January 31st, 2024
Andrew Hill's Music Made Fresh and New Ron Horton's wondrous double-LP is much more than a "tribute album"By: Fred Kaplan
Andrew Hill was one of the most remarkable jazz pianist-composers, a rare true original. His music is ripe with strange intervals, dissonant harmonies, and off-centered rhythms, yet the resulting sounds are riveting, often gorgeous. Imagine the lush tonal colors of Gil Evans, combined with the fierce cadences of Mingus and the jagged precision of Monk, and you get some idea of his music’s odd pleasures. Hill led a dozen recording sessions for Blue Note in the... Read More
January 29th, 2024
‘Marquee Moon’ and The Great Mastering Debate Can good mastering be musically incorrect?By: Malachi Lui
Everyone reading this site has by now probably heard about Rhino High Fidelity’s controversial reissue of Television’s landmark 1977 debut Marquee Moon. This latest edition sounds good but nothing like the original, which raises the question: what's the difference between good and bad mastering? And who's responsible?
Read MoreJanuary 25th, 2024
Los Lobos's "Kiko" Gets Its Best Vinyl Reissue RSD "Black Friday" release mastered by our Dave McNairBy: Michael Fremer
Is it a "conflict of interest" to review a record mastered by a Tracking Angle writer? I could care less. This is mastering engineer Dave McNair's second pass on Kiko, Los Lobos' best selling (other than the La Bamba soundtrack) and arguable best album. Though recorded analog and mixed to 2 inch 30IPS tape, It was originally released domestically on CD only in 1992 during vinyl's sunset fade. It got a digitally sourced European release that... Read More
January 19th, 2024
Moondog Comes Alive Ghost Train Orchestra and Kronos Quartet revive the startling music of the Viking of 6th AvenueBy: Fred Kaplan
Louis Hardin, who renamed himself Moondog, was one of the most unusual composers of the 20th century. Tall, bearded, and blind from a childhood accident involving fireworks, he spent much of the 1960s living on the streets of New York City, often standing ramrod straight at the corner of West 54th Street and 6th Avenue, dressed in square-patch clothing of his own making, his head cased in a Norse helmet (some dubbed him “the Viking of 6th Avenue”), playing his music,... Read More
January 19th, 2024
Green Day’s “Saviors” - A Textbook for the 2020s A return to form and their most mature recordBy: Dylan Peggin
Sub-genres aside, Green Day can be considered one of the elder statesmen of punk. The Bay Area punk rockers have been in the game for 35 years and are marginally responsible for bringing the DIY aesthetics of punk into the mainstream forefront. Albums like Dookie, Insomniac, and Nimrod established Green Day’s unique sound of power chords, melodic vocals, and fast tempos. Instead of the group growing with only its core audience, they crossed a musical threshold with... Read More
January 18th, 2024
Joni Mitchell's "Court and Spark Demos" Is A Catalog Essential Not a "Curiosity" is it more compelling than the actual release?By: Michael Fremer
Court and Spark, Joni Mitchell's best selling album, originally released 50 years ago yesterday (January 17th 1974) was preceded by a series of well-recorded by Henry Lewy demos that Rhino and the Joni Mitchell Archives say were "newly unearthed". The record was released on RSD Black Friday November 24th, 2023. Copies are easy to find on Discogs.A friend told me it's a "must have" so I ordered one. He was correct. Hearing these songs in... Read More
January 17th, 2024
"Change of the Century" is a Fun Listen! Why are People Afraid of Ornette? Bones Howe engineered sonicsBy: Michael Fremer
While Rhino's "High Fidelity" series lacks a clearly identifiable direction or purpose—it seems to meander around the catalog without regard to time, place or purpose—there's one consistent strategy: each two record release has a rock title and a jazz title. Credit Rhino with chance-taking guts this round. Marquee Moon isn't exactly mainstream rock (though the reissue gives it that sound), and Ornette Coleman's music scares a lot of... Read More
January 16th, 2024
The Heath Brothers plus Stanley Cowell Perform on French Radio Show "Jazz Vivant" previously unreleasedBy: Michael Fremer
The three Heath brothers, Jimmy, Percy and Albert formed their short-lived group in 1975 a year after The Modern Jazz Quartet gave its "final" performance at Carnegie Hall, November, 1974. Of course like many groups and solo artists, it wasn't really the MJQ's final performance and the group had been performing its "farewell" tour around the country all year, but for the time being following the Carnegie Hall appearance bassist Percy... Read More
January 12th, 2024
The White Stripes Took a Gamble on “Live In Las Vegas” The duo’s highly coveted live album gets reissued for the first timeBy: Dylan Peggin
Alright, Las Vegas, let’s lose our money and lose our minds!On September 20, 2003, The White Stripes took hold of Sin City and rocked it into oblivion. The Detroit garage rock duo blitzed through a setlist of familiar favorites, such as “Hotel Yorba” and “Fell in Love With A Girl.” Their then-new album, Elephant, took precedence with blistering renditions of “The Hardest Button to Button” and “Black Math.” The show caught its breath once drummer Meg White stepped away... Read More
January 9th, 2024
Jazz Detective Gets in the Groove With Vibe Man Cal Tjader live at the penthouse 1963-1967By: Michael Fremer
That Swing Thing! by The Terry Gibbs Quartet (Verve V6-8447) released in 1961 was the record that got me on the vibes bandwagon. I bought it that year at E.J. Korvette's in Douglaston, N.Y. of the Long Island Expressway. I was too young to drive of course, so probably was taken there by my mother or sister. It's also where I heard for the first time Bobby Timmons' "Moanin'"— over a pair of Korvettes' XAM "housebrand"... Read More
January 7th, 2024
Volatile Oscar Mind Melds With Mellow Milt For Fun Session crowd pleasing 1962 release provides much needed 21st century stress releaseBy: Michael Fremer
Nat Hentoff's notes get directly to how this musical experiment might have easily gone awry: the unflappable, cerebral MJQ vibraphonist Milt Jackson meets Peterson's "abundant" style. Jackson never broke a sweat on stage, Peterson probably would have had he played the Arctic circle.Yet Jackson and The Oscar Peterson Trio seem made for each other on this musically satisfying, sonically enjoyable set. I've been listening to the original pretty... Read More
January 6th, 2024
IMPEX Reissues Long Neglected Youngbloods Folk-Rock-Jazzy Gem "Darkness, Darkness" is not the only light emerging from the recordBy: Michael Fremer
Best known for the cover of Chet Powers' (stage name Dino Valenti) anthemic "Get Together" found on the group's eponymous Felix Pappalardi produced 1967 debut album and later as the launch pad for Jesse Colin Young's fizzled solo career, The Youngbloods never got the much deserved recognition for its three smooth, dreamy, well-crafted rock-folk-jazz albums released by RCA between 1967 and 1969, the last and best one being this one, Elephant... Read More
January 3rd, 2024
First New Shakti Album in 46 Years Is Truly A "World Music" Affair recorded in studios around the worldBy: Michael Fremer
The first Shakti album in 46 years is miraculous for a few reasons, the first being a "mind-body" cure for John McLaughlin's arthritic hand that had forced his 2017 retirement. The second is that though McLaughlin considers Shakti primarily a live band, this release was "phoned in" from various continents where the group members were living at the time. Not a problem for three of them—McLaughlin, percussionist Zakir Hussein and vocalist... Read More
January 3rd, 2024
Genesis’ “Selling England By The Pound” Finally Breathes The best-sounding pressing of their best albumBy: Dylan Peggin
By 1973, things were starting to come together for Genesis. The classic lineup of vocalist Peter Gabriel, guitarist Steve Hackett, bassist Mike Rutherford, keyboardist Tony Banks, and drummer Phil Collins embarked on a string of albums, 1971’s Nursery Cryme and 1972’s Foxtrot, that would go down to define the ethos of progressive rock. These albums exemplify Genesis’ liberating drive to incorporate European classical elements into multi-segment compositions with... Read More
December 31st, 2023
The Donnas Offered The Best of Both Worlds with “Get Skintight.” Real Gone Music continues to reissue the female rockers’ early catalogBy: Dylan Peggin
The turn of the millennium was a promising time for The Donnas. Churning out an album a year, consecutive tours and placements in film soundtracks established a respectable platform for the Palo Alto female rockers fresh out of high school. The steady productivity, both on and off the road, allowed the girls to evolve. The female Ramones stylings of their self-titled debut and the sleazier glam rock sound of American Teenage Rock ‘n’ Roll Machine are almost total... Read More
December 29th, 2023
A World of Piano!........Phineas Newborn Jr. Craft Recordings reissues piano trio classic, cut from master tape by Bernie GrundmanBy: Joseph W. Washek
Phineas Newborn Jr. was one of the greatest jazz pianists, possessing an astonishing technical ability, a deep bluesy swing, and a complete mastery of jazz harmony. Pianist George Wein wrote, “the only pianist who has as great or greater command of the piano is Art Tatum.” Gene Harris, pianist of the Three Sounds, told Downbeat that Newborn was “…the greatest pianist playing today. In every respect, he is tremendous.” Teddy Wilson and Ray Bryant said his technique was... Read More