Sparks, the duo of brothers Russell and Ron Mael is a true chameleons in the world of art-pop. Over decades, Sparks has musically shape-shifted through the realms of glam rock, disco, new wave, electronic music and chamber pop. Refusing to stick to one singular musical identity, Sparks kept a brave artistic face as music trends came and went. Thanks to Edgar Wright's documentary, a fresh demographic exposed to The Sparks Brothers are now beginning to appreciate... Read More

Back in June, Michael Fremer and I discussed my next Tracking Angle piece, and we agreed that I should do something I hadn’t done in a while and review a new album. I did some research and decided that Lucinda Williams’ Stories From A Rock n Roll Heart would be a good choice. Michael agreed, and so it was decided.I hadn’t heard the album, but I’d admired Williams’ music dating back to the time before her 1998 breakthrough Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. Her... Read More

If you want to talk about musicians who embodied the very best in quality, originality, versatility, craft, and sheer showbiz pizzazz, then you have to talk about Carl Davis, the great British composer and conductor, who just passed away at the age of 86.  Born and raised in America, Carl spent most of his life living and working in Britain, and there he was something of a national treasure on the music scene. Several of the TV shows he wrote music for were amongst the most popular of their time and are now acknowledged classics.  Equally at home conducting James Bond or unusual classical Pops repertoire, his greatest contribution was in the revival of interest in silent films.  Here I offer a personal appreciation and remembrance of a musician who resides in the pantheon of film composer greats, along with his American contemporaries John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, and Elmer Bernstein.

Often, when a label has a tape out of the vault for a 33 1/3 rpm reissue, it uses the opportunity to also cut it at 45rpm, plate it, and hold onto it until a later 45rpm release. That's clearly the case here. Verve/Acoustic Sounds reissued A Love Supreme at 33 1/3 a few years ago cut by Ryan Smith from the master tape copy Rudy Van Gelder had sent to the U.K. shortly after the album was recorded. When the original tape was found to be plagued with drop outs, Van... Read More

In Chicago, February of 1959 while playing at The Sutherland Hotel as members of Miles Davis's now classic "Kind of Blue" sextet, the group, minus Miles assembled at Bill Putnam's Universal Recording Studio at 46 E. Walton Street and laid down this album led by Cannonball Adderley. It was only a month before "Kind of Blue" but there's nothing modal about this almost corny by comparison set of "chipper" tunes taken post-bop... Read More

Sonny Clark's 1958 Blue Note release "Cool Struttin'" (BLP-1588) is rightly a Blue Note classic that epitomizes the label's musical heritage and ethos. The mono original is among the most sought after, collectible and costly original Blue Notes—an original went for almost $4500 on Discogs— (but I think the sonic signature forced upon it—dynamic compression and low bass attenuation with mid-bass boost —so it would track the inexpensive... Read More

Recently, Mark Ward and I joined "Original Source" producer Rainer Maillard, mastering engineer Sidney Meyer, DGG Heritage Director Johannes Gleim and Thomas Mowrey, former DGG producer and U.S. Marketing Director and "godfather" of the original quadrophonic recordings sourced for this series for a lively and very informative discussion about this exciting new project. Read More

For many pioneers of electronic pop music, the 1990s presented an identity struggle beyond the usual midlife crisis. Synths and drum machines were now widely accessible and ubiquitous: your $4000 synth isn’t so special anymore, your $5000 sequencer that constantly broke down on stage is a relic of the distant past, and any Detroit techno producer, Manchester acid house enthusiast, or some smiling dude from Cornwall could render your entire career obsolete. Past... Read More

And so it starts again with a ballad. One that Damon Albarn started 20 years ago as, literally, “Half A Song,” finished at the urge of bodyguard Darren ‘Smoggy’ Evans and now the opening track on The Ballad Of Darren, Blur’s first album in eight years. Albarn has written many ballads, probably a few too many: about love, about sadness, about England. Yet “The Ballad” stands out in how defeated it is, especially as the opener for such an anticipated record. It signals... Read More

I know more about Klaus Barbie the war criminal than I do about Barbie the doll—or Barbie the movie—but having spent a few months pondering the meaning of the songs on Amy Ray's recent, politically tinged, geographically existential, lushly arranged solo album I was fascinated to find that Greta Gerwig's new "Barbie" movie uses in a crucial scene The Indigo Girls' classic "Closer to Fine" from their eponymous 1989 debut album. The... Read More

Imitation is - as you may have heard - the sincerest form of flattery. In the music world, however, it’s a slippery slope: the listener crosses his or her finger when a composer or performer attempts to pay homage to another style or genre hoping that the final result is a well-done and tasteful tribute. It’s not as though Andrew Gold needed to imitate anyone, but out of his love of 1960s psychedelic rock ‘n’ roll he devised a fictitious band (The Fraternal Order of... Read More

In March 1957, Sonny Rollins was 26 and one of the hot young tenor saxophone players (matched only by his friend John Coltrane) when he went out to L.A. with the Max Roach quartet and, one night, in his off hours, stepped into a warehouse that doubled as a studio for Contemporary Records and laid down the tracks of Way Out West. (I mean “off hours” literally; the only time he and his bandmates could get together, in between club gigs and other recording sessions, was... Read More

Blue Note Records announces the next run of titles in the Classic Vinyl Reissue Series, presenting 180g all-analog vinyl reissues of some of the most iconic masterpieces of the Blue Note catalog by jazz legends including Art Blakey, Donald Byrd, Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Sonny Rollins, and others. Don Was and Cem Kurosman curate, Kevin Gray masters directly from the original analog master tapes Optimal presses and the price is right! Newly announced... Read More

In our occasional series of unusual but noteworthy records, this 1975 collection of works specially written for the brilliant vocal sextet of the King's Singers - still going strong after over 50 years - remains one of their most adventurous outings. Captured in vintage EMI analogue sound, the works recorded cover a multitude of both traditional and more experimental vocal techniques by top composers of the era, all performed at the highest level. If you think "a cappella" singing begins with the Barden Bellas, prepare to be surprised by this time capsule of vocal virtuosity.

Many classic albums are lauded as “singular” and “groundbreaking,” but after a while don’t really sound like it, because everyone afterwards did it, or we realize that someone lesser-known did it six months earlier. Yet 52 years later, Sly & The Family Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On remains as singular and confounding as ever; nothing remotely like it existed before, and nothing since has done exactly what it does. It remains impenetrable and unique: while its elements have scattered throughout popular and underground music since, Sly Stone's early 1970s work operates in a manner that’s impossible to plagiarize because exactly what makes it work is much harder to pinpoint.

The less than enthusiastic review I gave to the UHQR reissue of Steely Dan's "Pretzel Logic" produced some nasty and totally unfair comments aimed not at me, but at Analogue Productions and Acoustic Sounds that I think need addressing now, not later. All of the UHQRs shown in the photo got great reviews on this site from me or from Fred Kaplan. Why? Because they elevated the sound of those recordings to above what either of us heard on any other... Read More