John Abercrombie -- rest in peace

By now the word of John's death has made it out to various forums and many people are rightfully mourning the loss of a great guitarist. Much is written, and you can find a decent obit in Jazz Times. There's little I can add other than to note that his playing had a distinct quality, and like many jazz players, his commitment to music made complete artistic but rarely financial sense. To my ears, he was a uniquely free player, moving in ways that were hard to predict but eminently satisfying to hear.  Tonight I am spinning Sargasso Sea, his beautiful, deeply captivating LP with Ralph Towner, and am moved again by the power of this music.  The lifeforce is dimmed a little tonight. Thank you for the music, John.

Gretchen Menn -- beauty is a beast

Gretchen Menn can play guitar. She's young, photogenic as hell and can do note for note renditions of classic Blackmore and Django solos, as evinced on YouTube. This makes her talented but maybe not sufficiently interesting to the music business of 2017. What does set this artist apart though is readily apparent on her new release Abandon All Hope.  Where most flashy young metal guitarists can dazzle you with fingerwork flourishes, lightening speed runs and classical-flavored solos to the point of boredom, it's a far rarer player that can compose and deliver an instrumental rock album of sufficient musical depth to keep a jaundiced listener like me engaged for more than a few tracks.

Certainly the music here mines a relatively narrow range of moods and textures. Forget the pretentious Dante's Inferno inspiration of the marketing materials, this music is fast and furious rock guitar offset with airy, etherial touches of strings; piledriver rhythms and choir-like background vocals, the sort of fantasy rock world  teenage air guitarists dream of creating. But to sum it up so is to do a disservice to what's on offer. For sure there's a few rock cliches, but  I hear a classicism in tunes like Shadows and Weights that takes me back to early 20th century works in another canon. Riffs like Hounds of Hades (yep, the titles sort of sum up the vibe) are derivative but within these constraints she solos with a lyricism that catches your ear and tells you something different is on offer.

Bloodshed and Rise bring the violin to the fore, revealing Menn's compositional skills.  Throughout the record vague celtic edges and even middle-Eastern vibes conjure up early Rainbow, particularly in tracks like Limbo and the modal Tempest. This creates a mood throughout that elevates the music above the simple 'look at what I can do' of typical rock instrumentalists and gives you a connection to a deeper well of music making that had me thankful that in 2017 some emerging guitarists are committed to pushing the form forward.

Obviously a guitarist has to make a living and the photos and imagery of an obviously beautiful woman are used to catch the audience's eye here,  but Menn is too talented to be limited by this or being reduced to a Zeppelin cover band. Her compositional skills and playing ability confirm a talent that warrants a creative career in music making and I hope she can garner the support to enable this.   If you cut beneath the surface,  her form's more of a jazz musician than a metal guitarist, improvising within a strict structure, but this album kicks rather than swings. I suspect there's better to come from her in the years ahead. I certainly can imagine soundtrack requests following the dramatic soundscapes presented here.

Sound quality and production sadly, are not great, the music is disappointingly compressed, lacking resolution and air (I downloaded an AIFF version for my Mac and played via USB through my PS Audio PWDII, but am still tweaking it so maybe there is hope) but no matter -- the music warrants listening through the full, near double-album length work without pause, and that's more than I can say for many rock instrumental albums of recent years. Enjoy the ride.

Find out more about her here

Remember when CDs cost more than LPs?

Yeah, when CDs first came out they were priced higher than LPs...oh, how long ago that was. I am used to the premium cost of vinyl now but sometimes even I get surprised. Look at this pre-order price difference on Amazon:

Yeah, its a 4LP set, I know...but man...$20 on cd or $80 on vinyl, for a live album?  Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash eh Dave?

Wanna join the audiophile elite?

Are you ready for some new tweaks? Specially aligned crystals to sort out your soundstage? Painted wooden artifacts to align the signals? Hey, knock yourself out. Apparently they are popular among 'the audiophile elite', according to the site, so that rules me out.  But if you've tried them, let me know. 

more here: http://audiophile.rocks/index.html

Quality of vinyl hurting sales?

Growth slowing? No, it's not the limited pressing facilities, it's the use of digital files according to some:

"A move to making vinyl records from digital files instead of the original analogue recordings is causing concern in the industry with sales slumping in the first half of 2017.

In the first half of 2015, sales of vinyl records jumped 38% compared to the same period the prior year, to 5.6 million units, Nielsen Music data show. A year later, growth slowed to 12%. This year, sales rose a modest 2%. “It’s flattening out,” says Steve Sheldon, president of Los Angeles pressing plant Rainbo Records. While he doesn’t see a bubble bursting—plants are busy—he believes vinyl is “getting close to plateauing.”

Despite the resurgence of vinyl records in recent years, the quality of new LPs are not as good as “old” LP’s claim observers because record Companies are resorting to laying down vinyl from digital sources.

Old LPs were cut from analogue tapes—that’s why they sound so high quality. But most of today’s new and re-issued vinyl albums—around 80% or more, several experts estimate—start from digital files, even lower-quality CDs."

Full story here: https://www.channelnews.com.au/vinyl-sales-slump-quality-blamed/

Genesis Technologies sponsor new Anne Bisson D2D recording

No real info on how to purchase yet but here's the announcement:

Genesis Advanced Technologies (USA) and Brilliance Music (Thailand) are pleased to announce the release of a new “Live at Bernie’s” audiophile recording. The Anne Bisson Trio: Four Seasons in Jazz is the product of an amazing collaboration of the finest musicians from Canada with the best engineers in Hollywood.

“It was a chance that could not be turned down. An opportunity too good to miss,” said Gary L Koh, the Designer & CEO of Genesis Advanced Technologies, and self-described music lover and Bernie Grundman Mastering fan about sponsoring the album. “Anne first broached the idea of doing a Four Seasons in Jazz nearly two years ago, and when Bernie agreed to do it direct-to-disc, I leaped at it.”

The brainchild of Gary L Koh and his long-time friend and Thai distributor Wuti Larnroongroj, the story of how the recording came to be was one of serendipity; of chance meetings and opportunities grasped, then one of hard work and perseverance to bring the album to fruition.

Canadian jazz vocalist/pianist Anne Bisson and her musical collaborators were recorded direct-to-disk over two days by Bernie Grundman at his studio, Bernie Grundman Mastering in Hollywood, CA. Co-produced with Bisson, legendary sound engineer Michael C. Ross used a 100% analog recording chain directly to Grundman’s all-analog record cutting system to realistically capture every glorious moment.

 “When I was asked if I wanted to do a “Live” album at Bernie Grundman’s, I said “Sure! Yes!” Said Anne Bisson of the album, “I had no idea what sort of commitment and preparation it would involve, but well, we did it! Me and my two wonderful cohorts, Jean-Bertrand Carbou and Pierre Tanguay, who inspired me on every take.”

“I’ve known Bernie Grundman for many years. He does all the mastering of the Thai language albums I produce. When my old friend Gary asked him if he would do another “Live at Bernie’s” album, I was all in.” Said Wuti Larnroongroj of Brilliance Music. “It would be my first foray into producing an album in English, and what a way to start!”

Four Seasons in Jazz: Live at Bernie’s is only the 3^rd direct-to-disc recording ever created at Bernie Grundman Mastering, and the 2^nd mixed in real-time by Ross and mastered by Grundman himself. The album will be released as a Limited Edition, hand-numbered 180-gram 45rpm double vinyl LP in super premium packaging with a 16 page book containing lyrics and an essay giving readers and music-lovers a never-before-seen insight into the background and the process involved in creating this direct-to-disc adventure.

The Anne Bisson Trio consists of Anne Bisson, vocalist & pianist, Jean-Bertrand Carbou on double bass and Pierre Tanguay, drummer/percussionist.

http://www.genesisloudspeakers.com/