Quote:
Originally Posted by Davey 
BTW, I always thought the Folklore CD sounded great. A little loud, sure, but lush, and with a very nice sense of in room presence. I'm even listening to a 320 Kbps mp3 rip right now and it sounds very nice too. I do have some Woven Hand on vinyl, and they do sound better, but I don't have any 16 HP. Still, I wouldn't call Folklore a bad sounding CD by any measure. In fact, I think I've listed it in the past as an example of a good sounding CD (yea, just searched and posted link below), hmm, wonder if I should rethink that. Cat sex, eh? Had a friend who once described Bjork's singing as "someone hitting a bag of cats with a hammer"  |
Glitterhouse are such a great label!
Yes - the Folklore LP is just rich and deep, each trinkling guitar note really takes on a rippling presence. And yeah - it's really hard to find any 16HP vinyl stuff now. I've got Folklore; Secret South and Olden all on vinyl along with the 3 Woven Hand LPs. The sound is just superbly engineered even on the live Olden album! I love vinyl, so CD sounds inadequate in comparison most of the time...
Yet the tinny CD is probably more to do my my bright Musical Fidelity system - I'm on the NuVista tube amp and it is coming to the end of its life. Buying LPs seem to make up for it but I'm going to have to take up the second tube for it. Now Secret South! The bass and drum thump on that album is really terrific!
I can't tell when rock/modern stuff is recorded well or not. With classical music, I find it much easier. If you're keen to listen to reference standard of classical recording (and playing, then Simon Rattle's Szymanowski series - the Symphonie No.3; No.4, Harnasie; King Roger and the Violin Concerto fall into that category. It's so telling in the violin concerto - the violin piece is very sensuous and fragile, and always at risk of being dwarfed by the large orchestra. Here, Rattle pulls it off superbly with the mics perfectly positioned and the spaciousness of the orchestra opening up warm and invitingly without ever smothering the violin.
What's striking is that Rattle and the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra have pulled off a complete set of the Polish composer's symphonic works - all too the same standards right across his works on a number of cds. That makes it really invaluable for anyone looking for reference recordings of work........
Fabulous composer too .. almost forgot to say
Bjork....oer. Well, 'beautiful' or 'haunting' are not exactly adjectives I'd use to describe her singing style! She does sing on a par with other famous banshees though
