chadbang
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2001
- Posts
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This may be old news to other jazz fans, but I'd just thought I'd let you know about a stunning new find for myself. I was reading Stereophile and their "Records to Die For" and wrote down some names of some artists and cds that sounded promising. I went to audiogalaxy and downloaded a couple songs from each artist. Naturally they all sounded good (yes, I think that you can weed out great recordings from OK ones even listening to mp3s), but, as I often find with audiophile recommendations, much of the material was stuff I would never listen to more than once. But I downloaded a few songs by the jazz artist Patricia Barber, whose album "Companion" was highly recommened in Stereophile. Wow. Great tracks. The three that I downloaded hooked me right in. She has a terrific voice with character and a definite "cool". Barber is extremely listenable and contemporary sounding. I downloaded a slew of songs by her from Audiogalaxy and they were all fantastic. Now I can't wait to hunt down the real cds (I believe mp3 are great for auditioning music, and the record companies should chill out and be happy that mp3 have consequently sent me to the record shop a number of times.) Anyway, Patricia Barber, ahhh.... She's supercool and covers everything from jazz standards to The Doors, Sunny and Cher and Santana with sly interpretation. And the real bonus is that her albums are exceptionally well-recorded. The musicianship and arrangements are also superb with the occasional nice touch of the Hammond B4 sound. The albums "Modern Cool" and "Uncut 2000" sounded like winners to me, so I'm going to try and find those first. Excuse me for enthusing, but I'd thought I share.
