my ears prick up. When I find that he is recording the excellent pianist Susana Gomez Vazquez, I'm doubly on alert. Her playing is just scintillating and her choice of programming is always intriguing. And so, when... Read More »

The labels represented in NativeDSD's catalog continue to deliver outstanding performances in great sounding recordings. NativeDSD is just a stunning resource for those who love immaculate high resolution recordings made by some of the best recording engineers working today (Jared Sacks of Channel Classics, Brendon Heinst of TRPTK, Gonzalo Noqué of Eudora, Jake Purches of... Read More »