Michael Ludwigs who hosts the popular "michael45" YouTube channel will have as his guests tomorrow, Saturday March 4th, in a live YouTube stream TrackingAngle.com editor Michael Fremer and esteemed veteran audio and music reviewer Ken Kessler. The discussion will revolve around music and audio reviewing, but mostly music. What is a music reviewer's job? What are his or her responsibilities to the reader/viewer? To the record label? To the artist? What... Read More

Craft Recordings relaunches Original Jazz Classics – the acclaimed reissue series that faithfully presented more than 850 memorable jazz albums over three decades. The soon to be relaunched reissue series will be focused on audiophile-quality vinyl and HD audio releases. Upcoming reissues include titles from Bill Evans, John Coltrane, Dave Brubeck, Mal Waldron and Yusef Lateef, with further details to be announced soon via Craft Recordings. First launched in 1982... Read More

The series Includes jewels of the label’s deep catalogue that have long been out of print or have never been available on vinyl, packaged in elegant, high-quality editions cut from the original masters made in Europe analogue production wherever possible 

This year's RSD offerings are many, varied and of great interest whatever your musical tastes. The lead image shows the Craft offerings that includes the first American mono reissue of "Chet" by Chet Baker, Jonathan Richman's country record "Jonathan Goes Country" from 1990, Travis's "The Invisible Band Live", and others. Here are some great ones. At the bottom is a link to the Record Store Day listing of all titles. From... Read More

VMP's January 2023 "Record of the Month" is The Grateful Dead's "Anthem of the Sun"—the original 1968 mix not the 1971 Lesh remix—originally released on Warner Brothers-7 Arts. Chris Bellman cut lacquers using the original master tape for an AAA release. VMP does this so correctly both in terms of how they produce these records and in how they describe the process: "with AAA lacquers cut from the original master tapes by Chris... Read More

Saxophonist Jerome Sabbagh recently recorded "Vintage", a new all-analog jazz album with Kenny Barron, Joe Martin and Johnathan Blake, tracked to 30 IPS multitrack tape at Oktaven Audio, mixed to a custom, completely restored 1/2" 30 IPS Ampex 351 tube deck. Ryan Streber engineered at Oktaven, Pete Rende mixed at Brooklyn Recording.darTZeel's Hervé Delétraz recently came on board the project as the vinyl edition's Executive... Read More

This Thursday, December 15th from 4PM until 8:30PM at a special event hosted by Maier Shadi at The Audio Salon at The Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Avenue (Gallery F1) Santa Monica, California 90404, I will be be talking about my 60 years of record collecting and offering tips on what to look for and what to avoid when buying records, both new and used. Especially used. It will be more of a conceptual discussion rather than a list of what you should buy and own,... Read More