[SweetAdeline]

Japandroids- Post Nothing

 

[havagr8da]

 

[cheemo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by virometal /img/forum/go_quote.gif Good album cheemo. You have been listening to a lot of stuff I like lately, so that must mean you're cool.

Likewise, I always checkout what you have spinning@the moment and have sampled some of your recommendations and shortly after, add them to the collection.

Right now:

Black Devil Disco Club/Prins Thomas/Unit 4/Black Mustang - Ride Again EP.

 

[craiglester]

Manic Street Preachers - Journal for Plague Lovers

 

[priest]

 

[krmathis]

"Future Sound Of Egypt 099" - Aly & Fila

 

[Audio-Omega]

The Best Damn Thing by Arvil Lavigne

 

[havagr8da]

The Division Bell - Pink Floyd

 

[tru blu]

Phil Alvin - Un "Sung Stories" (side 2 on LP)

 

[hew]

Branford Marsalis -Random Abstract

 

[2deadeyes]

 

[leeperry]

Dusty Groove America - Various: Gypsy Creams & Ginger Nuts -- Sounds That Swept The Supermarkets

 

[voltraizer]

Steely Dan-Live In America

 

[Hi-Finthen]

CLIFORD JORDAN QUARTET:

Live At Ethell's

Mapleshade Records

Producer/engineer Sprey, notes:
Nothing I’ve recorded is closer to my heart than this, my first collaboration with Clifford. We recorded live at a posh jazz club in Baltimore for three great nights. Fresh off the New York jazz circuit, Clifford’s quartet was locked-in, relaxed and happily inspired by a house full of enthusiastic fans. Everyone from JazzTimes to Bound For Sound has heralded this as one of Clifford’s very best, most appealing recordings. Stereophile called the CD “simply one of the most natural-sounding jazz discs I have heard.” The crystal-clear ambience (the occasional squeak of the hi-hat, the click of a wine glass, the audience’s chuckles of delight) make this CD a pristine vignette of jazz as it was meant to be heard: live. A Fi SuperDisc and a Bound For Sound Recording of Exceptional Merit.

Clifford Jordan, tenor sax
Kevin O'Connell, piano
Ed Howard, bass
Vernel Fournier, drums

TRACK LISTING:

1.SUMMER SERENADE (B.Carte)
2.LUSH LIFE (B.Strayhor)
3.'ROUND MIDNIGHT (T.Monk, C.Williams, B.Hanighe)
4.BLUES IN ADVANCE (C.Jordan)
5. LITTLE BOY, BUT NOT FOR LONG (C.Jordan)
6.ARAPAHO (C.Jordan, B.Harri)
7.DON'T GET AROUND MUCH ANYMORE (B.Russell, E.Ellington)

The Absolute Sound:

Fred Kaplan told me this was among the best sounding jazz CDs he’d ever heard and I concur. Producer/engineer Sprey uses minimum miking and short runs of high quality cables, no filtering, compression, equalization, noise reduction, multitracking, or overdubbing, and he records in analogue at 15 ips. The digital catastrophe-er conversion is saved for the final step, and then done by Bob Katz on his custom D/A converter † this 1987 recording was digitized in 1990 at a 5645K sampling rate.

The results are predictably fine. It is as harmonically rich, colorful, and honest sounding as you’d expect, with a natural view of the quartet: Kevin O’Connell’s piano stage front right, Vernel Fournier’s drum kit back stage left, Ed Howard’s bass right of stage center, and Jordan’s succulent tenor sax, surrounded by plenty of air center stage. Everything is in proper perspective and sized just right. The club’s atmosphere is discernable, but not with the palpable presence of the best Sixties vinyl LPs like Bill Evan’s Village Vanguard sessions for Riverside, which could well have been Sprey’s acoustic model.

As with Bob Cummins’s India Navigation transfer of his exceptional Clarinet Summit recording, the last bit of air, transparency, and three-dimensional liquidity is missing, but here, unfortunately, there is no pure analogue release to compare it with. Someone should arrange to press one.

The sound on this CD is superior, in my opinion, to any of Bob Katz’s all digital, single point mike recordings for Chesky, both spatially and harmonically. I don’t think either the Chesky brothers or Katz would dispute the superior musicality (a valid word in my opinion) or resolution of the analogue medium. If Chesky’s aim was the best sound possible, they’d be recording their CDs in analogue. And they’d go from single point mike to minimum miking as Sprey records because it provides a closer version of what the ear might hear than the single mike which tends to be too damn literal. The last thing I want to be reminded of when listening to a recording of a quartet playing in a cavernous recording studio is that. Recording is an art after all, not an ideology or a pure science.

Sprey has it down just right on this release, as does the Jordan Quartet which turns in an ultra relaxed, yet substantial set of standards like Lush Life (which Jordan spontaneously sings into the sax mike), a hypnotic rendition of Benny Carter’s Summer Serenade, and a sultry take on Thelonius Monk’s `Round Midnight, as well as melodic, swinging originals. A natural sounding demo quality CD that I hope turns up in many rooms at the next CES.

May 1992

~

~

 

[gt67]