Wednesday, November 22, 2023

Jerome Sabbagh new vinyl on the way

 It's been a long ride on this Kickstarter project but Jerome is coming through again with his latest album on vinyl.  Details and history here. I can't remember when I signed up (a year ago?) but after very positive experiences with his earlier offerings, starting with The Turn, I had no hesitation backing this one. Fascinating to see the budget for all this  -- inclusing recording sessions for $9k, $4k for 2" multitrack tape to record on etc., but he had a proposed total budget of $30,700 for this -- sounds small in the recording scheme but you are looking at one jazz musician taking on this in the hope of producing a great sounding vinyl recording of his own music while paying musicians and engineers etc to get this done. He even took delivery of the lps in his apartment and oversees mailing himself. Now that's commitment.  Head on over and check it out.



 

Monday, November 20, 2023

Now that's a record collection!

 

The ARChive of Contemporary Music, which houses more than 90m songs and is supported by names such as Martin Scorsese, is in need of a new home
 

Sunday, November 12, 2023

MQA....maybe quiety attenuated...

 Is it finally dead? Lots of arguments online suggest that it's over but like a good horror movies, the ending has to be extended with a few unlikely comebacks before sanity is restored. I secretly enjoyed the discourse on the Steve Hoffman forum where the 'Is MQA dead?' thread started 6 years ago and continues (spoiler alert, the answer seems to be 'yes') but I'll leave it to Wikipedia to proffer a more disinterested account. Best part of the latter report is the historical context it provides, including some choice quotes from major audiophile writers who predicted MQA would change the world. Hey, Lenbrook just acquired the assets so that horror movie scenario remains.....