Month: December 2020

Larry Coryell – Spaces

  • Larry Coryell returns with this outstanding copy of Spaces, boasting a Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side one
  • Just as rich, lively and clear, with plenty of space for this exceptional ensemble to occupy as you would expect from a vintage Vanguard recording (1970)
  • Features jazz greats John McLaughlin on guitar, Chick Corea on electric piano, Miroslav Vitouš on bass, and Billy Cobham on drums
  • 4 stars: “This album features the pioneer fusion guitarist Larry Coryell with quite an all-star group… contains some lyricism often lacking in fusion of the mid-’70s… a stimulating album worth searching for.”

(more…)

Ray Charles – The Best of Ray Charles

  • An outstanding copy with solid Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it from start to finish – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Like any compilation the sound varies from track to track, but most of the material here sounds WONDERFUL
  • This collection of instrumentals gives you a taste of Ray’s prowess at the piano, with surprisingly good sound to boot
  • All these recordings are from the late 50s, including a live performance from the Newport Jazz Festival

The sound is tonally correct, Tubey Magical and above all natural. The timbre of each and every instrument is right and it doesn’t take a pair of golden ears to hear it. So high-resolution too.

If you love ’50s and ’60s jazz you cannot go wrong here. Ray Charles was a genius (it’s his nickname for heaven’s sake!) and the original music on this record is just one more album’s worth of proof of that fact.

You may have noticed that Tom Dowd, the recording engineer for these tracks, receives a fair amount of criticism on our site. We’re not always fans of his work on rock albums, but on jazz music he usually managed to do a great job. The sound is open, sweet, transparent, rich — all the stuff we like here at Better Records.

Just drop the needle on the first track, Hard Times. The brass is breathy and full-bodied, the piano has real weight, and the vocals sound Right On The Money. The extended solos by David Newman on tenor sax are especially brilliant.

If you want a good Blues based Jazz record, performed by men who were at the height of their powers, you can’t go wrong with this one. All these recordings are from the late 50s, including a live performance from the Newport Jazz Festival. (more…)

Miles Davis – Workin’ And Steamin’

More Miles Davis

  • An outstanding Double Album with solid Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it on all four sides
  • The best sounding tracks here can hold their own with ANY Miles Davis vinyl we’ve ever heard, and that’s a whole lot of Mile Davis albums
  • 5 Stars: “This two-LP set combines a pair of classic albums by the Miles Davis Quintet of 1956, the group that also featured John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones. …the music has plenty of variety and does not sound rushed. Davis’s beautiful muted statements made these two of his most popular albums.”

You might be surprised that a reissue can beat the originals, but one play of this pressing should be enough to remove all doubt.

To the Jazz Fans of the World, we here present one of the BEST sounding jazz recordings we have ever had the PRIVILEGE to place on a turntable. I cannot ever recall hearing a better sounding Rudy Van Gelder recording, and I have a theory as to why this tape is as good as it is: it’s MONO. It also sounds like it’s recorded completely LIVE in the studio, direct to one track you might say. As good a recording as Kind of Blue is, I think the best parts of this album are more immediate and more real than anything on KOB. (more…)

Tusk Has Some of Our Favorite Twisted Melodic Pop

More of the Music of Fleetwood Mac

Drop the needle on Beautiful Child for some of the best Fleetwood Mac sound you’ll ever hear anywhere. Stevie’s voice is breathy beyond belief.

This is one of the more controversial albums in the history of pop music — some people love it, others despise it, and some still don’t know what to make of it. You may not put it up there with Rumours, but when you hear these songs on a copy this good it’s easy to see why the All Music Guide gave Tusk five big stars!

Tusk suffered from high expectations, and disappointed those looking for Rumours II. There is much on this album that compares to the best of Rumours but the weak material somewhat drags the album down as a whole. About three quarters of Tusk is excellent. I made a 60 minute tape of that material and play it with great pleasure. I could tell you about lots of wonderful qualities the best tracks on the album have, but it would take too long. Sorry!

Sonically, the best sounding material ranks right up there with anything the band ever did, but there are more experimental moments such as What Makes You Think You’re The One that are never going to be Demo Quality.

One high point (both musically and sonically) is “Beautiful Child,” possibly the best song Stevie Nicks ever sang. If you listen carefully, and give yourself over totally to the sentiment of the song, and your eyes don’t well up, try opening up a vein and letting some of the ice water pour out, then try it again. Repeat if necessary. If that doesn’t work just give up and put on a Diana Krall CD.

(more…)

Rush – Exit Stage Left

More Rush

More Prog Rock

  • Outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • This pressing boasts surprisingly clean, undistorted sound for a live album, yet it’s every bit as big and lively as a Hard Rockin’ Concert Album (especially from these guys) should be
  • “… the nearly note-perfect performances, combined with exemplary song-selection essentially make Exit…Stage Left a ‘greatest hits’ package from Rush’s best, most-remembered peak, 1977-1981, when they recorded four studio albums culminating in Moving Pictures. The Moving Pictures tour was the right time to capture Rush. Their sound was still hard rock but with a hearty side-dish of prog – a satisfying combination of styles that no other band ever did as well as Rush.”

(more…)

Handel / Water Music / Academy of Ancient Music

More of the music of George Frederick Handel (1685-1759)

This original looking Purple Label L’Oiseau-Lyre (Decca) English pressing has some of the best sound we have yet heard for a period instrument recording. There are many good qualities that will recommend this pressing to audiophiles and music lovers alike. The group is smaller and more sprightly than most we heard, the hall they record in has wonderful sound that fits the music perfectly (not too reverberant, and not too dead), and, most importantly, the character of each of the instruments seems to come through in the recording more clearly; their “colors”, so to speak, appear to our ears to be more intense.

This is a lovely quality in a record. Years ago, fifteen I would guess, I remember playing a Telarc recording and noticing that every instrument had a “grayish” color to its sound. Since that day I have never been able to take a Telarc recording seriously. (CDs suffer from this sound even more.) (more…)

Grace Williams / Fantasia On Welsh Nursery Tunes / Groves – Reviewed in 2012

Super Hot Stamper sound for this TAS List title, containing the most famous piece for which Grace Williams is known. The sound is BIG and RICH, two adjectives we rarely apply to a ’70s EMI. Big maybe — lots of EMI’s are big, but the reason you see so few EMI Hot Stampers on our site is that they are usually big in a vague, phasey way, which is a sound I frankly have never seen the need to take seriously, TAS Listing or no TAS Listing. (Screen speakers tend to sound that way to me, and I’ve never been a fan of them either.)

But rich — now that’s a sound we do like! It’s also not shrill and hard like most EMI’s. Instead it’s transparent, lively and tonally correct from top to bottom.

Add it all up and you have a very special EMI record that qualifies for Super Hot Stamper status. You will have a very hard time finding a copy of the album that sounds like the side one here.

Side one does have a little tube smear on the strings, so we took off one plus and are giving it a grade of A++.

Side two is slightly less transparent, not quite as big and a bit recessed compared to side one. It could be a bit warmer as well.

(more…)

The Yardbirds – Roger The Engineer

  • A stunning copy with a Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two and a solid Double Plus (A++) side one – exceptionally quiet import vinyl too
  • Here are the full-bodied mids, punchy lows and clear, open, extended highs that let this Psych Classic by the band come alive
  • Over, Under, Sideways, Down – the big hit off the album – sounds great here in MONO
  • 4 1/2 stars: “… the Yardbirds’ best individual studio album, offering some of their very best psychedelia.”

This is one of the few Mono albums that really justifies the claims made for the superiority of mono in general. Just listen to the vocals on side one: they’re right up front and centered the way they should be on any good pop song. On the stereo version, they’re off to the left and way down in level. They have no power over there! It robs the song of its focus.

Even worse, the stereo remaster by Edsel has no bass. It’s a joke next to the mono. It’s doubtful we would ever buy one again. What a waste of good import vinyl.

Edsel did a great remastering job of the mono mix here. What do we hear on this pressing that’s different from most of the early pressings? A smoother, sweeter, lower distortion midrange and top end. And really punchy solid super low distortion bass. The transparency of this pressing is clearly superior to anything we have ever played. (more…)

Walton / Violin Concerto / Chung / Previn – Reviewed in 2011

A Near Mint 1973 Decca British Import LP. This album also contains the Stravinsky Concerto on side two.

The Walton sounds quite good; the Stravinsky is a bit Hi-Fi-ish for my taste.

Love that cover!

This is an Older Classical/Orchestral Review

Most of the older reviews you see are for records that did not go through the shootout process, the revolutionary approach to finding better sounding pressings we started developing in the early 2000s and have since turned into a veritable science.

We found the records you see in these older listings by cleaning and playing a pressing or two of the album, which we then described and priced based on how good the sound and surfaces were. (For out Hot Stamper listings, the Sonic Grades and Vinyl Playgrades are listed separately.)

We were often wrong back in those days, something we have no reason to hide. Audio equipment and record cleaning technologies have come a long way since those darker days, a subject we discuss here.

(more…)

Another Passenger – A Personal Favorite

More of the Music of Carly Simon

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Carly Simon

This is my personal favorite of all of Carly’s albums. In terms of singing and songwriting it’s her most consistent, highest quality work. Nothing too heavy, just well crafted and enjoyable Singer Songwriter pop. If you like the kind of albums Paul Simon used to make before Graceland, or middle period James Taylor, you should find much to like here.

Another Passenger checks off a number of important boxes for us here at Better Records:

Some of her albums can be badly overproduced, with monstrously reverberating drum thwacks courtesy of Richard Perry and his minions. Thankfully this is not one of them, so it tends to wear well over time. I can personally attest to that fact because I used to have a tape of the album in my car that I’d be willing to bet I’ve heard more than two hundred times (!)

(more…)