More Jazz guitar
- Jazz guitar great Bill Connors makes his debut on the site with this phenomenal sounding copy of Of Mist And Melting
- This pressing boasts Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on side two and an outstanding Double Plus side one
- The sound of this vintage ECM pressing is really quite amazing – fans of adventurous jazz, the kind ECM is known for, should get a lot out of this LP
- “A beautiful session by the ever searching guitarist Bill Connors… intense, lyrical, and introspective… continued to show his great talents as a composer…
Jazz Guitar – How Can You Go Wrong?
What the best sides of this Classic Jazz Guitar Album have to offer is clear for all to hear:
- The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
- The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl domestic pressings like this one offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1978
- Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
- Natural tonality in the midrange — with the guitar and drums having the correct sound for this kind of recording
- Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional space of the studio
No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now
Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.
What to Listen For (WTLF)
Copies with rich lower mids and nice extension up top did the best in our shootout, assuming they weren’t veiled or smeary of course. So many things can go wrong on a record! We know, we’ve heard them all.
Top end extension is critical to the sound of the best copies. Lots of old records (and new ones) have no real top end; consequently, the studio or stage will be missing much of its natural air and space, and instruments will lack their full complement of harmonic information. The sax sound will get shrill and congested without enough top end air to breathe.
Tube smear The copies that tend to do the best in a shootout will have the least (or none), yet are full-bodied, tubey and rich.
TRACK LISTING
Side One
Melting
Not Forgetting
Face In The Water
Side Two
Aubade
Cafe Vue
AMG Review
by AMG user, Martin Totusek
A beautiful session by the ever searching guitarist Bill Connors – showing part of the musical direction that Connors first took after leaving Chick Corea’s first jazz-rock incarnation of the “Return To Forever” band…
The intense, lyrical, and introspective Bill Connors’ originals on the “Of Mist And Melting” session continued to show his great talents as a composer – compositions which bassist Gary Peacock both praised and also used in his jazz composition classes and workshops following his return to Seattle, Washington after recording the session in December of 1977. Note: the piece “Melting” is also known under the title of “Spanish Flames” from live Bill Connors / James “Jimmy” Giuffre duet performances.